Here’s a song I used to skip half the time I listened to Magical Mystery Tour as a kid. Granted, when I was 7 years old I hadn’t done the sort of things to my brain that might have helped me better tune into this song, but even years later, after I should have had a better idea of what George was up to, the song dragged.
The Beatles, “Blue Jay Way” (German true stereo mix)
That started to change as I got used to the German true stereo version of Magical Mystery Tour. Now, it couldn’t drag enough. The bass is so friggin’ deep. It’s a wonder the entire band didn’t fall asleep to Ringo’s beat. George, for a rare time in his raised-consciousness phase, shows rather than tells what he’s going through.
Again, the true stereo mix lets the closely mic’ed strings be fully felt. You can hear the bizarre vocal effects as The Beatles themselves might have heard them in the studio. Athough I usually hate when a remastered ’60s album cleans everything up and offers me the opportunity to pick and choose what I want to hear (rather than slamming me in the face with the main hooks, as most great ’60s records were meant to do). In the absence of tremendous songs, the vague focus of the German mix becomes a strength.
More broadly, as we head to the finish line of side 1, although the band’s loss of Brian Epstein is often pointed to as a profoundly negative turning point in their overall quality, the sense of unease in side 1’s EP-collected recordings, especially as reflected in the true stereo mix, can be seen as a treat for Beatles fans. There’s a humanity to these mixes that I find refreshing after the monolithic studio wizardry that is Sgt. Pepper’s.
I must admit I have a strange fascination with this song. I’ll have to check (The Beatles book “Recording the Beatles” should tell me..) but I think it might be one that only George and Ringo play on and that John and Paul were not on any of the sessions.
Here’s the house the song was written in:
http://www.electricearl.com/BlueJay5.html
Here’s the organ it was written on:
http://www.electricearl.com/BlueJay6.html
I recently found one of these (at least similar) on craigslist for FREE! My buddy Hugo has it in his home studio:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deansabatino/401315991/
Geek page:
http://www.electricearl.com/BlueJay.html
And if you can afford it, this book is a must for any Beatles freak:
http://www.recordingthebeatles.com/
This is a true one-chord drone song, unlike Tomorrow Never Knows. Now that I know the backstory, it’s almost like it makes the lyrics more mysterious rather than less.
[Harrison: “Derek Taylor got held up. He rang to say he’d be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. And he said he could find it OK… he could always ask a cop. So I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn’t want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn’t noticed until then… so I messed around on it and the song came.”]
Ugh. I got halfway through and had to press the stop button. Come on, guys — German stereo or no, this song is a bonafide, fly-blown, corn-studded, carrot strip-laden TURD. If this were an Eric Burdon song, we’d all be laughing about it. Instead, folks around here are pickin’ dingleberries out of Harrison’s ass lookin’ for insight into The Creative Process. Here’s the story:
– He was bored.
– There was an organ.
– He wrote a stupid song about waiting for his friends.
NEXT!
This song invented the black light AND the black light poster.
and moments like that flanged out drum bit at 1.22 are among the most badassed in the entire beatles canon.
very sinister, georgie.
right now, as i listen, i’m thinking more of the “most psychedellic” part of mr. mod’s “most psychedellic album” platitude. when i think of what psychedelia COULD be (something much less vomit inducing than the kinds of treacle that i was criticizing in the “wherefore art thou, psyche?” thread i wrote awhile back), this is what i have in mind.
thanks for reminding me of this song, mr. mod. who really gives a fark whether or not mmt is “an album” as the last part of your platitude proclaims?
it may be their most psychedellic release.
oh…
on a nerdier note: i also listened to my american, mid 70s pressing of this tune, and there’s ALOT more flange on the drums at 1.22 than there is on this version.
Thinking back to when I first heard this song, I’m sure I didn’t catch the first line as “there’s a fog upon L.A.” And, if missing the scene-setting first line wasn’t bad enough, I certainly didn’t understand that Blue Jay Way was a street, because George, in the British manner, says he’s “in” Blue Jay Way, not “on” Blue Jay Way.
I don’t know what I thought the song was about. I guess I thought it was about death. I guess I still do.
it certainly sounds like death in our nightmarish imaginings, without being b-movie about it.
i don’t think anything quite so sour sounding had ever been made at the time.
I consulted the RTB book and will offer some pince nez details for you…
1. I stand corrected; Paul does play bass on this track and John at least sang some background vocals (there is some question as to if he also played a second Hammond part while they did the first 4 tracks (drums, bass and 2 organ tracks)
2. After George added doubled vocal tracks (they had bounced the first 4 tracks down), there was an empty track that remained blank for a month. The last bits to be added on that track were the cello and tamborine.
3. Ken Scott attempted the first stereo mix and then George Martin (the 5th Beatle as decided here) did a mix later. A mono mix was done later. In all cases it seems some sort of post mix edit was required on the song. It is not clear what was cut out.
4. While they did the stereo mix, a backwards version of the song was faded in and out at various times. It was determined that the mono mix would just be different and not have that backwards track.
OK, now that thats off my back, here’s why I dig this track:
1. Those flanged drums are awesome. Great “Ringo-isms” throughout.
2. It reminds me in some vague way of various times (good) spent in Los Angeles. I like to visit there, but know I couldn’t live there. It really does invoke the “mood” for me…
I’m kind of interested in the idea of where this stands in relation to “what psychedelia could be,” and how the song is designed. There’s the literal story behind it, what got George up off the couch to that organ in the corner, but there’s still work going on from the time he was sitting there annoying everybody with it to the time they finished producing it.
In that sense, I think it is “psychedelic” beyond having some bike horns and harpsichords around old-timey lyrics about tea and the Great War; there’s a genuine attempt to express sensory distortion, literal psychedelia. The bass thumps like a heartbeat or a headache, the double tracked lead lags slightly to help the backwards cymbal /haunted house vocals set up the dream state and then the drums that kick in at 1:05 and start speeding up around 2:15 lay out the sense of trying and probably failing to stay awake.
None of it’s musical rocket science, but I think it succeeds because all those touches transform it from a song written by a guy who’s bored and tired to a song where he tries to explain what that experience felt like and the lurching sound pulls you from the literal, harmless lyrics into that sinister, paranoid mindset.
And even if it doesn’t work for you, you can at least enjoy watching an amateur Literary Analysis 101 rabbit hole like this get set up so Walrus can knock it down.