If you loved The Beatles anywhere near their time, there’s a good chance you’ve got a soft spot for this song. If you’re some post-punk dude, you probably think of this song when dismissing The Beatles as “overrated.” That’s cool.
In this final track from the German true stereo version of Magical Mystery Tour, you get the added depth in the string and horn arrangements. The bass is a little heavier. The song sounds a little less like a jingle and a little more like the latest Lennon manifesto. A fine line, I know.
So that’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip. Thanks for taking the ride.
We’re heading into the final turn! I hope you who have been able to follow along with this reconsideration of Magical Mystery Tour – with the aid of the 1971 German true stereo mixes. If you’ve missed a day, search back. We’ll keep these tracks up for a limited time.
What I’m about to say may shock you: I’ve long loved this song. There are so many slight songs from The Beatles’ psychedelic phase that work primarily as showcases for McCartney’s heavy Rickenbacker bass parts. Paul’s reputation is typically as The Showman, The Cute One, The Writer of Granny Numbers, and even The Multitalented One, but he’ll never get all the credit he deserves as an Emotionally Engaging Bass Player. I’m not kidding: his basslines are the emotional center of so many songs, especially these half-baked psych-platitude pieces.
In this version of “Baby You’re a Rich Man” you get to hear even more of the bass – the lows and the attack of the picked strings. It’s one of Paul’s trademark songs. The song also features those little runs on an organ or some other kind of reedy instrument. What’s making those “raga” noises? I’ve always dug them, and I dig them even more on this version.
Finally, let’s not forget John Lennon‘s contributions to his own song. It might seem I’ve dismissed the song itself, but John’s commitment to the lead vocals and his enlightened point of view is worth tuning into. Lennon was in the middle of a long stretch of tuning in and out of Beatles activities, but when he tuned in, he could pull off almost any type of half-assed song with the best of them. This is no exception.
As I medidate on the beauty of unease that’s highlighted on the German true stereo release of Magical Mystery Tour, I’m finding that “Penny Lane” is one song that does not benefit from this mix. The song is too perfect, too much a product of the vibe that was at the mighty core of the Sgt. Pepper’s sessions for which it was originally recorded. Here’s the German true stereo version.
I prefer the crammed, fake stereo of the US release I grew up with. It’s totally in your face, like McCartney and like his airtight pop confection was meant to be.
[NOTE: If the gratuitous clip that kicks off this video doesn’t convince you nerds that the film Almost Famous actually was the most contrived piece of prepubescent proto-porn ever produced by Hollywood, as I’ve felt since first watching it, I don’t know what to say.]
Here’s another case of a song I’d already loved (in fact, this is one of my top 2 or 3 favorite Beatles songs) demonstrating, in true stereo on the 1971 German release of Magical Mystery Tour, previously untapped depths. How gripping is the intro with the added space of the true stereo mix?
I don’t know about you, but I find this mix to have even more allure than the version we’ve all grown up with and loved. As with so many of the arrangements on this album, a sense of unease is more palpable with the greater clarity, width, and depth.
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.
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.
On Day 2 of Rock Town Hall’s groundbreaking series on a reappreciation of The Beatles’ long-dismissed Magical Mystery Tour album on the strength of the 1971 German true stereo release we ask you to open your minds and hearts to the pleasures of one of the most-despised Beatles songs, Paul McCartney’s cloying “The Fool on the Hill”.
The space that the true stereo version grants to the arrangement of this song helps greatly. I’ve always thought of this album as the most psychedelic of Beatles albums (and please don’t Pince Nez me on the album’s history as a collected ep and singles), and the true stereo mix increases the “head” appeal, let’s the mood of each song better seep into one’s consciousness, man. Previously unaccessible nooks and crannies of “The Fool on the Hill” – the slightly out of tune mellotron parts, the woodwinds and whatnot, the gentle rhythm guitar and piano – open up. Suddenly, it’s like one of those weird, wonderful songs from Roy Wood’s Boulders that only I and another half dozen people on the planet seem to get. McCartney actually delivers a heartfelt vocal, although I can do without the second “Ohhhhh…round and round…” part on the fadeout. Even in true stereo the song has worn out its welcome by this point.
The true stereo mix does not help the lyrics. It’s too bad he couldn’t have written some gibberish; this would have topped most of the filler songs on Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Speaking of McCartney lyrics, I’m reminded of a morning last week, when I played my wife the recent McCartney album for the first time, and four songs in she said, “OK, enough of this! When’s he going to try to write lyrics that have something to do with an adult man’s life?” Then she quoted a particularly bad lyric that just pushed her past her limits. “Can’t he take lessons from Nick Lowe?” God, I love my wife – in true stereo, fake stereo, mono, you name it.
My promise of a slightly mind-expanding take on The Beatles’ oft-derided Magical Mystery Tour album is likely to be met with skepticism on Day 1, as I roll out the title track for review. Listeners who are familiar with the conventional release of this album may notice a little added brightness and definition in the horns and string – and the rhythm guitar is a little more distinct – but this song is still what it is, a poor man’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Perhaps you will hear more than even I hear. Hold tight for tomorrow’s first dramatic ear-opening selection!
