George Harrison Said The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ Was Cheap to Make: ‘Just a Couple of 16-Millimeter Cameras and a Bunch of Loonies on a Bus’
George Harrison said it didn’t take much to film The Beatles‘ Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. All the band needed was a couple of cameras and “a bunch of loonies on a bus.”
George Harrison said The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was based on typical pleasure trips of the time
If fans weren’t aware of The Beatles’ new sound and style, they understood once they watched the group’s third film, Magical Mystery Tour. It was completely different from the band’s previous two films, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! They were no longer running from fans or a ritualistic tribe. They were traveling on a psychedelic journey that didn’t make much sense.
The Fab Four accompany friends and family on a bus traveling to the sea. That’s all you can say about the film’s plot. George said they based Magical Mystery Tour on typical pleasure trips of the time.
“It was basically a charabanc trip, which people used to go on from Liverpool to see the Blackpool lights,” George said in Anthology (per Ultimate Classic Rock). “They’d get loads of crates of beer and an accordion player, and all get pissed.”
George said ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was cheap to make
In the mid-1960s, The Beatles stopped touring because Beatlemania had gotten out of hand. They couldn’t go anywhere, which meant they cut TV performances too. However, the group knew they still had to connect with their audience. The only solution was to make music videos.
They got some cameras, went out to a field, and shot videos for songs like “Rain” and “Paperback Writer.” It was easy and cost-effective. They weren’t thinking in terms of creativity. They just wanted to do something quick.
During a 1988 interview with MuchMusic, George said, “We used to just get a cameraman with a 16-millimeter, and we’d just go in a field and do it, you know? There wasn’t all these concepts and trying to-how to spend $200,000 on three and a half minutes of rubbish.”
The Beatles had the same mentality while filming Magical Mystery Tour. MuchMusic said it certainly seemed that The Beatles knew how to spend money, looking at the strange movie, but George said, “It’s still quite cheap, though. Just a couple of 16-millimeter cameras and a bunch of loonies on a bus.”
The film tanked, but Martin Scorsese thinks it’s still important
Magical Mystery Tour premiered on TV and tanked, mainly because of its subject matter and the fact that it premiered in black-and-white. However, at least The Beatles didn’t fork out a small fortune to make it. Although, maybe if the band spent a little more money, it would’ve saved the film.
“It wasn’t the kind of thing we could do a disclaimer before it and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to see is a product of our imaginations’ – and believe me, at this point they’re quite vivid,” Paul said in the 2012 feature about Magical Mystery Tour.
The film didn’t go down as one of The Beatles’ shining moments. Even The Rutles had to poke fun at it with their parody, “Tragical History Tour.”
However, director Martin Scorsese looks at the film thoughtfully and critically and says it’s important. “For me, it certainly still holds up,” said Scorsese (per Ultimate Classic Rock). “The freedom of the picture was very important.”
George might have said Magical Mystery Tour was cheap, but it’s worth a lot to some.
