The Beatles’ 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour isn’t as celebrated as some of their other full length features: Help!, A Hard Day’s Night and Yellow Submarine, which may explain why it has been out of print for years. However, that’s about to change. On October 9th, Magical Mystery Tour will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray with a remixed soundtrack and, of course, special features.
Additionally, Magical Mystery Tour will hit select U.S. theaters for limited screenings starting September 27.
Those features include new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as other members of the cast and crew; McCartney also recorded audio commentary. Other features include music videos of “Your Mother Should Know,” “Blue Jay Way,” “The Fool On The Hill.” There’s also “Hello Goodbye,” as featured on Top Of The Pops. “Nat’s Dream” was a scene directed by John Lennon which didn’t make the film. Perhaps the most interesting and surprising bonus feature is Traffic performing “Here We Go ‘Round The Mulberry Bush,” which got cut from the film.
A special deluxe version will include both the DVD and the Blu-Ray, with a 60-page book and a double 45” EP with the film’s (then-) new Beatles songs, “Magical Mystery Tour,” “The Fool On The Hill,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Flying,” “Blue Jay Way,” and “Your Mother Should Know.”
For those unfamiliar with the story behind Magical Mystery Tour: In September 1967, The Beatles loaded a film crew onto a bus, along with friends, family and cast, and headed out of London to make their third film, this time conceived and directed by The Beatles themselves.
“Paul said, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea,’ and we said ‘Great!’ and all he had was this circle and a little dot on the top – that’s where we started,” Ringo Starr said in a press release. “It wasn’t the kind of thing where you could say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to see is the product of our imaginations and believe me, at this point they are quite vivid’,” McCartney said in the same press release.
– Brian Ives, CBS Local
