Saturday, June 25, 2016

Overdubbing and Mixing the Title Track "Magical Mystery Tour"

On November 07 1967, the final session for the soundtrack LP "Magical Mystery Tour" was completed. This consisted of a few "tweaks" for the title track. For the television special, there was a spoken introduction during the opening of the title track by John Lennon which basically went like this: "Roll up, roll up, roll up for the magical mystery tour !! Step right this way !! Hurry, hurry, hurry !!!".
During the mixing session for the song, it was decided to have the intro on tape along with the music for record release. I suppose John was not available as it was Paul who stepped up to the microphone and stated the same phrases without the "hurry, hurry" part of it. So, you instantly have two versions of the title track with one intro by John (from the TV/film special) and by Paul (from the LP/CD commercial version).
There are also differences in the mono and stereo mixes completed on this day: the mono version has heavy "phasing" on both the lead vocal and the group backing vocals whereby the stereo version does not - at least it's not as heavy. There were six attempts at the stereo mix and ten attempts at the mono mix for this song. Both of these are commercially available on the mono and stereo Capitol LP/CD "Magical Mystery Tour" and released in the UK during the 70s - I recommend you seek out the yellow vinyl copy, it looks "fab" !!

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