Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Mystery tours was just sort of the quick hit.
Speaker 1: You get on the bus somewhere in Liverpool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you weren't supposed to know where you were going.
Speaker 3: You get on the bus and you'd trust the operators
Speaker 3: to take you somewhere.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: No, it was nice to get away and you couldn't
Speaker 3: really afford much more.
Speaker 4: Playground spectacular, playground, extraordinary.
Speaker 3: There were advertisers a mystery tour, but often wasn't so
Speaker 3: much a mystery.
Speaker 4: You were going to Blackpool, Blackpool and millions of Britons
Speaker 4: and millions from overseas.
Speaker 3: So I just liked the idea that you didn't know
Speaker 3: where you were going, and it's like, come with me,
Speaker 3: we'll go somewhere.
Speaker 2: Where are we going? It's a mystery?
Speaker 3: Okay, great, let go.
Speaker 1: When a man buys a ticket for a magical mystery theater,
Speaker 1: he knows what to expect.
Speaker 3: We guarantee him the drip of a lifetime, and that's
Speaker 3: just what he gets, the incredible or magically mister tool.
Speaker 2: Woll up, woll up.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul will do And I've been fortunate to spend
Speaker 1: time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era, And.
Speaker 2: Will you look at me, I'm going up to I'm
Speaker 2: actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of the songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: of our conversations.
Speaker 2: Well actually a song, my god, Well that crypta hoy.
Speaker 1: This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 1: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: figures in popular music in this episode magical Mystery Tour.
Speaker 1: When McCartney was growing up, the notion of a mystery
Speaker 1: tour involved paying to get on a bus and be
Speaker 1: transported to an unknown location for the day. The fact
Speaker 1: is there was very little mystery about it at all.
Speaker 1: The destination was usually Blackpool, a resort on the northwest
Speaker 1: English coast.
Speaker 4: Coaches carry three million passengers each year, and each season
Speaker 4: eight million arrived to experience the delights of.
Speaker 5: This the lamp.
Speaker 1: There, you'd be able to sit by the ocean, ride
Speaker 1: roller coasters and see the impressive festival of lights before
Speaker 1: heading home.
Speaker 3: I think it's a cheap holiday, you know, if you
Speaker 3: don't have any time or money, you just run out
Speaker 3: for the day and it often involved a sharra bank
Speaker 3: a coach and you'd all just get on that.
Speaker 2: And you go for a day trip.
Speaker 3: Blackpool would be the sort of star day trip and
Speaker 3: sometimes to see the lights.
Speaker 2: It was just sort of the quick hit take the
Speaker 2: kids out.
Speaker 3: Normally it's like a seaside place where you would get
Speaker 3: some o'zo down the kid's throats.
Speaker 1: In addition to a little fresh air. A Blackpool day
Speaker 1: trip provided a great deal of entertainment by way of
Speaker 1: its fair ground attractions.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 3: Blackpool was really pretty cool because they had a fun
Speaker 3: for and the famous thing there was the the laughing
Speaker 3: It was a guy in a little sort of a
Speaker 3: model that just laughed.
Speaker 2: You'd stand in front of it and you couldn't resist laughing.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a real person.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's a recording, I see.
Speaker 2: But it was a little model and they kind of moved.
Speaker 2: It was jolly bild.
Speaker 1: Guy McCartney's childhood enthusiasm for the Carnivalesque sets the tone
Speaker 1: for Magical Mystery Tour, a song written as an opener
Speaker 1: for the w P of the same name. The Blackpool
Speaker 1: Laughing Man wasn't the only carnivalesque laughter on McCartney's mind
Speaker 1: while writing Magical Mystery Tour. Shortly before he wrote those lyrics,
Speaker 1: Jerry Samuels, billed as Napoleon the Fourteenth, released a hit novelty.
Speaker 6: Song, Remember when you ran away and I got on
Speaker 6: my knees and begged you not to leave, because I
Speaker 6: go ber sir, well you left me anyhow, and then
Speaker 6: the days got worse and worse, and now you see
Speaker 6: I've gone completely out of my mind.
Speaker 1: First of all, let's talk about this phrase that coming
Speaker 1: to take you, to take you away? Right?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Yes, So it was a song and it came to
Speaker 1: me this morning as I was thinking of this. You know,
Speaker 1: one of those songs that one should probably have forgotten
Speaker 1: about completely, the novelty song.
Speaker 6: Yes They're coming to take me away, haha, They're coming
Speaker 6: to take me away.
Speaker 3: Hoe to the funny farm where.
Speaker 6: Life is beautiful all the time, and be happy to.
Speaker 3: See they're going to take you away. Hah, They're coming
Speaker 3: to take you away, Which was quite an amazing song
Speaker 3: because it was wor was it about mental health?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 3: It certainly sounded like and we were laughing at it,
Speaker 3: which you know, I think those post war time years,
Speaker 3: people laughed at stuff, even dark stuff. In fact, there
Speaker 3: was dark humor, quite a lot of sick jokes that
Speaker 3: were called, and you were encouraged to laugh at it
Speaker 3: as a way of defeating it, sure, as a way
Speaker 3: of not letting it get you down, so you know,
Speaker 3: we're coming to take you away. And it was I'm
Speaker 3: sure that was an echo of that.
Speaker 1: As fair Ground Barkers and Mystery to her guides. The
Speaker 1: Beatles repeat this nod to Napoleon the Fourteenth Song, their
Speaker 1: appeals to the listener escalating with each verse.
Speaker 3: And the other thing about this is it's waiting to
Speaker 3: take you away the first time, and the next time
Speaker 3: it's hoping to take you away, and the last time
Speaker 3: next to the last time is it's coming to take
Speaker 3: you away, and then it's dying to take you away.
Speaker 1: In Magical Mystery Tour, the idea of being taken away
Speaker 1: is more whimsical, But in Napoleon the Fourteenth Song, it's
Speaker 1: clear that the maniacal speaker would be taken away to
Speaker 1: a mental institution. Billing for Christ's sakes, you must be
Speaker 1: committed right. This setting loomed large in the public imagination
Speaker 1: after the release of ken Casey's nineteen sixty two novel
Speaker 1: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, later adapted into a
Speaker 1: film starring Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 6: Jesus, I mean, you guys do nothing but complain about
Speaker 6: how you can't stand it in this place here, and
Speaker 6: then you haven't got the guts just to walk out.
Speaker 2: What do you think you are? For Christie crazy or something?
Speaker 5: Well, you're not, You're not.
Speaker 1: Ken Casey would embark on his own version of a
Speaker 1: magical mystery tour in nineteen sixty four. He and his
Speaker 1: comrades drove across the United States in a school bus
Speaker 1: covered with psychedelic designs. This group called themselves the Merry Pranksters,
Speaker 1: and they firmly embraced a countercultural mindset. Here's Casey giving
Speaker 1: voice to that mindset outside of San Francisco Courthouse in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen sixties. Casey, do you feel that you
Speaker 1: have the right to do what you want, whatever you want,
Speaker 1: and still live in this world?
Speaker 6: I feel a man has the right to be as
Speaker 6: big as he feels it in him to be.
Speaker 1: While McCartney wasn't physically on ken Casey's hallucinogenic buss, it
Speaker 1: may have been this quintessential nineteen sixties image which prompted
Speaker 1: Magical Mystery to her. The Psychedelic Bus is particularly recognizable
Speaker 1: in the Beatles Surreal made for TV movie that accompanied
Speaker 1: the album, in which the band and an eccentric group
Speaker 1: of tourists pile into a coach and encounter various magical incidents.
Speaker 5: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls, welcome to
Speaker 5: magical Mystery. To all, I am your career, Jolly Jimmy Duncan,
Speaker 5: and you are all my friends.
Speaker 1: The film was largely improvised. Ringo Starr once recalled that
Speaker 1: the closest they got to a script was a circle
Speaker 1: that Paul McCartney drew on a blank piece of paper,
Speaker 1: with the idea that they would start with the bus
Speaker 1: and fill in the plot as they went along.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I'll tell you something.
Speaker 7: You ain't coming away with me anymore?
Speaker 3: Who bought the tickets to the trip?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not. I'm taking you.
Speaker 7: You're not taking me anyway the film.
Speaker 1: The idea of the film thought had been inspired by
Speaker 1: Ken Casey's Mary Pranksters, whom you came across when accompanying
Speaker 1: Jane Asher on a West Coast Theater tour in April
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. That's that's what I'm that's what we're hearing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I don't know about these things, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know some of these things. I'd say, well, I'm
Speaker 3: not even sure I met Ken Casey, but then someone
Speaker 3: shows me a photograph as you with him. Okay, so
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that connection. But it was connected inasmuch
Speaker 3: as we were all connected in this generation, this crowd
Speaker 3: of us, who'd you know, who liked the same kind
Speaker 3: of things, And you know, it was getting around.
Speaker 1: Throughout my conversations with Paul McCartney, it became clear to
Speaker 1: me that what he himself remembers is in many ways
Speaker 1: bond to the story that a generation told about itself.
Speaker 3: We always used to say, people say, oh, you were
Speaker 3: the absolute leaders of the generation, and we said.
Speaker 2: Well, not really.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were plenty of other people who we
Speaker 3: were influenced by. So you know, if you had Alan Ginsburg,
Speaker 3: Alan would be thinking very similarly to this.
Speaker 2: We had a lot in almost with people like that.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that I mean there is a
Speaker 1: there's got to be a connection between the Beats and
Speaker 1: the Beatles.
Speaker 3: We were very aware of all of that and that
Speaker 3: have preceded us, So we were really interested in that.
Speaker 2: It was kind of quite a thrill, you know.
Speaker 3: To know that there was this whole new thing breaking
Speaker 3: out across the world.
Speaker 1: The Beats weren't the only literary tradition. The Beatles were
Speaker 1: plugging into it. Before the Beats, there had been the
Speaker 1: Romantic poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who embraced personal liberty, whimsy,
Speaker 1: and even drug inspired visions. Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan, read
Speaker 1: here by Sir John Neville, was almost certainly written under
Speaker 1: the influence of opium.
Speaker 8: In Xanadu did Kubla can a stately pleasured ome decree
Speaker 8: where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man,
Speaker 8: down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of
Speaker 8: fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round. There
Speaker 8: were gardens bright with sinuous rills, where blossomed many an
Speaker 8: incense bearing tree. And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Speaker 8: enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Speaker 3: In school, as I took those kind of classes, I'd
Speaker 3: been told, you know that he was a bit of
Speaker 3: a drug addict, so you knew there was a history
Speaker 3: of people writing about that and weirdness and exotic stuff
Speaker 3: and this and that. Again, roll up is another illusion
Speaker 3: round because we were rolling up cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Right, That had not occurred to me, of course, you.
Speaker 3: Know that's what it is, roll up, and so you know,
Speaker 3: all our friends and oxy temporaries would spot that, Hey,
Speaker 3: that's great, let's roll up a joint. So we could
Speaker 3: have carried on with that with that, but then we
Speaker 3: start to try and get it into a little bit of.
Speaker 2: You know, the magical mystery tour.
Speaker 3: Rather than just an ordinary It could have been the
Speaker 3: weekend Mystery Tour, but you know, because it was magical,
Speaker 3: so we were we're putting trying to put this this
Speaker 3: song into that.
Speaker 2: Sort of hazy world.
Speaker 1: In their desire to break from tradition, these poets, artists
Speaker 1: and musicians established a new tradition of their own. He
Speaker 1: also find inspiration in unusual phrases which could be given
Speaker 1: new context.
Speaker 3: So something like Satisfaction Guaranteed is like roll up. There
Speaker 3: are phrases that you'd heard a million times, but now
Speaker 3: we were putting a spin on them. Instead of coming
Speaker 3: to my fir ground. We're saying more than that now
Speaker 3: to the ego listener satisfaction guarantee. That's the kind of
Speaker 3: thing you'd see on an advert for vacuum cleaner.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're drawing on these phrases that have
Speaker 1: currency at the moment, right in their moment.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would just venture.
Speaker 1: That the term magical mystery tour has in an now
Speaker 1: entered the language.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I noticed that with the popularity of the Beatles,
Speaker 3: a lot of our phrases.
Speaker 2: Have crept into language.
Speaker 3: Journalists will quote, well, it's been a long and mining
Speaker 3: road to get here, and they're just throwing it in
Speaker 3: because it works.
Speaker 2: As a phrase.
Speaker 3: And yet there's that little allusion to the Beatles song.
Speaker 1: In this way, the Beatles were much more than a
Speaker 1: band of four performers. They both derived from and were
Speaker 1: leaders of an entire cultural shift turning away from the
Speaker 1: known rules and customs of the past toward a mysterious,
Speaker 1: potentially magical future. This spirit was accessible to anyone who
Speaker 1: dared to sort of speak, get on the bus, that
Speaker 1: do is knee.
Speaker 3: It was a generational movement, no doubt about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we were very aware of that. It was a great
Speaker 3: thing to see that this whole thing was happening, which
Speaker 3: was a break from our parents and parents generally, because
Speaker 3: you know, the normal thing would be that people would
Speaker 3: just expect you to go to school, go to college,
Speaker 3: get a job, and get married, and that was sort
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: You know, that was like the expectation for most.
Speaker 1: People and work for the rest of your life, in
Speaker 1: that particular in one's job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: The artistic thing that we were part of was suggesting
Speaker 3: that you didn't have to do that, that there were options,
Speaker 3: and it was exciting to look at those options. I think, oh, wow, well, wow,
Speaker 3: we don't have to eat meat and too veg We
Speaker 3: could be vegetarian. Wow, that's crazy thought.
Speaker 2: You know, we can write songs about drugs. Wow.
Speaker 3: There's another crazy thought, you know, was the opportunities expanded
Speaker 3: and for us and for everyone.
Speaker 1: For Paul McCartney, songwriting itself is an excuse to venture
Speaker 1: into the unknown, a magical mystery tour.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Once I'm writing a song, I'm off on a trail and.
Speaker 7: I really don't know what the goal is or or
Speaker 7: even where I'm heading, but I do like to go
Speaker 7: there and find out things on the way.
Speaker 1: M Magical Mystery Tour the title song from the Beatles
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven album in the next episode. Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: has been a nature lover and birdwatcher since childhood, his
Speaker 1: song catalog teeming with feathered friends.
Speaker 3: Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing Birken Took Away.
Speaker 1: McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: NPL and Pushkin Industries.