George Harrison wrote "Blue Jay Way" after arriving in Los Angeles on 1 August 1967 with his wife Pattie Boyd[3] and Beatles aides Neil Aspinall and Alex Mardas.

[23] Harrison had expected to encounter an enlightened community engaged in artistic pursuits[24][25] and working to create a viable alternative lifestyle;[26][27] instead, he was disappointed that Haight-Ashbury appeared to be populated by drug addicts, dropouts and "hypocrites".

[27] The Beatles then publicly denounced the popular hallucinogen LSD (or "acid") and other drugs[5] in favour of Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose seminar in Bangor in Wales the band attended in late August.

[47][nb 1] Following the inclusion of a raga-style introduction (or alap) in his previous Indian compositions, "Love You To" and "Within You Without You",[49] "Blue Jay Way" begins with a preview of the song's melody played softly, in free time, over the opening drone.

[38][nb 2] Author Ian Inglis credits the song's incorporation of ambient drone, specifically its role in providing "an anchorage point for vocal and instrumental improvisation", as one of the first examples of a musical device that soon became prevalent in the work of Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band and other folk artists.

[18] With regard to whether Harrison was telling contemporary listeners not to "belong", Inglis writes, this "alternative reading" of the song aligned with Timothy Leary's catchphrase for the 1960s American psychedelic experience, "Turn on, tune in, drop out".

[61][62][nb 4] Author Nicholas Schaffner describes "Blue Jay Way" as the first Harrison-written Beatles recording on which he "adapt[ed] some of his Indian-derived ideas to a more Western setting" through the choice of musical instruments.

[60] Among Beatles biographers, MacDonald credits Harrison as the sole organ player on the song,[42] while Kenneth Womack and John Winn write that Lennon played the second keyboard part.

[45] "Blue Jay Way" features extensive use of three studio techniques employed by the Beatles over 1966–67:[15][52] flanging, an audio delay effect;[70] sound-signal rotation via a Leslie speaker;[60] and (in the stereo mix only) reversed tapes.

[45] Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn compares "Blue Jay Way" with two Lennon tracks from this period, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus", in that the recording "seized upon all the studio trickery and technical advancements of 1966 and 1967 and captured them in one song".

[52] Through the use of prismatic photography,[18] the "Blue Jay Way" segment also shows Harrison's "image refracted as if seen through a fly's eye", according to author Alan Clayson, who describes the scene as mirroring "the requisite misty atmosphere" suggested by the recording.

[78][nb 8] In its preview of Magical Mystery Tour in 1967, the NME highlighted the segment as one of the film's "extremely clever" musical sequences, saying: "For 'Blue Jay Way' George is seen sitting cross-legged in a sweating mist which materialises into a variety of shapes and patterns.

A church organ starts this one off and leads us into a whirlpool of sound ..."[92][93] Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker lauded the record as "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch".

The reviewer added, with reference to the concurrently issued Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones: "The master magicians practice their alchemy on Harrison's 'Blue Jay Way', recorded perhaps in an Egyptian tomb, and 'I Am The Walrus', a piece of terror lurking in foggy midnight moors.

Pepper, the soundtrack demonstrated the Beatles' departure from true rock values in favour of studio effects, and he found artifice in the "waft of foggy music" accompanying Harrison's declaration that "There's a fog upon LA".

Typically of Harrison's recent songs, Goldstein continued, "Blue Jay Way" was "filled with fascinating tones and textures" but the message was confused and laboured, and he complained that it was sung with a vocal that was "[more] sandpaper than Satori".

Pepper,[101] Ian MacDonald found "Blue Jay Way" "as unfocused and monotonous as most of the group's output of this period", adding that the song "numbingly fails to transcend the weary boredom that inspired it".

[102] Similarly unimpressed with Magical Mystery Tour, Tim Riley describes "Blue Jay Way" as a song that "goes nowhere tiresomely", with a vocal that "sounds as tired and droning" as the musical accompaniment.

[45] Ian Inglis writes that the emotion Harrison conveys on the track "belies its apparently trivial lyrics" and that, together with the instrumentation and backing vocals, his pleas "create an unusually atmospheric and strangely moving song".

[20] Writing for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham deems the song to be "essential Beatlemusic"; he views it as Harrison's "most haunting and convincing musical contribution of the period", after "Within You Without You", as well as "possibly the most unnerving of all Beatles tracks".

Harrison's vocal was treated until it sounded as if it was coming from beyond the grave ... Backwards tapes, droning organs, and a cello combined to heighten the Eastern atmosphere – without a single Indian instrument being employed.

[113][114] The artist credit was a pseudonym for London session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan,[115] although rumours circulated that Lord Sitar was in fact Harrison himself,[113][116] partly as a result of EMI/Capitol's refusal to deny the claim.

[123] "Blue Jay Way" was a rare Beatles song released before their 1968 self-titled double album that Charles Manson adopted as part of his theory of an impending social revolution in the United States,[124][125] a scenario that led to his followers carrying out a series of murders in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969.

[132] Borbetomagus released a live recording of the song on their 1992 album Buncha Hair That Long, a version that Trouser Press later said "could easily reunite the Beatles for good if it were played in the presence of the surviving trio".

[134] Other artists who have covered "Blue Jay Way" include Tracy Bonham, on her 2007 album In the City + In the Woods,[135] and the Secret Machines, whose version appears in the Julie Taymor-directed film Across the Universe (2007).

[136] Harrison's experience when writing "Blue Jay Way" is referenced in the Jonathan Kellerman novel Obsession (2007), as the lead character, Alex Delaware, waits among the "bird streets" overlooking Sunset Strip.

[137] The US hip hop group Death Grips included a reversed sample of "Blue Jay Way" as well as a quote from the song's lyrics in their 2012 track "Double Helix", released on The Money Store,[138] an album that Clash magazine described as sounding like "the burning skies of LA's decaying empire".