The project was initiated by Paul McCartney in April 1967, but after the band recorded the song "Magical Mystery Tour", it lay dormant until the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, in late August.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in April 1967, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film that captured a psychedelic theme similar to that represented by author and LSD proponent Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters on the US West Coast.

Instead, the band continued recording songs for the United Artists animated film Yellow Submarine and, in the case of "All You Need Is Love", for their appearance on the Our World satellite broadcast on 25 June,[9] before travelling over the summer months and focusing on launching their company Apple.

[10] In late August, while the Beatles were attending a Transcendental Meditation seminar held by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Wales, their manager Brian Epstein died of a prescription drug overdose.

[15] According to publicist Tony Barrow, McCartney envisaged Magical Mystery Tour as "open[ing] doors for him" personally and as a new career phase for the band in which he would be the "executive producer" of their films.

[23] The Beatles' use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD was at its height during that summer[24] and, in author Ian MacDonald's view, this resulted in a lack of judgment in their recordings as the band embraced randomness and sonic experimentation.

[26][nb 3] Early, pre-overdub mixes of some of the film songs were prepared on 16 September,[28] before the Beatles performed the music sequences during a six-day shoot at RAF West Malling, a Royal Air Force base in Kent.

[45] Featuring an accordion score by arranger Mike Leander, it was performed by Shirley Evans with percussion contributions from Starr and McCartney,[35] and recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in October.

[52] In addition to the song's string and horn arrangement, Martin wrote a score for the sixteen backing vocalists (the Mike Sammes Singers), in which their laughter, exaggerated vocalising and other noises evoked the LSD-inspired mood that Lennon sought for the piece.

[35] According to musicologist Thomas MacFarlane, Magical Mystery Tour shows the Beatles once more "focusing on colour and texture as important compositional elements" and exploring the "aesthetic possibilities" of studio technology.

[54] "Blue Jay Way" features extensive use of three studio techniques employed by the Beatles over 1966–67:[55] flanging, an audio delay effect;[56] sound-signal rotation via a Leslie speaker;[57] and (in the stereo mix only) reversed tapes.

[84] The impetus came from a fan letter Lennon received from a student at his former high school, Quarry Bank, in which he learned that an English literature teacher there was interpreting the Beatles' lyrics in a scholarly fashion.

[85] In addition to drawing on Carroll's imagery and Shakespeare's King Lear, he reworked a nursery rhyme from his school days,[86] and referenced Edgar Allan Poe[87] and (in the vocalised "googoogajoob"s) James Joyce.

[62] Author Jonathan Gould describes "I Am the Walrus" as "the most overtly 'literary' song the Beatles would ever record",[88] while MacDonald deems it "[Lennon's] ultimate anti-institutional rant – a damn-you-England tirade that blasts education, art, culture, law, order, class, religion, and even sense itself".

The lyrics document his wait for music publicist Derek Taylor to find his way to Blue Jay Way through the fog-ridden hills, while Harrison struggled to stay awake after the flight from London to Los Angeles.

[78] MacDonald describes the song as Harrison's "farewell to psychedelia", since his subsequent visit to Haight-Ashbury led to him seeking an alternative to hallucinogenic drugs and opened the way to the Beatles' embrace of Transcendental Meditation.

[123] In Gould's description, the LP cover "had the garish symmetry of a movie poster" through the combination of the Beatles' animal costumes, the "rainbow" film logo, and the song titles rendered in art-deco lettering "amid a border of op-art clouds".

[128][129] Lennon discussed the studio effects used on the new songs, including "I Am the Walrus",[129] which received its only contemporary airing on BBC radio when disc jockey Kenny Everett played it as part of the interview broadcast on 25 November 1967.

[152] Music journalist John Harris cites the critical maligning of the film as the excuse the British authorities were looking for to begin targeting the Beatles, despite the band's status as MBE holders, for their wayward influence on youth.

He continued: "The four musician-magicians take us by the hand and lead us happily tripping through the clouds, past Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the fool on the hill, into the sun-speckled glades along Blue Jay Way and into the world of Alice in Wonderland ...

Remarking on how the Beatles and their producer "present a supreme example of team work", the reviewer compared the album with Their Satanic Majesties Request and opined that "I Am the Walrus" and "Blue Jay Way" alone "accomplish what the Stones attempted".

[161] Rolling Stone was launched in October 1967 with a cover photo of Lennon from How I Won the War;[162] in its fourth issue, the magazine's review of Magical Mystery Tour consisted of a single-sentence quote from him: "There are only about 100 people in the world who understand our music.

Pepper unfavourably,[165] Richard Goldstein of The New York Times rued that the new songs furthered the gap between true rock values and studio effects, and that the band's "fascination with motif" was equally reflected in the elaborate packaging.

Reed said that exchanging drugs for meditation as their subject matter had left the Beatles "totally divorced from reality", and he especially ridiculed "I Am the Walrus" on an LP he deemed a "platter of phony, pretentious, overcooked tripe".

Christgau still found it a valid album, "for all the singles, which are good music, after all; for the tender camp of 'Your Mother Should Know'; and especially for Harrison's hypnotic 'Blue Jay Way,' an adaptation of Oriental modes in which everything works, lyrics included".

'"[179] Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph writes that the combination of soundtrack and singles means the album lacks cohesion, but he still finds it an "intriguing psychedelic companion piece" to Sgt.

[172] Reviewing for Mojo in 2002, Charles Shaar Murray said Magical Mystery Tour was the Beatles album he turned to most often following Harrison's death the previous year and that it evokes an era "when society still seemed to be opening up rather than closing down".

He similarly views "The Fool on the Hill" as the "Fixing a Hole"–style "cool, contemplative ballad", just as Harrison provides "another droning epic" and McCartney offers "another archaic number" in "Your Mother Should Know", which he finds a "halfhearted attempt at satiric nostalgia".

[182] Chris Ingham, writing in The Rough Guide to the Beatles, says that the soundtrack's reputation suffers from its association with the film's failure, yet while three of the tracks are rightly overlooked, "The Fool on the Hill", "Blue Jay Way" and "I Am the Walrus" remain "essential Beatlemusic".

Christgau wrote in an accompanying essay: "Because it begins with the lame theme to their worst movie and the sappy 'Fool on the Hill,' few realize that this serves up three worthy obscurities forthwith – bet Beck knows the sour-and-sweet instrumental 'Flying' by heart.