Magical Mystery Tour (LP) - Your reaction the first time you heard it?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by JohnnyQuest, Jun 24, 2015.

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  1. fogalu

    fogalu There is only one Beethoven

    Location:
    Killarney, Ireland
    My first reaction on hearing the MMT album was sheer bloody annoyance - but it had nothing to do with the Beatles.
    While awaiting delivery of my first stereo record player back in 1968, I started buying a few albums in stereo. Sgt Pepper was one and Magical Mystery Tour was another.

    MMT was an import (as the album was never issued over here until much later) and it cost more than the others. I already had all the tracks in mono but I was assured by the staff in the record store that it was a stereo pressing even though there was something off about the labelling on the cover.

    When I finally got my record player - I found the album was in mono and, for various reasons, I wasn't able to get back to the record store.
    I never heard MMT in stereo until the 19878 CD came out. However, it's still one of my favourite Beatle albums (and, yes, it is a "real" album to me) and I've even bought the 2009 mono re-master!
     
  2. tspit74

    tspit74 Senior Member

    Location:
    Woodridge, IL, USA
    The first time I heard MMT was at a friends house in Jr. High in about 1983. My initial impression was that it was a muffled, convoluted, drugged out mess. I thought SFF was a 20 sec. hook recycled endlessly and aimlessly thru a drug stupor. Must have been the Capitol stereo LP.

    It's now one of my favorite Beatles albums (but not the Capitol stereo version).
     
  3. hayden10538

    hayden10538 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Essex, England
    I first heard the full album in the early 90s when I started to collect the CDs. As my parents had the 1967-1970 double album when i was growing up in the 70s, i was already familiar with most of the songs included.

    Of the three compilations released during their recording career, I put it on par with Let It Be. It's a great collection of songs, and not a dud among them, and IMO it's got three of their greatest songs on it:

    I Am The Walrus
    Penny Lane
    The Fool On The Hill

    The rest, I think, are great, but not in the same class as these three tracks. Of the four I heard for the first time in 87, I enjoyed Your Mother Should Know & Baby You're A Rich Man. Blue Jay Way & Flying aren't bad, just not up to the standard of the other songs!
     
  4. HarvG

    HarvG Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago Suburbs
    MMT was the first Beatles album I ever got (Winter-Spring '68 - I was 9 years old).

    My reaction? I had my own Beatles album and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I played it over and over on a mono record player that was housed in what I though was a suitcase. I grew up in a pretty small apartment, so my parents pretty much listened to it as well - not sure they liked it as much as I did though :)

    And closing in on 50 years later, still one of my most listened to albums - Beatles or otherwise.
     
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  5. HfxBob

    HfxBob Forum Resident

    Right. But having 3 singles on it was one of the things that was unusual for a Beatles album.
     
  6. Mooserfan

    Mooserfan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eastern PA
    The first time, which was when it came out, I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. Which was my reaction to every new release they had.

    I was a kid, and I was smitten.
     
  7. mooseman

    mooseman Forum Resident

    Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, the two first singles in 1967 plus all four mustaches. :agree::laugh:
     
  8. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    Actually I was just thinking about this yesterday, because the idea of one's "first (rock) album" came up in another thread. I was trying to think about not the first music that I bought myself, but the first music that I became enthralled with via hearing it from my family as a little kid. My earliest memories of being enthralled with some music or other are mostly of singles--especially because my dad has always been a singles fan and we owned a couple different jukeboxes that were often playing. That included stuff like Little Eva's "Loco-Motion", the Chips' "Rubber Biscuit", the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes for You" and so on.

    But both Sgt. Pepper's and the US Magical Mystery Tour are a couple of the albums I first remember being enthralled by. They're not the only ones, but they're two of the more important ones. I was still 4 when Sgt. Pepper's came out. I had just turned 5 about a month before Magical Mystery Tour came out. So this couldn't have been long after my first love of the (sorts of) singles above, but I do know it was at least a bit after that.

    So I liked Magical Mystery Tour a lot when I first heard it, and I didn't bother much in the way of making critical comparisons with Sgt. Pepper's. Because I was only 5. ;) I was too busy bouncing around to "I Am the Walrus" and yelling "goo goo ga joob!"
     
  9. originalsnuffy

    originalsnuffy Socially distant and unstuck in time

    Location:
    Tralfalmadore
    OK, I am a bit older than many of you.

    I have memories of being about 9 years old and biking to the record store. They put on Magical Mystery Tour for me (in those days you could do that). And I walked out with my purchase on ..... stereo cassette. Because my LP player was mono. My first album was ... Sgt Peppers but I always heard that in Mono (even though it was a stereo copy). But I had a stereo cassette and that was how I heard Magical Mystery Tour....in stereo. Course I was stiffed on the booklet.
     
  10. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    I was perplexed that PAPERBACK WRITER wasn't on it. There was room on side two but no deal. I borrowed my friends' copy, loved side one. Played it over and over.
     
  11. googlymoogly

    googlymoogly Forum Resident

    You and Al Gore will have to have a death match to claim credit for the thought...
     
    gregorya likes this.
  12. This I would say was about 1971 or so when I was 13 years old. At the time, thought it was weird and a bit foreboding.
     
  13. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I absolutely LOVE most of it. I could do without Blue Jay Way, I guess, but it's a fantastic album (even though it's not really an album, but here, it was, I guess). It's a great 11 songs (or at least 10) regardless.
     
  14. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    I think Blue Jay Way is easier on the ears in mono without the backwards background vocals. Are you familiar with that one?
     
  15. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I'm sure I've heard it, but I have no memory of it, so....I guess not?
     
  16. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    Do you think it fits thematically? I love that tune big time but it would feel out of place to me on that album.
     
  17. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    Check it out. I think you'll like it better. I do.
     
    MLutthans likes this.
  18. jojo getback

    jojo getback Forum Resident

    Location:
    Almost west coast
    I remember the first time i put it on our family console stereo in the living room. My mother said the Monkees were way better . Not long after that she bought my brothers and me a portable record player for our bedroom. Wonder if that was just a coincidence :) Once I got that record player though the record buying really accelerated. Anyway thought MMT was great then and still do !
     
  19. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    Could have been all the same album to me... :shh:
     
  20. vinylbeat

    vinylbeat Forum Resident

    Was "Sgt. Pepper" or any Beatles record released during the band's time together a disappointment? I never thought so. But I was rabid fan since the Sullivan appearances so I'm biased. Even the "Yellow Submarine" LP that followed the "White Album" had it's charm. Back to the OP........MMT was the best Xmas gift I could ever receive back in 67'! The Stones "Satanic Majesties" that I also was gifted wasn't far behind.
     
  21. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I didn't really like it, not as an album and I'm still not sure I like it. It starts reasonably strong but I'm not really convinced that they brought their A-Game to the tracks they wrote for this film. I like a bunch of tracks on Side B but just having some good tracks isn't enough for me to consider something a good album. It's this and Yellow Submarine which are the only Beatles albums I don't have though I'd probably pick them up if they showed up on the shelf at JB HiFi. Maybe I'll warm on it one day but it hasn't happened yet.
     
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  22. googlymoogly

    googlymoogly Forum Resident

    And "Blue Jay Way", like several Harrison songs, has become one of my favorite tunes on the album! I always thought "It's All Too Much" would have been a great addition to the album, too.
     
  23. on7green

    on7green Senior Patron

    Location:
    NY & TN
    Like it better today than I did back in the day. The 2014 mono release is nice. I had lost my picture book somewhere along the way.
     
  24. Tommyboy

    Tommyboy Senior Member

    Location:
    New York
    I was 7. Loved it.
     
  25. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    This album feels like an original album as if the added singles were intended to be there from the beginning.
    The reason is of course that the singles were from the same era as Pepper and the MMT EP.
    Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane fit every bit as well here as they would have if they had been placed on Pepper as well.
     
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