Magical Mystery Tour was a pioneering 50-minute colour feature for television. It started off as Paul's project but soon all the Beatles were heavily involved in every aspect of production. They financed, directed, cast and scripted the film, as well as appearing in it themselves. Including the single 'All You Need Is Love'/'Baby You're A Rich Man', the songs from this period are the wildest, most psychedelic collection the Beatles put together, though they were never released together on one record. Magical Mystery Tour was released in Britain as a double extended play disc in December 1967 and as a single album in the US in November that year. If the Beatles had wished to release an album straight after Sgt Pepper in the Summer of Love, this electric bunch of songs would have made a fitting final fanfare for 1967 &endash; before the more sober reflections of the following year. 1968 marked a new period in the Beatles' songwriting, when cleaning up, straightening out and getting back to basics became the order of the day. Magical Mystery Tour, which was first seen on British television on December 26, 1967, was a critical failure, which consequently received only limited exposure in America. The music was much more successful; the British double EP reached Number 2 in the singles charts and the American album went to Number 1.

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