History: Early Years Of The Beatles

Sgt. Pepper was the first major pop album to include its complete lyrics, which were printed on the back cover. Those lyrics were the subject of intense analysis; fans speculated, for instance, that the "celebrated Mr K." in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" might in fact be the surrealist fiction writer Franz Kafka. The American literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier wrote an essay, "Learning from The Beatles", in which he observed that his students were "listening to the group's music with a degree of engagement that he, as a teacher of literature, could only envy." Poirier identified what he termed the "mixed allusiveness" of the material: "It's unwise ever to assume that they're doing only one thing or expressing themselves in only one style ... one kind of feeling about a subject isn't enough ... any single induced feeling must often exist within the context of seemingly contradictory alternatives." McCartney said at the time, "We write songs. We know what we mean by them. But in a week someone else says something about it, and you can't deny it. ... You put your own meaning at your own level to our songs". Sgt. Pepper's remarkably elaborate album cover also occasioned great interest and deep study. The heavy moustaches worn by the band swiftly became a hallmark of hippie style. Cultural historian Jonathan Harris describes their "brightly coloured parodies of military uniforms" as a knowingly "anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment" display.
On 25 June, the band performed their newest single, "All You Need Is Love", to TV viewers worldwide on Our World, the first live global television link. Appearing amid the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem. Two months later the group suffered a loss that threw their career into turmoil. After being introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, they travelled to Bangor for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. During the retreat, Epstein's assistant Peter Brown called to tell them Epstein had died. The coroner ruled Epstein's death an accidental overdose, but it was widely rumoured that a suicide note had been discovered among his possessions. Epstein had been in a fragile emotional state, stressed by both personal issues and the state of his working relationship with the band. He worried that they might not renew his management contract, due to expire in October, based on discontent with his supervision of business matters. There were particular concerns over Seltaeb, the company that handled merchandising rights in the United States. Epstein's death left the group disorientated and fearful about the future. Lennon said later, "I didn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared." He also looked back on Epstein's death as marking the beginning of the end for the group: "I knew that we were in trouble then. ... I thought, we've fuckin' had it now."
- Magical Mystery Tour, White Album and Yellow Submarine
Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, appeared as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967. In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically titled LP that also included tracks from the band's recent singles. Allmusic says of the US Magical Mystery Tour, "The psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of 'I Am the Walrus')", and calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative". It set a new US record in its first three weeks for highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the one Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums. Aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film, largely directed by McCartney, brought the group their first major negative UK press. It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express, which described it as "a great deal of raw footage showing a group of people getting on, getting off, and riding on a bus". The Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit", while The Guardian labelled it "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". It fared so dismally that it was withheld from the US at the time. In January, the group filmed a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, a fantasia featuring cartoon versions of the band members. The group's only other involvement with the film was the contribution of several unreleased studio recordings. Released in June 1968, it was well received for its innovative visual style and humour, as well as its music. It would be seven months, however, before the film's soundtrack album appeared.