Abercrombie Kent Tour


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Abercrombie Kent Tour

Abercrombie Kent Tour

Much has been made of the BBC's disastrous scheduling of The Beatles psychedelic, avant-garde TV film, Magical Mystery Tour. The 52-minute programme was first screened in black and white at 8.35 on Boxing Day 1967 and then again in colour on BBC2. However, this made little difference since there were less than 100,000 colour sets available in Britain.

The monochrome Magical Mystery Tour, slated by the British press led to the Beatles receiving the first critical kicking of their career. Today the consensus of opinion is that the film needs to be seen in colour, particularly the multi-coloured Flying sequence and was totally in keeping with the Beatles interest in avant-garde and the counter-culture.

What is a happening?

On 29th April 1967, while the Beatles were actually recording the track Magical Mystery Tour, the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream was being held at Alexandra Palace, London. This multi-media 'happening' featured sets from psychedelic bands such as Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, an oil light show by Optikinetics, and an experimental work by Yoko Ono. The event in aid of the International Times (shortened to IT), an underground paper supported among others by Paul McCartney, attracted 7,000 curious visitors including John Lennon. It featured in a BBC documentary, What is a Happening? and also a film called Tonite Let's Make Love in London by Peter Whitehead, the documentary filmmaker who brilliantly captured the counterculture scene in London in the Sixties.