#THE BEATLES MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR FULL#

If you ever see an interview with John's Aunt Mimi, she was very posh. There was a myth about the Beatles that they were all working- class lads but they weren't. I spoke to them all about Brian Epstein's death and Ringo said some quite perceptive stuff. Ringo was depicted as the joker, but I thought he was quite wise. John said that that's how they started to write songs, cutting things out of newspapers.'īy the time of Magi cal Mystery Tour, says Harrison, Beatles manager Brian Epstein had died 'and Paul filled that vacuum. and through Indica, Paul met Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and Burroughs was doing these cut-ups. I think Indica introduced Paul to that Robert Fraser/Tara Browne scene. Peter had a friend called John Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithfull and he had a bookshop called Indica where John Lennon met Yoko. Her brother Peter was an up-and-coming singer the Beatles pushed. Harrison connects the Beatles to the Beats person by person.Ĭut-up songs 'Paul was going out with Jane Asher. It was during a period when McCartney and Lennon had become interested in the cut-up experiments of William Burroughs. McCartney had been close friends with Browne, but it was Lennon who wrote the lyrics based on a news report of his death. A van pulled out of a side street and he pulled the wheel to save the life of his passenger.” Browne was killed at the age of 21. When he got it back “he just wasn’t used to being behind the wheel. “I met a couple who said, ‘he killed our chickens’.” He lost his licence. I met some people in Roundwood : ‘Be careful out there, Tara Browne is home’,” says Howard. “I remember gawping in the window at that car,” says Harrison.Ĭars were ultimately the death of poor Tara Browne. “There’s this great Pathé news footage of Browne driving it up a ramp and down a ramp again into Robert Fraser’s gallery,” says Howard. They discuss the working-class roots of the art collective Binder, Edwards and Vaughan, who painted a psychedelic mural on Browne’s car. I became left-wing because of the way the police were busting all my friends. “The difference was that the 1930s was all about a social elite with money,” says Harrison. If the 1960s was anything it was an echo of the 1930s.' A lot of incredibly sophisticated people were in her drawing room and Tara was there, aged eight, absorbing it all. She knew the queen mother, Beckett, Brendan Behan. She was one of the bright young people in the 1930s. Their mother was Oonagh Guinness, the brewery heiress. 'He was kind of a Forrest Gump figure, present for a lot of very significant moments. Muse and scene-maker He talks about how Browne was a muse and scene-maker for people such as Paul McCartney. 'In 2006 I wanted to write a story about his life and went to meet Garech and I just thought, 'Wow, what an extraordinary life and times'.' 'I remember listening to A Day in the Life and my brother said it was about an Irish guy,' says Howard.

Harrison asks Howard how he became interested in Tara Browne. Ringo Starr tries his luck against Sugar Ray Robinson. I thought it was a bit 'yeah, yeah, yeah'.' So I was a bit disdainful of that music at first. He said 'It's a film with the Beatles.' I was a jazzer. I was a humble assistant director working on feature films, and one day the phone rang and Andrew Birkin said, 'What are you doing next week?' I thought it would be a Corn Flakes commercial.

#THE BEATLES MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR FULL#

'I lived in Notting Hill Gate, which was quite cool, not full of millionaires like it is now.

Harrison was 24 in 1967, the summer of love. “I wish I got one cent every time it was shown.” Of the latter he says: 'Yoko was sitting on the floor being a bit of a nuisance and I said to her, 'Why don't you go around the room and open the shutters?' ' He helped film Magical Mystery Tour, and videos for McCartney's Mull of Kintyre and Lennon's Imagine. Ringo Starr sang Lady Madonna to him at a party in Joan Collins's house. John Lennon drove him around in his Rolls Royce. Howard knows his Beatles, but Harrison actually knew the Beatles. Paul Howard, biographer of Tara Browne, the 1960s peer, scenester and alleged subject of the Beatles song A Day in the Life, is chatting to film-maker and writer Gerry Harrison.

The beatles magical mystery tour