Magical Mystery Tour

My daughter wanted to borrow the Magical Mystery Tour CD to take in for music class, where all the 6th graders were supposed to bring in CDs of music they liked. She wanted to play the song Magical Mystery Tour.

"Everyone else is bringing in Green Day," she said cryptically.

As usual, it took me a while to hunt around and find it.

"Why that one?" I asked.

She shrugs. "I like it." she says, then adds with concern, "there's no drug references or swears on that one are there?"

I had to think for a minute. I was certain there was no bad language, but drug references? If you thought about it for a minute, almost all of their songs from that period could be construed as being about drugs, drug influenced, or so weird and indecipherable as to be suspect.

"I think they played it on the BBC," I finally said. Actually they did; they played the Magical Mystery Tour film on the BBC - once.

"What's that mean?" she asked, not getting the reference. I wondered whether I should explain how the BBC is owned by the government, and how it was very "proper" and wouldn't broadcast anything remotely lewd or obscene. Well, except for Monty Python.

I just went with the "It'll be okay," reassurance instead.


I'm actually quite pleased that she is a fan of The Beatles. As a fan myself, I was careful not to push the music on to her. It was a friend of hers who first introduced her to a Beatles song, and when she came home one day and said how much she liked a song she'd heard, I said 'You know, I have that."

Since then she's become a bigger fan, though I guess we'll see if it lasts into the teen years.


I picked her up after school the next day.

"How was your day?"

"Okay."

"Anything interesting happen?"

"No."

"Did you play your song?"

"What? Oh yeah! Though I played Hello Goodbye instead."

"Why'd you do that?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Just felt like it," she said.

"What did everyone else bring? Green Day?"

"No. Actually, a lot of people played Beatles songs. [Someone] played Bungalow Bill and there was Ricky[sic] Raccoon and [someone] played Maxwell's Silver Hammer and there was some rap and some other stuff."


It felt somehow good to know that The Beatles are still popular with 6th graders.