Recording: Magical Mystery Tour

Studio Three, EMI Studios, Abbey Road
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Malcolm Addey

The trumpets were overdubbed onto the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ song during this session, which lasted from 7pm to 12.15am the following morning.

The trumpeters were David Mason, Elgar (Gary) Howarth, Roy Copestake and John Wilbraham. They were initially bemused that no score had been prepared, and spent some time waiting while Paul McCartney and George Martin decided what they wanted.

Paul McCartney was humming to the musicians the notes that he wanted, trying for a long time to get his thoughts across to them. In the end we had to send the trumpet players off for tea while Paul and George worked things out on the Studio Three piano.

Eventually, Gary Howarth became tired of waiting and wrote a score himself, which was used for the recording. It was added to the fourth track of the tape. Some glockenspiel was then overdubbed onto the third track, which already contained vocals, during the coda. The instrument had previously been used on ‘Only A Northern Song’.

With this, recording for the song was considered complete, although an additional vocal overdub was added on 7 November 1967.