Blue Jay Way

rdf:langString Blue Jay Way

rdf:langString Blue Jay Way

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rdf:langString Blue Jay Way face label .jpg

rdf:langString 'and album'' Magical Mystery Tour

rdf:langString Psychedelia, psychedelic rock

rdf:langString What could have been a simple, maudlin ditty was transformed by The Beatles' studio process into an exotic, almost mystical journey. Harrison's vocal was treated until it sounded as if it was coming from beyond the grave ... Backwards tapes, droning organs, and a cello combined to heighten the Eastern atmosphere – without a single Indian instrument being employed.

rdf:langString Given the portentous reading of Taylor and his entourage "losing their way", it was easy to assume that Harrison wasn't being literal, but sermonizing on the idea of being spiritually lost ... Magical Mystery Tour seems to support that view by framing Harrison, as he sings the song, in a meditation pose refracted through a psychedelic prism.

rdf:langString I told [Derek Taylor] on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way … There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to fill in time, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this rented house … I messed around on this and the song came.

rdf:langString – Author Kevin Courrier, 2009

rdf:langString – George Harrison to Hunter Davies, 1968

rdf:langString – Peter Doggett, 2001

rdf:langString EMI, London

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rdf:langString "Blue Jay Way" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles. Written by George Harrison, it was released in 1967 on the group's Magical Mystery Tour EP and album. The song was named after a street in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles where Harrison stayed in August 1967, shortly before visiting the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The lyrics document Harrison's wait for music publicist Derek Taylor to find his way to Blue Jay Way through the fog-ridden hills, while Harrison struggled to stay awake after the flight from London to Los Angeles. As with several of Harrison's compositions from this period, "Blue Jay Way" incorporates aspects of Indian classical music, even though the Beatles used only Western instrumentation on the track, including a drone-like Hammond organ part played by Harrison. Created during the group's psychedelic period, the track makes extensive use of studio techniques such as flanging, Leslie rotary effect, and reversed tape sounds. The song appeared in the Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour, in a sequence that visually re-creates the sense of haziness and dislocation evident on the recording. While some reviewers have dismissed the song as monotonous, several others have admired its yearning quality and dark musical mood. The website Consequence of Sound describes "Blue Jay Way" as "a haunted house of a hit, adding an ethereal, creepy mythos to the City of Angels". Among its continued links with Los Angeles, the song was one of the first Beatles tracks that cult leader Charles Manson adopted as the foundation for his Helter Skelter theory of an American race-related countercultural revolution. Artists who have covered the song include Bud Shank, Colin Newman, Tracy Bonham and Siouxsie and the Banshees.