{"id":3812,"date":"2026-02-03T11:19:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T11:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/?p=3812"},"modified":"2026-02-03T11:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T11:19:41","slug":"damn-the-torpedoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/2026\/02\/03\/damn-the-torpedoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Damn The Torpedoes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_code module_class=”custom-cat” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]
\t
\t\tMojo<\/pee>\t<\/div>\t
\t\tPresents<\/pee>\t<\/div><\/div>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text module_class=”article-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”||||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#111111″ header_font_size=”68px” custom_margin=”40px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Damn The Torpedoes<\/h1>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”intro-text” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Full of holes but also hope; the target of hipster depth charges upon its release in 1968, but living on as a kind of psychedelic coelacanth: Yellow Submarine<\/strong><\/span> is still the most polarising Beatle product of all. In 2018, with the help of script scouse-ifier Roger McGough and famous fans, Mat Snow<\/span><\/strong> upped periscope.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-1125946170-scaled.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ alt=”The Beatles at TVC’s animation studios, participating in %22Mod Odyssey,%22 a film about the creation of Yellow Submarine, November 6, 1967″ title_text=”The Beatles In London For Yellow Submarine”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

The Beatles at TVC’s animation studios, participating in “Mod Odyssey,” a film about the creation of Yellow Submarine, November 6, 1967.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

T<\/span>HE DOG & DUCK IN LONDON\u2019S SOHO HAS seen some shenanigans. There was the time when Animal Farm was picked for the American Book Of The Month Club in 1946 and to celebrate George Orwell got stuck into the absinthe, a stash of which the pub had mysteriously acquired. Eight years later, Orwell\u2019s fable about totalitarianism was adapted into a full-length animated feature film, the last made in the UK until, 14 years later, another fable about totalitarianism (and liberation therefrom) was brought to life by a team for whom a two-hour liquid lunch at the Dog & Duck plus gin and red wine refreshers back at the studio fuelled perhaps the greatest multisensory masterpiece of the psychedelic era \u2013 the Yellow \u2028Submarine movie. There was neither time nor inclination for those artists and animators toiling over every cel on the tightest of budgets, and an even tighter deadline, to drop acid; it was brown ale, M\u00e9doc and Gordon\u2019s all the way.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cThe production was so chaotic,\u201d confirms Valentine Edelmann, daughter of the film\u2019s late art director Heinz Edelmann. \u201cTo be in the middle of that was really tough for my father. It took him two years to recover and find himself again. For a long time afterwards he didn\u2019t like us to speak about it at home.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

In truth, bad vibes had bedevilled the project from the start. In 1964, The Beatles had signed a three-picture deal with United Artists but, feeling they had better things to do than follow up 1965\u2019s Help!, had yet to deliver the third. So when in 1966 Al Brodax, the producer of the US children\u2019s TV \u2028cartoon series based on their zany capers, proposed a feature animation, UA would get their third picture and The Beatles need hardly get involved at all, not even voicing their characters.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Brodax contracted the production to the Soho animation house TVC, and here the conflict began. Thrilled by the creativity blossoming in both high and popular arts, fashion, design and more, TVC wanted to make something great, whereas Brodax wanted something quick. Not that the stogie-chomping \u2028Battle Of The Bulge veteran lacked artistic vision \u2013 he initially tried to hire Catch 22\u2019s author Joseph Heller to write the script \u2013 but tensions rose as TVC developed an ever more elaborate feast for the eyes until, amid the threat of lawsuits and bankruptcy, the movie cut corners in a rush to make the July 1968 UK release.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cMy dad was the kind of man always to see a work\u2019s faults,\u201d says Valentine Edelmann. \u201cLike the final animated sequence at the end of the production has a stroboscopic effect but all the \u2028characters are standing still; it was the special effects man Charlie Jenkins who came up with the solution when there was no time or money left.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

For all the chaos, improvisation and tension of its production, Yellow \u2028Submarine does not fall short of TVC\u2019s ambitions for it; inspired by not just The Beatles\u2019 artistic adventurousness but the whole surrounding sociocultural ferment, the film captures the High \u201960s in general and does full justice to the music in all its imagination, wit and colour. The Beatles themselves came to love it, even Paul McCartney, who had hoped for something very different.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

“<\/span>That\u2019s what pissed me off at the end of it. Very little money and no credit.“<\/span><\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Roger McGough<\/span><\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

O<\/span>F ALL FABS SPIN-OFFS, THE YELLOW SUBMARINE film is surely the greatest. Now, 50 years after its original cinema release, it gets back to where it once belonged \u2013 on the big screen \u2013 where it blew its first generation of minds, including that of future XTC singer, guitarist and songwriter Andy Partridge: aged 14 when he went to the Swindon ABC when Yellow Submarine opened in 1968.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cMe and my mate Steve were so knocked out, we lay low after it was over and watched it three times,\u201d he tells MOJO today. \u201cWe went again a couple of days later to watch it a few more times. It flipped my lid. I\u2019d never seen anything like it. What was I looking at in that fantastic moving collage of images of Northern England in the \u2028Eleanor Rigby sequence? This was a different type of animation \u2013 it wasn\u2019t Road Runner. Nor had I heard anything like it, especially It\u2019s All Too Much and Only A Northern Song with that almost continuous jabber of different frequencies of psychedelicised sound smershed all over it.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Competing over the school summer holidays with the Julie Andrews vehicle Star!, Yellow Submarine did respectable British box office. But released in America four months later it performed far better. Perhaps not because it tapped into the Zeitgeist but precisely because it didn\u2019t \u2013 at least not any more. 1968 was America\u2019s annus horribilis. The Tet Offensive; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; violence at the Democratic National Convention: on every TV screen in America the nation appeared to be tearing itself apart, culminating in the law and order backlash vote that propelled Richard Nixon to the White House in November. As Pauline Kael wrote that month in her New Yorker review of Yellow Submarine, \u201cThe movie is a nostalgic fantasy \u2013 already nostalgic for the happy anarchism of \u2018love\u2019. It finally goes a bit flat because love is no longer in bloom.\u201d Yet less than six weeks later, Miller Francis of Atlanta\u2019s underground paper The Great Speckled Bird asserted, \u201cYellow Submarine is rapidly on its way to canonisation.\u201d Love may have wilted in Manhattan, but nationwide the hippy tribes coalescing into the Woodstock Nation were keeping the flower alive.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Then, of course, there were the kids. Kael again: The Beatles are \u201cno longer the rebellious, anarchistic pop idols that parents were at first outraged by; they\u2019re no longer threatening. They\u2019re hippies as folk heroes\u2026 they have become quaint \u2013 such gentle, harmless Edwardian boys, with one foot in the nursery and the other in the boutique, nothing to frighten parents.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Though the era of plastic mop-top wigs had passed and the time of discord and Yoko, Sgt. Pilcher and Chairman Mao already begun, The Beatles were more child-friendly than ever. And that was very much down to Paul McCartney. The pivotal Beatle year 1966 had marked the 10th anniversary of the death of his mother, and into his songwriting entered a new streak of melancholy, even morbidity (Eleanor Rigby), but also a more characteristically sunny nostalgia for a rosily recollected childhood (Penny Lane, When I\u2019m Sixty-Four). McCartney was initially disappointed that the Yellow \u2028Submarine film was not in the classic Disney style; part of him wanted to regress to the time before the great loss of his life.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Nor was he alone in looking back. From the top down, urban planners, public bodies and private corporations were wedded to rebuilding the post-war world in rectilinear concrete, steel and plate glass, a white-heat-of-technology modernism reflected in the black polo neck sweater and polyester miniskirt. But from the bottom up, dedicated followers of fashion from 1965 onwards were increasingly tempted away from Mary Quant and Courr\u00e8ges space age knock-offs by the offerings of Granny Takes A Trip, I Was Lord Kitchener\u2019s Valet, Hung On You and Biba. London happily swung between the seeming oppositions of the thrillingly if chillingly new and the half-nostalgically, half-mockingly old. It was the difference between The Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper satins and the sober, suited waxworks beside them on Peter Blake\u2019s album sleeve.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-1137105390.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ alt=”Yellow Submarine, poster, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, 1968″ title_text=”Yellow Submarine”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

O<\/span>N THAT SLEEVE, SANDWICHED between Laurel and Hardy, lurks perhaps the Yellow Submarine movie\u2019s most significant stylistic ancestor, the German-born US painter Richard Lindner, whose brightly coloured and clothed, half-comic, half-sinister characters blended the legacy of Otto Dix with poster-friendly pop art. In a similar vein but more Art Nouveau with a surrealistic twist, Heinz Edelmann\u2019s illustrations in Germany\u2019s Twen magazine commended him to take charge of Yellow Submarine\u2019s visual style, most importantly its Beatle avatars with their outsize feet, legs and hands, grown-ups as seen from a child\u2019s perspective. Not only did he give life to the scripted Blue Meanies but devised their army of snapping Turks, apple bonkers and the flying, crushing glove (surely the prototype of Terry Gilliam\u2019s animated stomping foot in Monty Python, one of the TV classic\u2019s several Beatle-isms). Alongside Robert Freeman, Klaus Voormann and Peter Blake, Edelmann completes the quartet of those who most inspirationally extended The Beatles\u2019 brand into the visual medium.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cI was so obsessed with Yellow Submarine visually,\u201d says Andy Partridge. \u201cI started dreaming the Northern Song sequence where they psychedelicised and brought to life the solarised Richard Avedon posters, zapping an oscilloscope across the screen. I would draw the characters, then draw my own characters in that Heinz Edelmann style, making up stories parallel to Yellow Submarine.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

When Partridge unveiled his own psych-pop opus \u2013 XTC\u2019s 1989 album Oranges & Lemons \u2013 he reached again for Yellow Submarine.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cI knew it had to have a bright pop art sleeve, with a dollop of Alan Aldridge \u2013 his sleeve to The Who\u2019s A Quick One and cover of The Observer colour magazine of Paul McCartney in 1967 \u2013 a dollop of Milton Glaser, but mostly the style of Heinz Edelmann, whose books I had. That sleeve was our thank-you to our favourite pop artists.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Partridge wasn\u2019t the only future creator to fully submerge. Another was cartoonist and animator Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. His partner in Bongo Comics, MAD Magazine editor and fellow Sub nut Bill Morrison has now created a Yellow Submarine graphic novel, out this summer.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cI first saw Yellow Submarine on TV when I was around 13,\u201d says Morrison. \u201cI was blown away by the visuals and animation. It\u2019s so bright and fresh and fun compared to today\u2019s animation where super-real effects get to be\u2028boring after a while.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

A coincidence that TV\u2019s first family are also yellow? \u201cThere is a lot of Yellow Submarine in The Simpsons,\u201d Morrison says, \u201cand the characters\u2019 yellow is very close to the shade of the submarine. Matt Groening\u2019s room at Bongo Comics is full of records; the Beatles section alone is massive, with bootlegs and interviews too. He can talk about them for hours.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

In an earlier Yellow Submarine tribute project, US comic artist Alex Ross reimagined a panorama of characters from the movie plus individual portraits of each Fab in a spectacularly three-dimensional style, as if Yellow Submarine were a Marvel superhero movie, a psychedelic Valhalla.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cThe film was a surreal delight to me as a child; it had a hypnotic effect,\u201d Ross tells MOJO. \u201cIn my teen years, it still seemed absolutely unlike anything else. It seemed wise \u2013 edgier, and more substantial than most \u201980s entertainment. Today Yellow Submarine is magically exactly the same as it was to me as a child. It is charming, funny, engaging in all the ways that The Beatles seemed like the Marx Brothers in their other films, and it has the enormous advantage of the edge their music had by the psychedelic, colour-drenched late \u201960s. I feel that it holds up against anything from the modern era.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

“<\/span>I was totally obsessed with Yellow Submarine. At home I would draw my own characters in that Heinz Edelmann style.“<\/span><\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Andy Partridge<\/span><\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-519726096.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ alt=”The Beatles posed with cardboard cutouts of their ‘Yellow Submarine’ characters at TVC animation Studios in London, 6th November 1967″ title_text=”The Beatles”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

The Beatles posed with cardboard cutouts of their ‘Yellow Submarine’ characters at TVC animation Studios in London, 6th November 1967.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Y<\/span>ET HOW BEATLEY, ULTIMATELY, IS YELLOW \u2028Submarine? They only appear in a brief live action coda, and where the group\u2019s gravity had shaped the screenplays of A Hard Day\u2019s Night and Help!, Yellow Submarine\u2019s original script had passed through the hands of playwright Lee Minoff and then Erich Segal, the Yale professor of Greek and Latin literature who would later hit big with Love Story. It retained elements of both writers\u2019 work \u2013 the know-all Nowhere Man Jeremy Boob was Minoff\u2019s parody of British theatre director Jonathan Miller with whom he\u2019d clashed on a Broadway production of Come Live With Me; the same character\u2019s Latin gags were Segal\u2019s.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

What the dialogue needed was a higher than homeopathic dose of authentic Beatles flavour. Roger McGough was already famous in his own right as co-author with Brian Patten and Adrian Henri of 1967\u2019s best-selling poetry collection, The Mersey Sound, and as\u2028a member of The Scaffold with John Gorman and Paul McCartney\u2019s younger brother Mike McGear. At TVC\u2019s insistence, he was the one Fab friend piped aboard.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cI knew The Beatles from the whole Liverpool cornucopia,\u201d recalls McGough today. \u201cAnd when I saw some of the early drafts by Erich Segal I realised why I was there. It was very American but also very metaphysical, with Greek references which sometimes work with the Blue Meanies but less with John or Ringo. So I came in and made The Beatles sound like The Beatles.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Though initially brought in to doctor a few scenes, McGough became more involved and ended up writing the Sea of Monsters segment working alongside the animators (John: \u201cThere\u2019s a cyclops.\u201d Paul: \u201cCan\u2019t be. He\u2019s got two eyes.\u201d John: \u201cThen it must be a bi-cyclops\u201d).<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cThat\u2019s what pissed me off at the end of it,\u201d says McGough. \u201cVery little money and no credit, even though [TVC\u2019s] George Dunning wrote to Brodax saying I should get credit and more money for doing more work than I originally agreed. But no, credit would mean I would get subsidiaries. But it was a delightful thing to have done and I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Indubitably Beatley, of course, were Yellow Submarine\u2019s four thus-far unheard songs. Three \u2013 McCartney\u2019s All Together Now, a playtime sing-along boasting a cheeky depth charge in the couplet \u201cBlack white green red\/Can I take my friend to bed\u201d, plus Harrison\u2019s Only A Northern Song and It\u2019s All Too Much \u2013 were recorded in 1967 but deemed not good enough for Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour or even a B-side (\u201cApparently, they would say, \u2018This is a lousy song, let\u2019s give it to Brodax,\u2019\u201d the producer carped to MOJO in 1999). But time has been kinder, and It\u2019s All Too Much, the most acid-drenched of all Yellow Submarine\u2019s \u2018originals\u2019, has been elevated to the top table of the band\u2019s psych output. Nearly as good, Lennon\u2019s piano-pounding Hey Bulldog was the most recently recorded (February 1968), although the sequence it soundtracked was redacted from the film\u2019s original US release. Both Edelmann and Brodax insisted that it didn\u2019t fit.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Despite Lennon\u2019s later characterisation of it as \u201call this terrible shit\u201d, even George Martin\u2019s orchestral interludes have aged well.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cA lot of people pass over side two of the soundtrack album,\u201d says Andy Partridge. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s perfection. So melodic, inventive and beautifully realised, from nabbing [Bach\u2019s] Air On A G String for the character smoking the diversionary cigar, to Pepperland\u2019s almost Ealing Comedy soundtrack.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

By the time the film hit the screens, The Beatles and rock were voyaging elsewhere, inspired by the autumnally \u2018brown\u2019 sound of The Band and dressed-down blues and folk. The intensity of Yellow Submarine\u2019s sounds and images was already its own elegy.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

\u201cI was still wallowing in Magical Mystery Tour when The White Album hit, but The Beatles had moved on,\u201d recalls Andy Partridge. \u201cI must admit I wondered, Where has all the colour gone? Wind us down gently from Magical Mystery Tour, if you would! I went cold turkey. You couldn\u2019t grasp how Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine sounded so magical, couldn\u2019t grasp how they did it. But you could grasp how they did The White Album \u2013 Oh, he\u2019s turned his guitar up.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

This article originally appeared on Issue 297 of MOJO<\/em> <\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]

Images: Getty<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Full of holes but also hope; the target of hipster depth charges upon its release in 1968, but living on as a kind of psychedelic coelacanth: Yellow Submarine is still the most polarizing Beatle product of all. In 2018, with the help of script scouse-ifier Roger McGough and famous fans, Mat Snow upped periscope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3812"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3829,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3812\/revisions\/3829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}