Flying is the only instumental among The Beatles’ official releases, and one of just two tracks credited to all four Beatles (the other is Dig It). Arising from a studio jam session, it was composed as incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour TV special and included on the Magical Mystery Tour album and EP.
The Beatles BibleA mostly instrumental recording with wordless vocals from all four Beatles, ‘Flying’ was recorded as incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour film.
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WikipediaWhy on earth is it ranked so high!?
The inclusion of Flying at this exalted level of my ranking serves mainly to highlight a quirk of the underlying ratings: most songs receive a rating for their lyrics, which enters into my calculations, and rather than receiving a low number (Wild Honey Pie gets “2”, for example), the lyric rating has been omitted and the score is based on the other factors. Even so, it is probably too high; the ranking shouldn’t be taken too seriously as I’ve explained elsewhere.
Flying is an interesting track, and a nice piece of incidental music for the TV show. The Beatles do sing on it, albeit wordlessly, chanting la-la-la-la-la in a mock choral style, but even without words you can easily recognize the Beatles: the rhythm section is unmistakably Ringo and Paul chilling out and grooving. The instrumental itself has a warm, soothing, laid back feel, which after a minute and a half breaks down into a flowery chaos cave. It’s much more than competent, but less than thrilling.
Mellotron
The distinctive sound the dominates the track is the mellotron. This unique instrument was invented in 1963, initially marketed as a way to produce the sound of a cabaret band (as shown in the Pathe and Paul McCartney clips above). It came to prominence in the mid to late sixties when rock bands, including the Moody Blues, found that it was useful for creating more elaborate soundscapes in the recording studio. Along with the sitar, it became a signature of psychedelic rock. But as the instrument proved difficult to maintain and ill-suited to the demands of touring musicians and so it was soon overtaken by more reliable instruments. It’s a sound that very much belongs to its time, so much so that to hear a mellotron is to be transported to the late sixties. Here are some of the classic tracks it appears on:
- The Moody Blues – Question (and many more)
- Flying – The Beatles
- Strawberry Fields Forever – The Beatles
- We Love You – The Rolling Stones
- She’s A Rainbow – The Rolling Stones
- 2000 Light Years From Home – The Rolling Stones
- Space Oddity – David Bowie
- And, providing a subliminal dose of 67, Wonderwall – Oasis
The Beatles each got a their own mellotrons after being shown one by Moody Blues keyboardist and mellotron enthusiast, Mike Pinder:
Speaking of Mellotron Flutes, I got to know John, Paul, George and Ringo over the years and I introduced them to the ‘tron. They all said, “Hullo-wer vury pleased tuh meet yuh!” Within a week all four of them had a Fab-Tron. I knew that I would be rewarded, and the first time I heard “Strawberry Fields,” I was in bliss. It was the closest thing to recording with them, other than my visits to Abbey Road during their recording sessions.
Musicians throughout the centuries have sought after a single instrument that can emulate the sounds of others, so that the rich textures of an orchestra, or ensemble can be at the fingertips of a single player. A pipe organ uses air blown through different size pipes to create oscillations over a wide range of frequencies producing distinct timbres – approximating the sounds of strings, flute, reed instruments, voices and so on. These timbres that can be combined together using stops. Electronic organs, such as the Hammond organ emulated the pipe organ system using electronic oscillators and allowing different harmonics to be mixed using drawbars. Synthesizers that were being developed at the time (the Beatles began using one of the earliest for Abbey Road in 1969) allowed for more complex manipulation of the electronic oscillators. This creates a wider variety of sounds, most of which sounded artificial, but which could loosely emulate other instruments sounds.
These technologies each allowed players to access and manipulate a wide variety of textures and timbres within a single instrument but, while the results could be compelling in their own right, they were achieved by tweaking and combining oscillations. The mellotron took a very different, at the time unique, approach of replaying the sounds of recorded instruments. Each key controls its own tape loop and motor, playing back the sound of a given note. Because each of this there are fluctuations in pitch, and the instrument goes out of tune easily if the tapes stretch. All the moving parts lead to the maintenance problems, but they also give the mellotron a distinctive quality of its own that is not unpleasant.
The mellotron was the precursor of modern samplers, which use digital technology to overcome the many technical issues involved in reproducing sound with tapes and motors. But they can be rather soulless.