‘Magical Misery Tour’: The Beatles parody that made John Lennon storm out of a studio
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and parody is among the most popular forms of imitation. Going back centuries, parodies have been used to pay homage as well as to criticise. During the 1960s, the global popular culture was dominated by The Beatles, so it makes sense that the Fab Four inspired a lot of parodies over the years. These works ranged from the good-hearted homage of The Rutles to the much more controversial ‘Magical Misery Tour’, recorded for National Lampoon back in 1972.
Founded in 1970 by former Harvard Lampoon writers Douglas Kenney, Henry Beard, and Robert Hoffman, National Lampoon quickly became the definitive humour magazine of the era, and parody was its bread and butter. The magazine tackled an endlessly broad range of topics, from the sleazy world of politics to the landscape of music and popular culture. In addition to the magazine, National Lampoon also spawned a radio show, live tour, and, perhaps most notably, a series of albums.
Radio Dinner, released in 1972, was the magazine’s very first album release. It saw comedians Tony Hendra and Michael O’Donoghue, both instrumental in the writing of the magazine, parody various musical artists, including the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Predominantly, though, the album took aim at The Beatles and the solo careers of each member. After all, the split of the world’s biggest band was still fresh in the minds of audiences in 1972, and the band members gave satirists more than enough material to work with.
The stand-out track on Radio Dinner is ‘Magical Misery Tour’, which satirises John Lennon using inspiration from an interview he gave to Rolling Stone in 1970. With the break-up of The Beatles still fresh in his mind and the bitterness between band members only seeming to increase, the interview did not paint Lennon in a particularly good light. Notably, the interview featured a lot of swearing from the songwriter and the regular proclamation that he is a genius: “If there is such a thing as one, I am one,” he said.
This open admission of ego and anger was a gift to satirists like Hendra and O’Donoghue, and they used elements of Lennon’s interview within the parody song, delivered in a style reminiscent of ‘I Am The Walrus’.
Within the lyrics, Lennon’s voice is parodied by Hendra, who delivers lines such as, “I resent performing for you fuckers tell me what do you know?”, “Look, I’m not your fuckin’ parents, and I’m sick of uptight hippies,” and “I don’t owe you fuckers anything, and all I got to say is fuck you, the sky.”
Using a handful of direct quotes from Lennon’s interview, interspersed with Hendra’s own writing, the song exaggerated the songwriter’s ego and his less-than-favourable attitudes towards his old bandmates. It is chock full of surreal lyrics, such as “I was the walrus, Paul wasn’t the walrus. I was just saying that to be nice, but I was actually the walrus.”
Radio Dinner was a great success for National Lampoon and spawned various other album releases for the publication. However, ‘Magical Misery Tour’ did not go down particularly well with John Lennon himself. According to Hendra’s 1987 book Going Too Far, Lennon was shocked and appalled by his portrayal within the parody song and once stormed out his guest appearance on a radio show with Yoko Ono when the DJ played the track.
Seemingly, the former Beatle couldn’t see the humour of the parody. Either way, ‘Magical Misery Tour’ remains one of the strangest parodies of The Beatles ever put to record.
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