The Fool on the Hill
McCartney said the idea for the song was inspired by the Dutch design collective the Fool, who derived their name from the tarot card of the same name, and possibly by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.[25] The clip was the only musical segment filmed at an exterior location and using professional photography,[26] and the shoot took place when the rest of the Magical Mystery Tour footage was well into the editing stage.[27][28] Peter Brown, who was coordinating the Beatles' business affairs following Epstein's death, recalled that McCartney phoned him from Nice asking for new camera lenses to be sent out for the shoot.[41] The song's segment in the Magical Mystery Tour film proved the most problematic during the editing process since McCartney and Dewar had failed to use a clapperboard.[47] In Many Years from Now, McCartney cites the inclusion of Lennon's "I Am the Walrus" as justification for Magical Mystery Tour and highlights the sequence for "The Fool on the Hill" as another of the film's redeeming features.[43][52] Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker described the EP as "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch".[54] In Saturday Review magazine, Mike Jahn highlighted the song as an example of how the album successfully conveyed the Beatles' "acquired Hindu philosophy and its subsequent application to everyday life", in this instance by describing "a detached observer, a yogin, who meditates and watches the world spin".Pepper, the soundtrack demonstrated the Beatles' departure from true rock values and an over-reliance on studio artifice and motif, such that when "the hero of 'The Fool On The Hill' sees the world spinning round, we whirl gently amid dizzy rhythms".He nevertheless found the song "so easy to adore", with a melody that he deemed "the most haunting thing on the album", and concluded: "The fool as visionary is a common theme ...He said the song represented the "complete negation of their earlier selves" and contained "all the qualities that the early Beatles sought to deflate: it is pious, subtly self-righteous, humorless and totally unphysical."[59] NME critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler described the song as "exquisite" and paired it with "I Am the Walrus" as being "by far the most outstanding cuts" on the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack.He said "The Fool on the Hill" was among McCartney's "most irresistible, universal" ballads, with a lyric that successfully transposed into pop music the literary theme established through fairy tales, through stories of monarchs prizing their court jester over more learned counsel, and in Dostoevsky's popular novel The Idiot.[62] Tim Riley writes that unlike the sharp insights offered by fools in Shakespeare's works, the lyrics teach the listener "Little or nothing, except how to pull the heartstrings."[63] He describes the song as "an airy creation, poised peacefully above the world in a place where time and haste are suspended" and says that its "timeless appeal ... lies in its paradoxical air of childlike wisdom and unworldliness".[65] He calls the melody "bewitching" and adds: "part of the joy of the piece is the finely judged lyrical ambiguity that, along with the beautiful spaciousness of the arrangement (all flutes, recorders, bass harmonica and whispery brushes on the drums), allows a myriad of implied meanings to float beguilingly into the imagination of the listener.[80] Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66 recorded "Fool on the Hill", using their approach of marrying a simple bossa nova rhythm with a string accompaniment.[92] The duo Eurythmics, nine years after disbanding, reunited in January 2014 to perform "The Fool on the Hill" for The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles.[93][94] The following are among the many other artists who have covered the song: the Four Tops, Björk, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, Petula Clark, John Williams, Santo & Johnny, Ray Stevens, Bobbie Gentry, Eddie Fisher, Lena Horne with Gábor Szabó, Micky Dolenz, Stone the Crows, Vera Lynn, Enoch Light, Andre Kostelanetz, the Boston Pops Orchestra, Corry Brokken, the King's Singers, Zé Ramalho, Bud Shank, Mulgrew Miller, the Chopsticks, Mark Mallman, Lana Cantrell, Barry Goldberg, Sharon Tandy, Libby Titus, the Singers Unlimited, Isabelle Aubret and Eddy Mitchell.