Blue Jay Way *** New Stereo Mix Exp

Re-mixed and re-mastered from the original stereo mix.

The name of the song comes from a street located high in the Hollywood Hills overlooking Sunset Boulevard where George Harrison rented a house at 1567 Blue Jay Way during August 1967. The home affords panoramic views of Hollywood and much of the Los Angeles Basin. It is reached from downtown Los Angeles via a complicated route, difficult to navigate on a foggy night — thus creating the backdrop for the opening lines of the song: "There's a fog upon LA, and my friends have lost their way."

According to Harrison: "Derek Taylor got held up. He rang to say he'd be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. And he said he could find it OK... he could always ask a cop. So I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn't want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn't noticed until then... so I messed around on it and the song came."

The song was recorded on 6 September 1967, with overdubs on 7 September and 6 October. The record employs flanging, an audio delay technique, and the stereo and mono mixes differ noticeably. For the stereo version, a full-length copy of the song was played backwards and faded in at key points in the mix. This was not done for the mono or film versions. The television film, Magical Mystery Tour, included the mono mix; the 1990s remastered version used a new stereo mix, sounding closer to the mono mix. The music video for the Magical Mystery Tour film was shot at West Malling and Weybridge in Surrey on 3 November, the day filming was completed.

At the end of the song, there is what might be perceived as a malfunction of the cello tape loop. It is in fact a cover-up of what had been planned to occur in the music video featured in the Magical Mystery Tour film; in the planned ending George was supposed to be hit by the Magical Mystery Tour bus. That ending was never shot, and the revised repeated ending is shown instead. A session musician played the cello.