West Malling: then & then.

West Malling airfield exists, as regulah readahs will know, only in the memories of those who have either seen (and can recall) MMT, or those who actually managed a visit to the place before it was swallowed by Kings Hill. Piet Schreuders, a master of the old "then & nows", falls into both categories, and he has very kindly allowed me to reproduce his photos (ca. 1988) for your perusal.
Thus - above the very spot where the Walrus sequence was shot. The slight difference in perspective vis-a-vis blast walls can be explained by contrasting lenses on pre-digital cameras. Note the pavings, and compare with the following:


The circular hole, effected in MMT, still there at that time:


And, o' course, the iconic blast walls, soon to be blasted:


Piet, who was visiting in the inestimable company of Mark Lewisohn, also managed to find the "I WAS" room, situated in a small building attached to the side of one of the hangers. Astonishingly enough, the very Union Jack, if a little on the mouse-masticated side, still in place:


Note the roof beams above, and the window below:


I would have needed a hand getting it into my etc:


Finally, the hanger itself, scene of YMSK:


And this:


The presence of one of the automotive stars o' MMT means that the rather interesting BJW sequence was almost certainly filmed in here too:


...of which more anon.
Many thanks go to Piet for generously allowing his pics to be used. There's more on Malling in The Beatles' London, which you really should buy immediately if you haven't already done so.
UPDATE: Looks like MMT will finally get an official DVD release on October 9, with a side-helping of tasty extras (unseen footage etc.). It's available now for pre-order on the US Amazon site, presumably with UK and others soon to follow.
FURTHER UPDATE: Official trailer now HERE... fairly exciting stuff it is, too!

West Malling: more then & then & now.

As many as one people have written to ask where exactly in Kings Hill the MMT hanger stood. This, o' course, was the scene of the climactic Yer Mama Should etc. sequence in the titular film, but despite the excellent illustrations in The Beatles' London, pinning down its former location proved tricky; virtually nothing now remains of West Malling airfield, and, as stated in the aforementioned 'bok':"...the new roads and buildings have obliterated any sense of MMT orientation".
Well almost...but not quite. There is one surviving landmark - the old control tower, and this, together with the above newly found pic, allows a more or less accurate placing of the 'anger (should anyone care.)
There were actually four hangers at West Malling. The pics above and below were taken with the MMT hanger behind the photographer, but crucially (and that really isn't the right word) the control tower can be seen above on the right. This one is to the immediate left of the above (clear as mud, but let's plough on):


An overview - the arrow marks the spot:


This 'then & then' again shows the location - the hanger in these pics isn't the MMT one:


Had the photographer turned around, however, they'd have got the following view - the "correct" hanger (and another 'then & then'):


The MMT hanger location can thus be ascertained. The car park on the right is (more or less) the spot where John and George's vehicles can be seen in the first two pics above, the arrows point to the control tower, the circled portion corresponds to the '67 fan photo, and scanning left shows what now squats where the very hanger once...errr...also squatted, namely Queen Street in Kings Hill:


There are a number of excellent on-line resources celebrating the history of West Malling airfield (and lamenting what has become of it), and lots of interesting pics. For example these, taken on the other side of the hanger seen in the first two pics above, with the one on the left circa WW2:


So now ye know.

West Malling: Kings Hill - Durello Avenue.

What, pray tell, compels all this? It's an odd business, no question, but one of many itches that, I feel, needed scratching revolves around the former West Malling (pronounced "Mawling", apparently) Airfield, scene of much of Magical Mystery Tour, and visited by "your" (why is everything "your" these days?) tired/emotional writer of drivel during the glorious summer of 1985, before the dread redevelopment.
It's been a source of regret, somewhere amongst the middle of the by now enormous pile of regrets, that I didn't take more photos that day (particularly given that the ones I did take were of the wrong thing).
So I felt compelled, m'lud, to return, digital camera in hand, in order to test the assertion in the Beatles' London that the "new roads and buildings have obliterated any sense of MMT orientation".
Using (or mis-using) the wonders of satellite mapping, together with the glorious diagrams in the aforementioned tome, it's still possible to locate the Walrus locales, mainly due to the fact that the developers haven't managed to destroy the surrounding woods yet (Hoath Wood, Coalpit Wood, Not Sure If I Wood, Jesus I Should Be Beaten To A Pulp Immediately For That Which Isn't Even A Wood, and so on, and so forth, etc.).
Thus, Durello Avenue: this is the very spot where the sequence for I Am The Walrus was filmed:


It's now a cul-de-sac, and they were smack in the middle of it (if that makes sense):


The famous blast walls (32 pairs, fact fans), long, long gone, o' course. These were mainly situated on the edges of the airfield, but the one behind the Beatles was directly beyond what is now Durello Avenue, and luck has dictated that the patch of ground thus far remains:


So, to labour the point unnecessarily, here is what's left of the Walrus locations:


Funnily enough, in what seems to be about the right position (re. blast wall), there is the concrete footprint of...something:


Walking on past the houses that can be seen in the above pic, I came upon a patch of undespoiled ground; the perimeter road would have run along to the right. Traces of the old airfield remain here, yet this too is about to be swallowed up by a no doubt horrible business park:


Wandering further I arrived at the edge of the former airfield, a spot now marked by large chunks of something or other:


Clearly these were once part of something else; one would hope an airfield related building, but shurely not the blast walls?
So there we have it. There is still a small patch of MMT in Kings Hill, if one knows where to look. But I wouldn't count on it for very much longer. So it goes.

West Malling: then & now.

Ah, West Malling: We hardly knew you, too.
"Chosen" by the Beatles as a primary location for Magical Mystery Tour, largely due to gross incompetence (they hadn't bothered to book a proper film studio, thus everywhere was taken and it was all they could get), the airfield represents, in excelsis, another one of those happy accidents that occur at almost every turn where these four "shit-kickers" (Ringo's words, not mine) are concerned; it proved ideal.
That MMT is a load of pish is an almost universally accepted "fact". However, having recently viewed it again after a gap of around 20 years, with lowered expectations, I'd take issue with the consensus. Parts of it are (and I'm struggling to find a better term, so I won't bother) a load of pish; the "wizards" are to be regretted, and the title sequences and intermittent explosive "special" effects have aged less than well... but beyond that, I can't really find much to dislike. It veers (wildly) from the silly (though charming) to the scintillating. I do wish they would release it in a properly re-mastered version on DVD.
And so to a little wittering about West Malling.
Assuming you have functioning eyes, the aerial pic below is self explanatory. Nevertheless, clockwise from top left: the main hanger where the finale was filmed, the blast shields (two locations) which served as backdrop to the Walrus sequence, and, finally, at the bottom, the patch of ground once occupied by yet another blast shield - this one used by the Rutles (they couldn't find the right one - and neither could I when I was there in the 1980s):


Speaking of the Walrus areas, it's now very hard to identify precisely where these points were; as regulars will know, the airfield is long gone, and the whole place is gradually being eaten by a large modern housing development called Kings Hill. However, too much time poring over Google Earth and the like leads me to believe (quite possibly wrongly) that where the Walrus blast shields once stood is now a street called Durello Avenue. You can see it below, to the right. This satellite image is at least a couple of years old; I'm pretty sure that the waste ground has been covered in new houses in the interim. If I'm right, then someone's front drive now sits where the Walrus once sat:


Lastly, some charming home movie footage, showing West Malling airfield in the late 1970s, around 10 years after the MMT cast and crew packed up and left; filmed by glider pilots, and therefore not of a specifically Beatles bent, glimpses of those blast shields can nevertheless be seen, amongst other things. Three more parts are to be found on YouTube.
Thanks to Nernie, E. and Christopher "I'm not drinking today" Stewart for "input", and to The Beatles' London (Schreuders, Lewisohn & Smith), without which West Malling MMT topography would have been forever lost.

West Malling: yet more bike.

Apparently, the brakes didn´t work. I can believe it. That´s enough bike.

More West Malling: more West Malling.

More West Malling. And more tangential every day. But wait! There is a connection, after all... a story about the bike. Some of the Apple Scruffs were at Kenwood one day. John was absent. They found the bike in his garage, and decided to "borrow" it. Whoever was charged with looking after it in London left it in their communal hall, only to discover the next day that someone had mistaken it for junk and put it out to be collected, which it had been....and that was that. That´s the story, anyway.

West Malling: airfield.

Looking through some old "analogue" photos this evening, I came across a few that I took at West Malling Air Station (scene of I Am The Walrus), circa 1984 (pics 3 & 4 in this post). As you can see from the satellite image, the whole area was razed to the ground in the 90s and is now completely unrecognisable as the scene of that bit of MMT. Also here, a fanpic of John in Soho during the editing of MMT (thanks to Bruno Dupont) plus a couple showing the Beatles "editing" said film. No comment required, I think. (What, you may ask, does this have to do with Kenwood? Nothing much, aside from the fact that John would have been driven to West Malling each day from Kenwood.)