page_title: Blue Jay Way
section_title: Cover versions and cultural references
hierarchical_section_title: Blue Jay Way / Cover versions and cultural references
caption_attribution_description: English: Colin Newman, nov 2011. Photo by Fergus Kelly.
context_page_description: "Blue Jay Way" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles. Written by George Harrison, it was released in 1967 on the group's Magical Mystery Tour EP and album. The song was named after a street in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles where Harrison stayed in August 1967, shortly before visiting the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The lyrics document Harrison's wait for music publicist Derek Taylor to find his way to Blue Jay Way through the fog-ridden hills, while Harrison struggled to stay awake after the flight from London to Los Angeles.
  As with several of Harrison's compositions from this period, "Blue Jay Way" incorporates aspects of Indian classical music, although the Beatles used only Western instrumentation on the track, including a drone-like Hammond organ part played by Harrison. Created during the group's psychedelic period, the track makes extensive use of studio techniques such as flanging, Leslie rotary effect, and reversed tape sounds. The song appeared in the Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour, in a sequence that visually re-creates the sense of haziness and dislocation evident on the recording.
context_section_description: Lord Sitar included "Blue Jay Way" on his 1968 album of Indian music-style recordings, titled Lord Sitar. The artist credit was a pseudonym for London session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, although rumours circulated that Lord Sitar was in fact Harrison himself, partly as a result of EMI/Capitol's refusal to deny the claim. Also in 1968, jazz saxophonist and flautist Bud Shank, another associate of Ravi Shankar, recorded the song for his album Magical Mystery.
  "Blue Jay Way" was a rare Beatles song released before their 1968 self-titled double album that Charles Manson adopted as part of his theory of an impending social revolution in the United States, a scenario that led to his followers carrying out a series of murders in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969. Finding parallels between the Beatles' lyrics and the Book of Revelation, and believing himself to be the messiah, Manson interpreted Harrison's opening verse and chorus as the Beatles calling out to Jesus Christ.
  Colin Newman, singer and guitarist with the post-punk band Wire, included a cover of "Blue Jay Way" on his 1982 solo album Not To. In March 2015, the song was his selection for the NME's "100 Greatest Beatles Songs" poll. Newman cited the track as an example of how the Beatles were "properly serious about their art" and why they now "need to be rescued from the clammy clutches of the heritage industry".
  Borbetomagus released a live recording of the song on their 1992 album Buncha Hair That Long, a version that Trouser Press later said "could easily reunite the Beatles for good if it were played in the presence of the surviving trio". On their 2003 live album Seven Year Itch, Siouxsie and the Banshees included a reading that, according to The Guardian's reviewer, "transformed [the song] into an apocalyptic howl". Other artists who have covered "Blue Jay Way" include Tracy Bonham, on her 2007 album In the City + In the Woods, and the Secret Machines, whose version appears in the Julie Taymor-directed film Across the Universe (2007). Former Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes recorded a ukulele rendition for his 2008 solo album The Beatles Uke.
  Harrison's experience when writing "Blue Jay Way" is referenced in the Jonathan Kellerman novel Obsession (2007), as the lead character, Alex Delaware, waits among the "bird streets" overlooking Sunset Strip. The US hip hop group Death Grips included a reversed sample of "Blue Jay Way" as well as a quote from the song's lyrics in their 2012 track "Double Helix", released on The Money Store, an album that Clash magazine described as sounding like "the burning skies of LA's decaying empire".
  In a 2011 interview, music producer and radio host Kim Fowley identified "Blue Jay Way" as the first song in which a member of the Beatles wrote about America and cited it as evidence of Harrison's standing as "the most American of all the Beatles" during the 1960s. Fowley highlighted this connection – including Harrison's friendships with David Crosby of the Byrds and other California-based musicians, such as Leon Russell – as the foundation for rock music's first all-star charity concert, the Concert for Bangladesh, which Harrison staged in New York in August 1971.
  Due to the attention created by the Beatles' song, the street signs for Blue Jay Way have long been collector's items for fans visiting the Hollywood Hills. In May 2015, a lane in the Heavitree area of Exeter, in the English county of Devon, was named Blue Jay Way after the song. In addition to much of the filming for Magical Mystery Tour having taken place at various locations in the West Country, the title commemorates the Beatles' three concert appearances at Exeter's ABC Cinema over 1963–64.
caption: Colin Newman (pictured in 2011) covered the song on his 1982 album Not To.
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