Back on November 11th, 2011, I featured the promo video for one side of the double A-sided Strawberry Fields Forever c/w Penny Lane single. I decided to follow that up this week with the other side.

The promo clip for Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane” was shot at a few locations on the 5th and 7th of February, 1967, in preparation for the upcoming mid-February single release (specifically the 13th in the U.S. and 17th in the U.K.).

Although there were a few sequences shot in Liverpool’s Penny Lane (the subject of the song), The Beatles never traveled there to make the video. The footage, where The Beatles are in the city, was shot at a district of London called Angel Lane. This includes the scene where they are riding horseback through the streets (I’ve always wondered if it was a coincidence that George Harrison rode the “dark horse”). These scenes are interspersed with footage of the “real” Penny Lane in Liverpool, which show the #46 bus, the “shelter in the middle of the roundabout,” the barber’s pole, the fireman on the white horse, etc.

The banquet scene at the end, where Beatles assistant Mal Evans serves the band guitars instead of food, was shot at Knole Park, in the Sevenoaks district of Kent, U.K., where the “Strawberry Fields Forever” promo had been shot less than a week earlier.

As was the case with the “Strawberry Fields Forever” promo clip, the video was directed by Peter Goldman, who was given the position as a result of a recommendation by long-time Beatles friend Klaus Voormann, whom The Beatles had met back in their pre-fame days in Hamburg, Germany.

Click the image above to play the video.

Extra info: “Penny Lane,” along with “Strawberry Fields Forever,” was originally intended to be part of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, but since it was already early 1967 and the band had not put a single out since the previous August’s “Yellow Submarine” c/w “Eleanor Rigby,” it was decided to release it as a single ahead of time. Since singles tracks did not typically end up on albums in the U.K., neither song was included on Pepper. Both songs were later included on the U.S. Magical Mystery Tour LP; however the British double EP package of the same name included only the songs that were in the Magical Mystery Tour film.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Magical Mystery Tour (Remastered) – 2009 stereo remaster of original 1967 album, including “Penny Lane”.

2) 1967-1970 (Blue) Remastered – 2-CD 2010 stereo remaster of original 1973 Beatles hits compilation, including “Penny Lane”.

3) 1 – 2011 remaster of Beatles No. 1′s, including “Penny Lane”.

4) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

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