quest to free Pepperland and the imprisoned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from the music-hating Blue Meanies. The recording was slowed down by a semitone for inclusion in the film. Referring to the psychedelic imagery in the animation, author Stephen Glynn says that this segment "only 'makes sense' when read as attempting an audio-visual recreation of the hallucinogenic state". Jeremiah Massengale, an academic in the field of visual communication, highlights the sequence as one of many technical innovations introduced by the 1968 film, saying: "accompanying multi-colored, square portrait paintings of the Beatles during 'Only a Northern Song', there's a creative use of an oscillator picking out the sound waves of the track." In his book The Beatles Movies, Bob Neaverson says that the segment arguably represents the best example of the film's adoption of the psychedelic iconography typical of 1960s underground poster art. He describes it as a "simulated 'trip' sequence" and adds, "Here, bright strobes of alternating primary colour and close-ups of the Beatles' ears attached to frequency monitors emphasize a higher reality than that of the objective world and, in the employment of irrational imagery and a visceral onslaught of 'mind-blowing' colour, attempt to simulate a hypnotic 'psych-out' of epic proportions." Glynn cites the drug-inspired imagery of "Only a Northern Song" and two other song sequences as the true reason that Rank pulled Yellow Submarine from its UK cinema run, rather than the company's official reasoning that the film had performed poorly at the box office. The segment was among the clips shown in a feature about Yellow Submarine on the television show How It Is. Produced by Tony Palmer and including portions of the stage play based on Lennon's book In His Own Write, the show was broadcast on BBC1 two days after the film's world premiere in London, on 19 July 1968. By the early 21st century, "Only a Northern Song" was the only music clip from the How It Is broadcast circulating among collectors. Release and reception The film soundtrack was viewed as a secondary work by the Beatles, who delayed its release to allow for their 1968 self-titled double album (also known as the "White Album"). On 13 January 1969, "Only a Northern Song" was issued as the second track on side one of the Yellow Submarine LP, with George Martin's orchestral score for the film occupying the whole of side two. Although