Which fairy-tale EP was packaged with the Beach Boys album Holland?

The fairy-tale EP packaged with the Beach Boys album Holland was Mount Vernon and Fairway. Subtitled A Fairy Tale, it was included as a bonus record with the group’s 1973 album rather than issued as one of Holland’s regular LP tracks.

The roughly 12-minute suite was primarily composed by Brian Wilson and assembled by Carl Wilson. Manager Jack Rieley narrated most of it, while Brian supplied the voice of the Pied Piper and helped create the music’s unusual storybook atmosphere. The plot follows a magical piper who lives inside a glowing transistor radio owned by a royal family.

The project grew from the band’s time in the Netherlands while recording Holland. Because the fairy tale was too long and unconventional for the main album, the group ultimately used it as a separate bonus EP. Accounts differ over how enthusiastically the band initially received Brian’s idea, but the final packaging gave Holland an especially distinctive format.

An instrumental version later appeared on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson revisited the material in 2021 with “Mt Vernon Farewell,” a piano piece based on the fairy tale.