Pitchfork

"Carnival of Light" began as something of a goof. In a recent interview with BBC Radio 4's John Wilson [via the Guardian], Paul McCartney recalls that the track was laid down on January 5, 1967 in the midst of vocal tracking for the Beatles classic "Penny Lane". McCartney told Wilson, "I said to the guys, this is a bit indulgent but would you mind giving me 10 minutes? I've been asked to do this thing. All I want you to do is just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn't need to make any sense. Hit a drum, wander to the piano, hit a few notes... and then we put a bit of echo on it. It's very free."

What resulted was a 14-minute improvised track that was played just once in public-- at the 1967 London music festival for which it was commissioned-- and never released. The Guardian calls "Carnival of Light" "a kind of holy grail for Beatles obsessives." But now, it seems that McCartney is ready to unleash the piece on the world's ears. He told Wilson, "The time has come for it to get its moment. I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste."

The reason for keeping "Carnival of Light" from the fans, it seems, is that every Beatle but McCartney thought the tune was too adventurous." According to the Guardian, the Cage- and Stockhausen-influenced tune was called "one of those weird things" by Beatles producer Sir George Martin, who recalls, "It was a kind of uncomposed, free-for-all melange of sound that went on. It was not considered worthy of issuing as a normal piece of Beatles music at the time and was put away." Apparently, the track is a "jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects" that "features the sound of gargled water and strangled shouts from [John] Lennon which vie with church organs and distorted guitar."

George Harrison, cleverly, dismissed the track as "avant-garde a clue", and despite McCartney's pleas, it did not make the cut for the band's mid-90s Anthology collections. Nevertheless, Macca seems to think the time is now nigh. Wilson told the Guardian that "all he [McCartney] needs now is the blessing of Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison's widow, Olivia."

Perhaps "Carnival of Light" can serve as some kind of expert track in the Beatles' forthcoming "Rock Band"-esque game? However he gets it out there, McCartney's been making with plenty of the stranger stuff lately: Electric Arguments, McCartney's third LP with collaborator Youth (Killing Joke, the Orb) as the Fireman, hits stores this week from One Little Indian. For a little more on that one, you'd be advised to check out our brand new interview with Macca and Youth over there on Pitchfork.tv.