"Carnival of Light"
The history of the Beatles'
most mysterious unreleased track
by Steve Marinucci
(This article is copyrighted b Steve Marinucci and may not be reprinted without permission of the author.)
The now famous Abbey Road studio tour in 1983 and the Anthology series that was finally realized in 1995 has allowed the public at large to hear unreleased Beatles studio material.
But there is an additional unreleased track that was given its world premiere during a two-day event -- when it could have been heard by anyone present -- and has not been heard since. It's the 1967 track, "Carnival of Light," perhaps the Beatles' most significant experiment in the avant-garde.y
The track was created for "The Carnival of Light Rave," an event held at the Roundhouse Theater Jan. 28 and Feb. 4, 1967, and promoted by underground designers Binder, Edwards and Vaughan, who had been hired by Paul McCartney to decorate one of his pianos (similar to the decorated piano seen on Paul's '89 tour).
The trio invited Paul to create a track for the event. Although John's avant-garde's work with Yoko is well-known, McCartney had experimented with avant-garde music also, and it was McCartney who instigated the recording session for the track.
It was recorded on Jan. 5, 1967 during a five-hour session that also included vocal overdubs for the then-unreleased "Penny Lane."
According to descriptions of the session from Record Collector magazine and by Mark Lewisohn, the four-track recording begins with track one as basic drums and organ rhythm backing and track two as sound effects and distorted guitar.
Track three consisted of John and Paul screaming like "demented old women", according to one account, with John crying "Barcelona!" while Paul screams, "Are you alright?," with added whistling and water gargling. Track four had more sound effects, tambourine shaking and tape echo. The track ended with Paul shouting, "Can we hear it back now?"
The 13-minute, 48-second track was mixed down to mono and a copy was given to Binder, Edwards and Vaughan. It was used for this one event and hasn't been heard in public since. Those attending reportedly thought it was an excellent piece of '60s avant-garde music, but Beatles producer George Martin felt it was a waste of time.
"This is ridiculous. We've got to get our teeth into something a little more constructive," Martin told Geoff Emerick during the recording session.
They did, and in very short order. The next day, they went back to work on "Penny Lane."
UPDATE: The August '96 issue of MOJO says that Paul McCartney is considering releasing "Carnival of Light" as the sound track to an experimental film he's making using images of the Beatles. The film would be similar to one he made about the Grateful Dead using Linda's photos.
UPDATE, April 2002: The Rockingvicar.com recently put up a short interview with Paul McCartney discussing this unreleased track. We reprint it here in its entirety by kind permission of The Rocking Vicar. Unique rock'n'roll stories emailed free every week. Autosubscribe at http://www.rockingvicar.com.
Update (3/16/04) Here's a very interesting email we received out of the blue. Just call it "another clue for you all." It was sent by Dudley Edwards:
To put the record straight...I am the 'Edwards' of Binder Edwards & Vaughan who were responsible for staging 'The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave' otherwise known as the 'Carnival of Light' that you refer to.The avant-garde track you refer to did not contain a version of 'Penny Lane' but Paul singing 'Fixing a Hole' on the piano. The tape was taken to America by one Ray Anderson (who was brought over from the States to assist us with the light show). I have no knowledge of what happened to it after that.Paul's electronic experiments were played along with tapes from 'Unit Delta Plus' an offshoot of the BBCs Radiophonic workshop. Regards,
Dudley.
Dudley.
On a BBC 4 radio show, Front Row, to air this week, McCartney told host John Wilson, "It does exist," he still has a master tape of the song and says "the time has come for it to get its moment."
"I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste," he says.
The track was created for "The Carnival of Light Rave," an event held at the Roundhouse Theater Jan. 28 and Feb. 4, 1967, and promoted by underground designers Binder, Edwards and Vaughan, who had been hired by Paul McCartney to decorate one of his pianos (similar to the decorated piano seen on Paul's '89 tour).
McCartney described how "Carnival" was developed in the recording studio. "We were set up in the studio and would just go in every day and record. 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.' "
McCartney said it was inspired by the works of composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Track three consisted of John and Paul screaming like "demented old women", according to one account, with John crying "Barcelona!" while Paul screams, "Are you alright?," with added whistling and water gargling. Track four had more sound effects, tambourine shaking and tape echo. The track ended with Paul shouting, "Can we hear it back now?"
The 13-minute, 48-second track was mixed down to mono and a copy was given to Binder, Edwards and Vaughan. It was used for this one event and hasn't been heard in public since.
"Carnival" was considered and rejected for release on "The Beatles Anthology," he says. 'We were listening to everything we'd ever recorded. I said it would be great to put this on because it would show we were working with really avant-garde stuff ... But it was vetoed. The guys didn't like the idea, like 'this is rubbish'." George Harrison, he said, dismissed this type of experimentation with his typical humor by saying "avant-garde a clue".
Midway through the recording of "Penny Lane," we spent the better part of an evening creating a tape of sound effects, under Paul's direction, for a live "happening" called the Carnival of Light. It was a bit of nonsense, really, but everyone had fun doing it. Whenever The Beatles tried something really outrageous, George Martin would roll his eyes and mutter a clipped "Oh my God" under his breath. Looking back, I guess that everyone was tripping his brains out that night, but we didn't know it then. When John started shouting "Barcelona" repeatedly in one of his Goon-like voices, Phil and I were doubled over in laughter. That line, and other bits and pieces from that night's sessions, were later used in the sound pastiche "Revolution 9" on the White Album.
E.C.: You also mention "Carnival of Light" in your book. Was any of this used in Paul’s “Liverpool Sound Collage”? You also mention that parts of it were used in “Revolution 9”? Do you remember which parts? Do you think it was a good choice to leave it off of the Anthology? I mean, if you have John’s “What’s the New Mary Jane” dribble, why not some experimental Beatles?Geoff: I’m not familiar with the “Liverpool Sound Collage,” so I don’t know if any of it was used there. The bits from the Carnival of Light session that were used in Revolution 9, as I recall, were of John saying the word “Barcelona,” and some other random sound effects. It was really just noise and cacophony, not a proper song.
ML: In very early 1967, when you were doing "Penny Lane, you made a 14-minute, very bizarre recording of effects and noises for a "Carnival of Light" at the Roundhouse. Like "Revolution #9," but in 1966 rather than in 1968. You seemed to be the leader of that. Do you remember it?PM: Yes, I was interested in that. I'm now becoming re-interested, in fact. There were millions of threads that we put down in the '60s that I never picked up again. George's Indian stuff and all of that. It was really just pushing frontiers, that's all we were doing. Everyone else was pushing frontiers, too, but perhaps we didn't necessarily like what, say, Berio was doing. There was only one Stockhausen song I liked actually! We used to get it in all interviews "Love Stockhausen!" There was only one "Gesang der junglinge (The Song of the Young)" - that was the only one I ever liked! I thought most of his other stuff was too fruity.
"The way I see it, I lived a very urbane life in London, I eventually got my own house there. So I had the metropolis at my fingertips with all this incredible stuff going on, the '60s, and John used to come in from Weybridge in his coloured outfits and we'd meet up. And I'd tell him what I'd been doing. "Last night I saw a Bertolucci film and I went down thet Open Space, they're doing a new play there" or "I had dinner with Jagger last night" and it was "My God! I'm jealous, man." Because I was doing a lot of avant-garde stuff -- it turned out later to be avant-garde. I though it was just "being different." Making little home movies, showing them to people like Antonini. It was very exciting, very creative. I do remember John coming in with his big chauffeur and Rolls-Royce and saying, "God, man, I really envy you." He was starting to feel like he was getting middle-aged and that he was out of it."
PM: Yes, I was interested in that. I'm now becoming re-interested, in fact. There were millions of threads that we put down in the '60s that I never picked up again. George's Indian stuff and all of that. It was really just pushing frontiers, that's all we were doing. Everyone else was pushing frontiers, too, but perhaps we didn't necessarily like what, say, Berio was doing. There was only one Stockhausen song I liked actually! We used to get it in all interviews "Love Stockhausen!" There was only one "Gesang der junglinge (The Song of the Young)" - that was the only one I ever liked! I thought most of his other stuff was too fruity.
"The way I see it, I lived a very urbane life in London, I eventually got my own house there. So I had the metropolis at my fingertips with all this incredible stuff going on, the '60s, and John used to come in from Weybridge in his coloured outfits and we'd meet up. And I'd tell him what I'd been doing. "Last night I saw a Bertolucci film and I went down thet Open Space, they're doing a new play there" or "I had dinner with Jagger last night" and it was "My God! I'm jealous, man." Because I was doing a lot of avant-garde stuff -- it turned out later to be avant-garde. I though it was just "being different." Making little home movies, showing them to people like Antonini. It was very exciting, very creative. I do remember John coming in with his big chauffeur and Rolls-Royce and saying, "God, man, I really envy you." He was starting to feel like he was getting middle-aged and that he was out of it."
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