Unreleased Beatles Song Might Be Issued

11/17/08 11:19am

Paul McCartney will release an experimental Beatles track recorded 41 years ago at Abbey Road studios if he can get approval from Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.

McCartney wants the world to hear his master recording of the 14-minute "Carnival Of Light" that was recorded during the sessions for "Penny Lane" and made for an electronic music festival. The event was the one and only time the song was played in public.

"I said it would be great to put this on because it would show we were working with really avant-garde stuff," McCartney said in an interview with England's BBC Radio 4's Front Row show that will be broadcast on Thursday.

"I said, 'All I want you to do is just wander around all the stuff, bang it, shout, play it, it doesn't need to make any sense. Hit a drum then wander on to the piano, hit a few notes, just wander around.' So that's what we did, and then put a bit of an echo on it. It's very free."

The track also apparently features Lennon and McCartney shouting "Barcelona" and "Are you all right?"

"Carnival Of Light," which was inspired by experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (and probably lots of drugs), wasn't released at the time because it was deemed to be too adventurous for mainstream music audiences. The band's opinion must have changed a bit by 1968, when the out-there "Revolution 9" was included on The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album).

McCartney apparently wanted to include "Carnival Of Light" on The Beatles' Anthology compilations in the mid-'90s, but the other band members put the kibosh on it.