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This is a website about all things Beatle. There will be news if we find them attractive, there will also be articles and features about sol...
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GEORGE HARRISON's SITAR UP FOR AUCTION - Nate D. Sanders Auctions is set to offer George Harrison’s Sitar on April 25. In 1965, George Harrison purchased his first sitar from the renowned shop,...
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Restored Let It Be film coming to Disney+ 05-08-24 - The Beatles’ 1970 film Let It Be is coming to Disney+ on 8 May 2024. The film, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in January 1969, has been commercially un...
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LIBB P767: 15 April 2024 - Show 1460 Panel: Graeme Dickenson, Gary Lally, Greg Armstrong *LIBB Show 1460 WynFM Podcast P767* Download Or Stream LIBB Show 1460 WynFM Podcast P767 ...
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ED治療の際はシルデナフィルの使い方を正しくマスターしよう! - シルデナフィルはED治療によく使用されていますが、使い方を間違えると命に関わることもありますので注意が必要です。一番良い方法は、医師や薬剤師など専門家に相談し、指示を守って服用することですが、ここでは一般的に言われているシルデナフィルの正しい使い方についてご紹介します。 市販されているシルデナフィルには25...
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William Leslie Anthony (Les Anthony): 30 April 1933 - 21 May 2020. - Les Anthony, John's driver from 1965-1971, has died. The story goes that John was having problems finding a suitable chauffeur, and so Brian Epstein, upo...
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This website is all about The Beatles and the individual members of The Beatles. It is kept by Roger Stormo, who has been associated with the Norwegian Beatles fan club, "Norwegian Wood", since 1980. Feel free to quote from the site, but please give me credit and a link back to the original item. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This is not a news site per se, but if we hear about something that has yet to be reported by other Beatles news services, we tend to write about it. Apart from that, we will write stuff about the Beatles on an irregular basis at the whim of the author. A lot of our readers arrive at specific articles from internet searches or references to this site from forums and other Beatles sites. If you did, we encourage you to click here to access the main page, and also to indulge in our archives - you may find other posts that are interesting. You may also subscribe to news from the site and have each new issue delivered to your rss feed reader.
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Sunday 16 November 2008
Carnival of Light
For Beatles fans across the world it has gained near mythical status. The 14-minute improvised track called 'Carnival of Light' was recorded in 1967 and played just once in public. It was never released because three of the Fab Four thought it too adventurous.
The track, a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects, is said to be as far from the melodic ballads that made Sir Paul McCartney famous as it is possible to imagine. But now McCartney has said that the public will have the chance to judge for themselves.
'It does exist,' McCartney says on a BBC Radio 4 arts programme to be broadcast this week. Talking to John Wilson, the presenter of Front Row, the former Beatle confirms that he still has a master tape of the work and says he suspects that 'the time has come for it to get its moment'.
'I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste,' he adds.
In the 40 years since 'Carnival of Light' was recorded by McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon in the Abbey Road studios in London, its collection of disparate rhythms has become a kind of holy grail for Beatles obsessives. The track was put together on 5 January 1967, in between working on the vocals for the song 'Penny Lane'.
Once released it should offer proof that the Fab Four, and McCartney in particular, were much more avant-garde in their tastes than many gave them credit for. According to the few who heard the track on the one occasion the recording was played publicly, at a London music festival in 1967, it features the sound of gargled water and strangled shouts from Lennon which vie with church organs and distorted guitar.
'We were set up in the studio and would just go in every day and record,' McCartney tells 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.'
McCartney had been commissioned to create a piece for an electronic music festival at the Roundhouse Theatre in north London by his friend Barry Miles. The event, the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, was organised by International Times, an underground newspaper. Many in the audience had no idea they were listening to a new Beatles track. Other performers included Delia Derbyshire whose work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop included jointly creating the theme for Doctor Who.
McCartney, who this month releases his third experimental album of new work under the alias the Fireman, regards 'Carnival of Light' as evidence of how musically adventurous he has always been. For the three other Beatles the track was just an oddity. George Harrison dismissed it as too weird. But McCartney is hopeful it can now be released with the agreement of the group's estate.
'It will help reaffirm McCartney's claim to have been the most musically adventurous of all the Beatles,' said Wilson this weekend. 'He told me he would love to release the track. All he needs now is the blessing of Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and George Harrison's widow Olivia.'
The piece was inspired, McCartney says, by the works of composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In his book Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, author Mark Lewisohn - who was played the track in 1987 - describes 'distorted, hypnotic drum and organ sounds, a distorted lead guitar, the sound of a church organ, various effects (water gargling was one) and, perhaps most intimidating of all, Lennon and McCartney screaming and bawling random phrases including "Are you all right?" and '"Barcelona!".'
Beatles fans came close to hearing 'Carnival Of Light' in 1996 when it was considered for inclusion in the exhaustive Anthology compilation. 'We were listening to everything we'd every recorded,' McCartney says. '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".'
McCartney revealed that George Harrison disparaged sonic experimentation as 'avant-garde a clue'.
Sir George Martin, the Beatles producer who oversaw the track, has described it as 'one of those weird things'. '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.'
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