Beatles "Carnival of Light" Who has heard it?*

It’s a Beatles recording and can’t be released without all four shareholders agreeing to it.

 

If you "enjoy Mary Jane"..."What's the New Mary Jane?" is pretty wild. Love it!

 

Am I going crazy, or was there a supposed YouTube version up yesterday?
Now it's gone...

 

Forgeries appear online every now and then. Because almost no one has actually heard it, and Lewisohn's description is rather vague, it's not too difficult to bang some stuff together and claim it's "Carnival of Light."

 

I was amazed you made this post & 40 people didin't chime in, because i think you are correct.

At the time Liverpool Sound Collage was being promoted, 20 years ago !, We have been hearing pieces of it
the whole time !

 

It's the last...that we know of.

The 27 minute Helter Skelter shows up on Anthology 2 in an edited form. But seriously...who wants to sit through 27 minutes of those guys mindlessly making noise. And I get it - BEATLES!

But they weren't proficient in the arena of jamming and in-the-moment improv. They were really songwriters and production-minded musicians and that's totally fine. You can't really beat those songs, right?

 

Nonsense. Pure fabricated internet rumor. We know what sessions were used for the Liverpool Sound Collage, at the time of its promotion and release there was no mention of 'Carnival of Light'. This is one of those cases where a rumor is started and when one attempts to trace it back to its source... there isn't any, this is people repeating false/fake information online and it gathering more interest. I would be amazed if there was any sample of Carnival of Light mixed into the Liverpool Sound Collage, there is NO evidence of this.

 

It isn't. Anthology 3 (not 2) used alternate take. Same one was used in 2018 SDE in longer form.

 

It was the 12 minute take 2 that appeared on Anthology 3 in edited form, and on the WA super deluxe in full.

 

In my 20s, I was on vacation in London and took a tour of Abbey Road Studios. I got separated from my group when I was raiding the canteen for butties and jam, and ate so much I fell asleep curled up in the pantry. When I woke up, the building was locked up for the day. That meant that I was stuck there, and I sure as hell wasn't going to spend the night without listening to "Carnival of Light".
I laughed, knowing those tapes were likely under lock and key. I walked through a few doors and down a hallway, and there was a door with "64" on it. I opened the door and there was a staircase leading upwards. I flipped the light switch and walked up slowly, smelling the smell of old wood. I found myself in a dimly-lit room nearly full of cabinets. I opened a cabinet and found reams of paper. Old paper, by my estimation.
On to the next cabinet; they couldn't all be full of paper. I pulled it open and WHAM! More paper...I started back towards the stairs when I saw a cabinet with stars on it. Scratched into the cabinet was the phrase "ALL TOGETHER, HOW?"
I opened it and saw boxes that had various manufacturers -- EMITAPE, Ampex, and Scotch.
Every box was in decent condition - I did notice that the entire building was very clean and free of dust.
These boxes had paper in them. Surprise. But one box said PEPPER$. Keep in mind, this was the early 90s, before work had earnestly begun on the Anthology series. In that box was a pencil with chew marks and splicing adhesive.
I closed it back up and then shut the cabinet door. To the right was a cabinet with a green circle on it. Inside this cabinet were 10 boxes containing recording tape. I pulled one out - "Penny Lane" (Harrison elec. guitar solo/track 6/ADT-DONOTUSE) was written on it below the title and date.
I set that box next to me. I looked at the next box. It was labeled, "Ahhhhhs".
Flat against the back wall of the cabinet was a box with tape wrapped around it, sealing it shut. I pulled the boxes out from behind it and extracted it from its decades-old hiding spot. It said "COLE" on the spine of the box. On the inside of the lid, it read, "Carnivale of Light Electromag", Phase One.
I put that box on top of "Penny Lane" and headed back down to the control room. I threaded the reels onto the machines and powered-up the equipment. George's psychedelic guitar solo in "Penny Lane" was very magical, and we would never hear it, as it seems. As I fired the other Studer, I heard a wild party full of beeping sounds and laughter for a few minutes, a pipe organ...and then, I opened my eyes to see the tape disassociating itself from the machine, and being mangled and chewed in the process...it was ruined. Clearly I didn't quite get this tape seated in the right position over the heads and rollers...totally ruined the tape.
I pulled all of the tape out and put it in a trash can with the reels and the boxes.
I got a fresh reel and fed it through the machine, and recorded myself playing my harmonica with lots of studio echo and wrote COL on the box, and took it back up to the cabinet with "Penny Lane".
I tucked them in, closed the door, went back down to the control room and took the trash back to a trash chute in the wall that took it to the basement to eventually be hauled away.

So, yeah...no "Carnival of Light".

 

DISCLAIMER: never actually happened

 

Ha ha . Many moons ago, I had a few friends who were big Beatles fans and they would speak reverentially about this amazing Mary-Jane song that the band had recorded around the time of the White Album. When I finally heard this masterpiece, the only thing I could think was I could see why it never made it to the album ! Terrible song.

 

Despite people's feelings here with Anthology edits, "Mary Jane" on Anthology 3 is the best way to hear it. Emericks Anthology mix saves the song and makes it a psychedelic mini-suite that would have made Syd Barrett. Same goes for "That Means A Lot" (yeah I said it - wanna fight about it? ).

The leaked mixes from bootlegs sound unfished to me (and probably are).

What's The New Mary Jane - so many versions... (Beatles thread)

 

Hmmmmm..Did the Beatles record that at the Cavern? (sure sounds like it).

 

The Beatles were a very good tight instrumental band unit, as proven by the BBC sessions and their live recordings. However, they didn't quite have the chops to be a jam band (as the plodding 13-minute "Helter Skelter" jam reveals). Whenever they did an extra-long song like "Hey Jude" or "I Want You(She's so heavy)", the epic length was achieved through repetition, not improvised solos. The closest they came to a good jam was on "The End" with Ringo's drum solo followed by J,P and G duking it out on lead guitar licks, but that was very concise; an inspired marvel in less than 2 minutes.
Question: Is "Carnival of Light" a "jam" or would it be more accurately categorized as musique concrete or sound collage, similar to "Revolution 9" (which I personally love)? Most of what I've read suggests the latter.

 

If we ever hear "Carnival of Light", can it possibly live up to its hype? I'm thrilled that we finally got SMiLE, but dazzling as it is, it was actually rather anticlimactic. Versions of several of the songs had already leaked out on Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, 20/20, Sunflower, and Surf's Up, plus the preview tracks on the Good Vibrations box and a number of boots. To almost appreciate the groundbreaking impact SMiLE may have had in 1967, I have to put myself in that time frame. I'm guessing I would have to do the same with "Carnival of Light."

 

I guess one of the differences would be that COL was a completed work while SMiLE was abandoned during recording and was only released decades later as a best estimation of what it could have been from what they had recorded. SMiLE 2004 and SMiLE 2011 and all those other unofficial versions are not and could never be SMiLE 1967 because SMiLE 1967 doesn’t exist, it was never made. Carnival Of Light was finished but remains unpublished.

 

" If it's as bad as "You've Got Trouble" I feel glad I won't live to hear it, when it does come out.

 

Also, "Carnival of Light" was really just a sound collage to accompany a light show.

 

If I never heard it again, I'd be fine.

 

The “freak-out” ending of the alternate mix of “Penny Lane” on Anthology 2; was that from the “Penny Lane” master tape or could that have been added on from something that happened later in the session (hint, hint)?



Another internet rumour I’ve see a few places is that a sample of Paul can be heard yelling “Barcelona” during the end of “Something/Blue Jay Way” on the Love album (I can’t hear it).

https://www.reddit.com/r/beatles/comments/5xoaov/carnival_of_light_snippet_hidden_in_love/

 

From DJ Food's web-page:


The Million Volt Light & Sound Rave was put on at The Roundhouse over two separate days in early 1967 by the Binder Edwards Vaughan / BEV design partnership of Douglas Binder, Dudley Edwards and David Vaughan.

Sometimes also known as the Carnival of Light Rave, it most famously featured the airing of ‘Carnival of Light’, Paul McCartney’s mythical 14 minute musique concrete piece, specially made for the occasion with the participation of the other three Beatles. Vaughan had painted a piano for McCartney the year before and asked if he would be up for contributing something whilst delivering it. It was played a number of times during the two events and hasn’t been officially released since. Less heralded was a performance of tape music by Unit Delta Plus, the trio of Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff although it’s unknown if they were there in person to play it or if it was just playback. Also on the bill, Tonics, Soft Machine and Electric Poets which consisted of Soft Machine‘s Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt with Gilli Smyth and Early Fuggle on welding kit (according to a clipping from International Times). Allen and Smyth of course went on to form Gong. The poster and flyer above and below I’m presuming were done by BEV although I can’t find any confirmation of this anywhere, if anyone knows please leave a comment.


Above, A Million Volt Rave flyer for the first event, these also exist on white, below, detail from BEV headed stationary that was found dumped in a skip outside a mill in Manchester, 1999. The collection of papers included sketches for McCartney’s piano and a list of BEV commissions was found by builder Andy Clynes, more info and photos here. This design has also been found printed on silver paper as a poster (see below) and may be an early draft (I’m speculating here).

Here’s Dudley Edwards talking about the event, he reveals that an unknown Jimi Hendrix was also on the bill.