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Forty years on, McCartney wants the world to hear 'lost' Beatles epic

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.'Coincidentally, McCartney played some of his Fireman compositions at the reopened Roundhouse venue last year during the Electric Proms. 'With the Fireman you're in disguise,' he told Observer Music Monthly. His pseudonym may have been taken from the lyric of 'Penny Lane' where a fireman 'rushes in from the pouring rain' and could also be a nod to his father, Jim McCartney, a firewatcher on the Liverpool docks in the Second World War. ? John Wilson's interview with Paul McCartney can be heard on Front Row, Radio 4, on ThursdayThe BeatlesPaul McCartneyPop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Oct. 31, 1951: We'll Cross That Street When We Come to It

1951: The first official zebra crossing starts protecting pedestrians at Slough, just west of London. Postwar Britain had only 10 percent of its current road traffic, but fatalities were mounting. The typical pedestrian crossing was marked with nothing more than metal studs in the road: easy for pedestrians to see, but difficult for the motorist. By the time a driver felt the bumps under his tires, it was usually too late to stop or slow down. The government's Transport Research Laboratory ran visibility experiments on new types of crossings, using model roads at 1/24 scale (half-inch to the foot). The lab then tested a variety of designs at a thousand locations starting in 1949. Broad black and white stripes had the most visual impact. The new, striped crossings were made the legal standard in Britain and widely introduced in late 1951, starting at Slough (The name rhymes with plow, not slow, and the borough is the putative location of the original BBC version of the TV comedy, The Office.) Pedestrian deaths dropped 11 percent in the first year. Jim Callaghan, Member of Parliament (and later prime minister), visited the lab in 1948 and is sometimes credited with first noting the crossing's resemblance to a zebra. Despite Callaghan's saying in 1951 that he didn't remember that, no one else has ever claimed credit, and the name zebra crossing caught on. Enamored of the moniker, Britain's Ministry of Transport has called forth animal cognates for subsequent improvements. The panda crossing used interlocking black and white triangles instead of stripes. The pelican (pedestrian light controlled) crossing combined traffic lights and conventional, rectangular stripes. The puffin (pedestrian user-friendly intelligent) crossing uses sensors to detect pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The toucan (two can cross) is shared by pedestrians and bicycles. The pegasus is a pelican crossing with a control panel high enough for horse riders to push the button. It's a bleedin' roadside zoo. Cities around the world have been gradually adopting the crosswalk of a different stripe. The old-fashioned two-stripe crosswalk (with just its borders marked by full-length stripes perpendicular to the direction of traffic) cannot be seen by motorists from farther than 100 feet or so away. At 30 mph, that's about 2 seconds. Zebra-striped crosswalks can be seen from greater distances. An empty crosswalk informs drivers that pedestrians might enter there. And pedestrians who are crossing the street are highly visible as they move against the striped background. (You can improve your own visibility to distant vehicles by walking on the side of a zebra crosswalk nearest to the approaching traffic: That maximizes how much of your body appears against the stripes flickering behind you.) The Beatles brought international fame to the zebra crossing in 1969 with the album cover for Abbey Road. The much-parodied image also inspired the current logo of Abbey Road Studios, where the album was recorded. Beatles producer Sir George Martin has a heraldic badge of a zebra carrying an abbot's crozier — along with a crest of a martin holding a recorder under its left wing, a Latin motto that could be translated as "Love is all you need," and a shield with three beetles. Go figure. Source: Various

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NOEL'S MEMENTO Noel Gallagher has admitted ripping out a piece of the floor from Abbey Road studios.