A “Carnival” Of Beatles

McCartney told the BBC he wants to release “Carnival of Light,” a 14-minute experimental track the Fab Four recorded in 1967 but never released.

The recording was made at Abbey Road studios when McCartney asked the other members of the band to “just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense.”

The band played the recording for an audience just once, at an electronic music festival in London. It reportedly includes distorted guitar, organ sounds, gargling and shouts of “Barcelona!” and “Are you all right?” from McCartney and John Lennon.

“I like it because it’s The Beatles free, going off piste,” he told the BBC in a radio interview to be broadcast Thursday. Extracts of the interview were published Sunday in The Observer newspaper.

McCartney said he still had a master tape of the piece and “the time has come for it to get its moment.”

Even though Macca is largely known as the Beatle responsible for the band’s melodic hooks, he told the BBC he had a long-standing interest in avant-garde music. He said “Carnival of Light” was inspired by experimental composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

He said he had wanted to include the track on the Beatles’ Anthology compilation, but the rest of the group shot down the idea.

McCartney would need permission from Ringo Starr and the widows of Lennon and George Harrison to release the track.