“Carnival of Light” is an unreleased experimental piece by The Beatles. It was recorded on 5 January 1967, after the vocal overdubbing sessions for the song “Penny Lane”. The track was created for The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, an event held at the Roundhouse Theatre on 28 January and 4 February 1967.
Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn, who listened to the song in 1987 while compiling his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, says the song included “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, John Lennon and McCartney screaming dementedly and bawling aloud random phrases like ‘Are you alright?’ and ‘Barcelona!'”
McCartney biographer Barry Miles wrote in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now that the song had “no rhythm, although a beat is sometimes established for a few bars by the percussion or a rhythmic pounding piano. There is no melody, although snatches of a tune sometimes threaten to break through.”
“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 onto the piano, hit a few notes and just wander around’,” said McCartney in November 2008.
The basic bed track of an organ playing bass notes and drums was recorded at a fast speed, meaning that when played back at a regular speed they are deeper in pitch and slower in tempo. There is also a huge amount of reverb used on the instruments and on Lennon’s and McCartney’s vocals (the only two voices on the track); Lennon and McCartney also recorded Native American war cries, whistling, close-miked gasping, genuine coughing and fragments of studio conversation. Other overdubs to the song include bursts of guitar feedback, schmaltzy cinema organ, snatches of jangling pub piano and electronic feedback with Lennon shouting ‘Electricity!’. The track concludes with McCartney asking the studio engineer in an echo-soaked voice, “Can we hear it back now?”
Also, according to Barry Miles, musically it “resembles ‘The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet’ from Frank Zappa’s Freak Out! album, except there is no rhythm and the music … is more fragmented, abstract and serious.”
Dudley Edwards (one of the organizers of The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave and friend of McCartney’s) said that an early take of “Fixing a Hole” (from Sgt. Pepper’s) with a piano appeared during the song. It is unlikely that a sample of an early take was heard since the recording of “Fixing a Hole” did not commence until five days after the last The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave, but it is not impossible that McCartney played a few bars of the song on the track.
Some reports indicate that it is around fourteen minutes long and Paul McCartney has said it was around fifteen minutes. In The Complete Beatles Chronicle it is listed as lasting 13 minutes and 48 seconds.
Although Lewisohn’s book says that a rough mono mix was given to Vaughan, Miles claims that the mix down “was made with full stereo separation, and is an exercise in musical layers and textures”. Whether a second mix was made after the event or Vaughan was in fact given a stereo mix which was not logged in Abbey Road’s records is unspecified. Edwards has said the tape was taken to America by one Ray Anderson (who was brought over from the U.S. to assist with the light show). The master session tapes of Carnival of Light are still at Abbey Road Studios.
“Carnival of Light” has not yet appeared on any official release. In 1996 McCartney tried to release the track on the compilation album The Beatles Anthology 2, but George Harrison voted to reject it. According to McCartney, the reason was that “he didn’t like avant garde music” and referred to avant garde as ‘avant garde a clue’ (“haven’t got a clue”).
Insanity.
vuvuvuvuvu 
