Any new Beatle grails lately? (The group, that is, not solo...)

[onkster]

OK, so Carnival of Light and 30 Minute Helter Skelter are still MIA.

Has anybody yet found:
- We Can Work It Out, live from '65
- Sour Milk Sea, with George's guide vocal still on it
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps - the full-band alternate versions
- Etcetera
- The live rehearsals from the Roundhouse in late '68


These are the rarest Beatle tracks I can think of that haven't turned up in public yet, as far as I know.

Anybody know anything?

And are there any superamazing things I've left out?

-Onkstser

[SurferGirl7]

She Said demo - Funny and insightful
Bad To Me - sang by Paul and John(way better personally)
I'm In Love - John on piano.
One and One Is Two - Paul on guitar. One of my favorite demos ever.
Catwalk - It's from the Cavern. That is all I really know about it.
Don't Bother Me demo - I can hear the mood on it. I always liked it.
September In The Rain - From the audition that Decca rejected them. I can see why they didn't get it. It wasn't really them.

[I. Spaceman]

Those have been around a long time.

[wind chime]

I have an .mp3 boot of sour milk with a George vocal...thats super rare?

[Chance]

I have an .mp3 boot of sour milk with a George vocal...thats super rare?

No, no, what you've got has to be the Esher demo, that's not rare. But George, Paul, Ringo, Eric Clapton and Ian Stewart cut a studio version with whats-his-name. Jackie Lomax. It's thought that George laid down a guide vocal for it, which would basically give you a Beatle track, substituting Clapton for Lennon. Pretty cool, but it's never surfaced.

[king of anglia]

- We Can Work It Out, live from '65

- The live rehearsals from the Roundhouse in late '68

Details? Are these fact or speculation?

[Jason]

What about that supposedly legendary early '67 track "Carnival Of Light"?

[I. Spaceman]

OK, so Carnival of Light and 30 Minute Helter Skelter are still MIA.

[Chance]

That's the big one for me. More avant garde sound collage than music, but I'd love to hear it. Didn't George veto that from consideration on the "Anthology"? Think so. There was also talk that Macca was going to release it as some kind of accompanying soundtrack to a presentation of Linda's photos, but that was years ago and nothing's happened.

I don't know about live rehearsals at the Roundhouse. That's what they were doing at Twickenham in early '69, trying to work up material for a show. You wouldn't hold rehearsals before you had the material together.

[Jason]

OK, so Carnival of Light and 30 Minute Helter Skelter are still MIA.

Note to self - read the thread.

[I. Spaceman]

 

[JRauch]

That "Carnival Of Sound"-thing, has anyone ever heard it? Is it just a bunch of sounds, like Genesis´s "The Waiting Room", or more musically, like "Mrs O´Learys Cow"?

[Jeff Mason]

That "Carnival Of Sound"-thing, has anyone ever heard it? Is it just a bunch of sounds, like Genesis´s "The Waiting Room", or more musically, like "Mrs O´Learys Cow"?

READ THE THREAD!

The point is, no one outside of EMI or Mark Lewisohn has heard it.  It hasn't booted.  It was slated for Anthology 2 but as I hear it axed by George.

[JRauch]

1. Sorry
2. Thanks

[Jeff Mason]

   of course.

[Chance]

We haven't heard it, but in "Recording Sessions" George Martin gives quite a bit of detail on what comprised each of the four tracks. If I were home, I'd look it up and post it. Doesn't sound very musical. Lots of bizarre shouting, odd organ chords, random drum beating. Lewisohn says it bares more of a resemblance to "Revolution 9" than anything else. Don't expect a "Pepper outtake." If I remember, though, it's something like 14 minutes long. I think there's little chance, if they do release it, that we'll get the whole thing. But of course, that's what bootlegs are for.

[SurferGirl7]

Those have been around a long time.

Hey, it was new to me. 

[pavlos brenos]

Perhaps the time has come for the Live at The Star Club tapes to be revisited: modern technology would be able to extract more information from them. Don't know if Apple Corps now owns them since winning a lawsuit where George Harrison was a star witness.

[onkster]

The "We Can Work It Out" isn't exactly speculation--it was performed on the UK leg of the end of their '65 tour--strangely, no recordings have ever turned up from that leg.  But I bet they exist.  And that would be the only existing live versions of that song ever.

The Roundhouse stuff:  I recall reading it had been recovered in the 90s and that Paul was also going to use that stuff for another photofilm soundtrack.  The plan in '68 was to possibly do a 10-date tour of White Album material.  Supposedly a few secret rehearsals were recorded at the Roundhouse, and tapes of these are what Paul got ahold of.  But it does sound a little too like the Get Back situation.  Maybe it was an early plan that evolved into Get Back.

Or...

Their stupid publicist was spreading bunko rumors again (not Derek, but his successor that they fired...)

[dogbreath]

That "Carnival Of Sound"-thing, has anyone ever heard it? Is it just a bunch of sounds, like Genesis´s "The Waiting Room", or more musically, like "Mrs O´Learys Cow"?

READ THE THREAD!

The point is, no one outside of EMI or Mark Lewisohn has heard it. It hasn't booted.  It was slated for Anthology 2 but as I hear it axed by George.

Well, this just ain't true. About three years back, Paul auditioned the track for an English rock journalist, Mark Ellen. Ellen's meticulous description was posted on rockingvicar.com, and I copied and pasted it onto (I believe) the old Smile Shop board (I could be wrong about that). As I remember it, Ellen describes the track as being very much a true Beatles track, with the full group playing together live in the studio, with a bunch of effects added. He was quite strong about it being a listenable, exciting, semi-structured piece of music, and not wildly chaotic experimental noise.

[b.dfzo]

This is sort of a reiteration of what's already been said:

Exclusive! Lost Beatle Track Unearthed!

By Mark Ellen

Deep-end Beatles obsessives like myself have lost a fair amount of sleep over the years fantasing about the possible existence of Carnival Of Light, the highly legendary "lost" Fabs outtake. Although no-one has ever heard it - it remains intruigingly unbootlegged - the song merits a fairly substantial footnote in Ian Macdonald's stupendous "Revolution In The Head" and was even logged in the Abbey Road session notes as having been taped in Studio 2 on January 5 1967, smack in the middle of several attempts to nail down Penny Lane. But no Beatle, to my knowledge, has ever gone on record to offer any official insight. Until now!

I was interviewing McCartney this week in his London office - where the album collection, incidentally, includes "The Vocal Selections Of Fats Domino" and the musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" - and was at that point of the encounter where you're almost being physically dragged out of the door as there's another interviewer waiting in the wings, and I decided to pop the all-important question. And managed to solicit the following for Rocking Vicar who, I rather suspect, are the sole community of individuals on God's earth who might be genuinely interested. Here follows what may well be the first parish world exclusive!

RockingVicar: Just one last question - "Carnival Of Light," does it actually exist?

Paul McCartney: It does exist, yeah. We recorded it in about fifteen minutes. It's very avant garde - as George would say 'avant garde a clue' - and George did not like it 'cos he doesn't like avant garde music .

RV: Who wrote it?

PM: It's officially me. I instigated it. No there's no lyrics, it's avant garde music. You would class it as ... well you wouldn't class it actually, but it would come in the Stockhausen/John Cage bracket ... John Cage would be the nearest . It's very free-form. Yeah man, it's the coolest piece of music since sliced bread!

RV: This is early '67?

PM: I was asked about '67 to do it by Barry Miles - you know, who did my book Many Years From Now - and he asked me to do it for this event at The Roundhouse called Carnival Of Light, so that's how it got its title. And he asked me to write a fifteen to twenty minute piece, and I was into that kind of thing, not on record with The Beatles, but just for that. I went into the studio and said to the guys, Look we've got half an hour before the session officially starts, would you mind terribly if I did this thing?

RV: So this is with the other Beatles?

PM: With the other Beatles. This is a Beatle record. And they all just fell in with the spirit of it and I just said, Would you go on that and would you stay on that and would you be on that and we'll just take twenty minutes to do it in real time? And they all just got into it.

RV: Why don't you release it?

PM: I actually have a project I would like ... I'm involved ... One of the many things I did, I did a thing called The Grateful Dead Photo Film, using Linda's snapshots and making them move, dissolving between them and making them into a film, a short art film, which I showed at festivals and things. And I'm actually in the process - although everything else and its uncle is holding it up - but I've got a Beatles photo film on the go and I would love to use it as part of the soundtrack of that.

RV: There was a rumour it was going to come out on Anthology. What happened with that?

PM: It was up for consideration on The Anthology and George vetoed it. He didn't like it. Maybe its time hadn't come.

[pavlos brenos]

There were rumours years ago about tracks with names such as "Pink Litmus Paper Spirit" and "Colliding Circles" which appear to have been lost (or may just be rumours and nothing else); there was an excellent piece of lysergic whimsy that came out called "The Candle Burns" AKA "Peace Of Mind" that sounds very Lennonesque and very '67......................

[b.dfzo]

What about Watching Rainbows?

[pavlos brenos]

"Watching Rainbows" should be on one of the "Get Back" CD boots (have it on an LP of the same name)........
Could be ripe for a decent cover version..............................................

[I. Spaceman]

Candle Burns was proven to not be The Beatles a while back.
Watching Rainbows is pretty godawful, worthless except for the fact that it turned into Come Together.