Didn’t know this existed.
What I expect from this: in early 1966, Paul became fascinated with musique concrète, particularly with the early experiments of Stockhausen. Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) was his favorite, giving him the idea to use tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Thus, historians say, Stockhausen’s mug on the Sgt. Pepper cover, the sound collages on that album, etc. You might think John would have been the guy to latch on to this music first, but it seems he came around later- we get excerpts of the brass band samples in Stockhausen’s Hymnen (1966-67) in “Revolution No. 9.” I think we can safely chalk him getting into that up to Yoko making him go to Lamonte Young concerts though.
Then there’s “Carnival of Light,” the 13-minute Beatles quadrophonic track, which sounds something like a backwards Sun City Girls improvisation with a John Cage percussion orchestra playing on top of it. It was recorded during the “Penny Lane” sessions for a 1967 hippie-ish summit organized by some London designers and electroacoustic composers called the “Million Volt Light and Sound Rave.” It seems logical that the common-practice art music representative for the Beatles, George Martin, thought this project was bullshit. “Hey, fellas, let’s come on and finish Strawberry Fields.”
But anyway, please contrast that miserable ‘90s vid I posted a while back of Paul McCartney talking about how “In My Life” sounds like Monteverdi with this information, just so you don’t fool yourself into thinking that Paul was secretly a cool guy. Listen to “Carnival of Light” here.
