The Beatles The Candle Burns

I’ve been a Beatles fan since I first discovered the Fab Four in High School-about ten years after the band broke up. I bought reissues of all their albums and once in a while in a thrift store I would find an album I had never seen before.

These unknown albums would often have the usual tracks of an LP I was familiar with, but with new cover art. Once in a while they had songs I had never heard of either. These, of course, were bootleg albums-records cranked out by companies that didn’t have the rights to release them and got their Master tapes from mysterious places.

One of the great bootleg albums is The Candle Burns featuring the image of four candles with one recently snuffed out. This was clearly Paul Is Dead stuff-the countless rumors and hints that the Real Paul McCarty had died in a car crash, or been so disfigured that he could no longer tour and had to be replaced. I bought all the Anthology CDs when they came out-and lo and behold there was just about every odd bit of business that ever showed up on a bootleg.

I am not a huge of out takes as a general rule, and most other people aren’t either-except when it comes to the Beatles. No one wants to hear the unreleased Rolling Stones or Beach Boys, but the unreleased Beatles is still making records on the auction blocks. A recently found tape which had nothing but a few seconds of the Beatles laughing sold at auction in London for $23,000.

To tell the truth I have not been all that interested in this stuff the past few years. Seems likely that just about everything has been found. But then a garage full of old reel to reel tapes shows up, so who knows what will turn up next.

Which brings me to the old mystery of The Candle Burns track. With an undercurrent of Dear Prudence and a pretty good sounding John Lennon impersonation The Candle Burns is a wonderfully fun bit of silliness. Rumored to have been found in the trash at Apple Studios, this rough and scratchy demo showed up on Beatles bootleg albums in 1970s.

The song, such as it is, has the feel of a Beatles psychedelic number. What makes the track so much fun to me is the idea that maybe it was recorded by the Beatles, but they recorded it in the mid-1970s. The Beatles had a wicked sense of humor and I wouldn’t put it past John Lennon to whip out a crappy bootleg song as a lark to be released on bootleg albums. But more likely, it is the work of some fan that wanted what we all wanted-The Beatles back together.

Which is the whole point of The Candle Burns-clearly a post break up song about the Beatles getting back together. It’s over, it’s done, babe I need it again and To see you all around me and to take you by the hand and lead you to a brand new world that lately has been banned-to me clearlysays that the Beatles breaking up was a mistake that needs to be fixed. A desire that all Beatles fans held close to their hearts right up until the moment John Lennon was shot.

Peace of Mind/The Candle Burns is an oddly compelling song, I like it better than most of the alternate tracks on Anthology-because I know what those songs are supposed to sound like. This just sounds new-like a Beatles song that slipped out of an alternate reality. There was a great short story in Fantasy and Science Fiction a few years back about a world where The Beatles didn’t break up and they released The Twelfth Album called God. In this alternate world God featured all of the singles from the Fab Four’s first solo efforts-only they were better-because they were preformed by all the Beatles, not just one. That world was destroyed, so it turns out to be a good thing The Beatles broke up here. The story was The Twelfth Album by Stephen Baxter-The Wife did the research and found it for me.

I just recently ran across the YouTube video of Peace of Mind/The Candle Burns and thought maybe some of you hadn’t seen it either. It brought back just a bit of that thrill when I first heard a new Beatles song. It’s odd and strange and I like it-even if it isn’t The Beatles.

“Peace of Mind/The Candle Burns” (Lennon/McCartney or Unknown)

I’m looking at the candle burns a flame to meet the sky.
I leave the candle laughing. I turn my face to cry.
A safety pin returns my smile, I nod a brief hello,
while you are building molecules with your garden hoe.

Why can’t this last forever, these things repressed inside?
One feels it almost instantly unless one of us died.
It’s over, it’s done, babe I need it again.
Just please, please (please) … oh, don’t keep me from begin.

I need to hear the colours red and blue and whispered word.
To fly all day and sing in tune and not hear what I heard.
To see you all around me and to take you by the hand
and lead you to a brand new world that lately has been banned.

We’ll build things never built before. We’ll do things never done.
And just before it’s over, it’s really just begun.

 

---