One of two remixes of Beatles chatter assembled by Super Furry Animals for Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Sound Collage, ‘Peter Blake 2000’ was originally part of the soundtrack to artist Peter Blake’s On Collage exhibition at Liverpool’s Tate Gallery.
‘Peter Blake 2000′ mixed a number of samples of dialogue from The Beatles’ original recording sessions with new music recorded by the Welsh band. The majority of the speech samples came from the 8 November 1965 session for ‘Think For Yourself’, and from the 1 February 1967 session for the song ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
Peter Blake 2000 is essentially a longer version of ‘Free Now’, Liverpool Sound Collage’s other ‘collaboration’ between The Beatles and SFA.
I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, Oh baby, now
I get it, I get it, I get it
Baby, free now, gotta be free now
Baby, free now, gotta be free now
‘Free Now’, Liverpool Sound Collage
The tracks came about after Super Furry Animals’ keyboard player Cian Ciaran approached McCartney at an NME awards ceremony on 1 February 2000, where SFA won the Best Live Act award. Ciaran convinced him to let him remix some previously unreleased Beatles recordings.
One minute Cian is dragging Paul McCartney to a table, and within two weeks four boxes of original Beatles master tapes arrived in our office in Cardiff. We sampled chunks of John and Paul chatting, and we made loops of George’s guitar and Ringo’s drums. That was extremely surreal.
Super Furry Animals
In return for their contributions to Liverpool Sound Collage, McCartney agreed to guest on SFA’s song ‘Receptacle For The Respectable’, which appeared on their 2001 album Rings Around The World. He chewed carrots and celery on the song, a reference to his previous role on The Beach Boys’ 1967 song ‘Vegetables’.
The samples on ‘Peter Blake 2000’ include: a quote from George Harrison (“It’s okay. We know. I think we know. We just go chinga chinga ching. Boom boom boom. The bit that John finally got just after that. And we’ll do both of the do what you want to do…”) at 5’43”; the refrain “Baby free now, gotta be free now” sung by McCartney; extracts from the ending of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ (9’24” and 10’09”); and outtakes from an unidentified Beatles session at 13’01, which possibly date from the Sgt Pepper period. It also included snippets from McCartney’s 1991 classical composition Liverpool Oratorio.
Does anyone have this? Anything particularly interesting in this track?
I was working in my studio listening to the Beatles. When the lp was over Alexa put on this mix of sounds that I recognized, but had never heard before. It made for a very lively listening experience.