Classic Rock’s Vault Isn’t Empty: 10 Lost Projects We Need to See Released

On Jan. 5, 1967, shortly after work began on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles recorded a nearly 14-minute song entitled “Carnival of Light” that almost nobody has ever heard. This may sound incredibly exciting, like learning there’s an undisputed lost Leonardo Da Vinci painting in a hidden storage locker, but there are some important caveats here. “Carnival of Light” is an impromptu, lyric-free, avant-garde experiment that the band created at Paul McCartney’s behest for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at the Roundhouse in London. “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,” McCartney recalled years later. “‘Hit a drum, then wander onto the piano, hit a few notes and just wander around.’” In other words, this thing makes “Revolution 9” seem structured by comparison. That’s why Ringo Starr and George Harrison vetted McCartney’s attempt to include it on Anthology 2. Still, it’s a legit recording by all four Beatles at the height of their powers. It needs to come out.

According to rock lore, Brian Wilson completely lost his songwriting powers in the Seventies, and spent the decade battling severe addiction and mental health issues, rarely leaving his bed. And while it’s true this was a very tumultuous decade for Wilson, he did manage to write stunning songs like “‘Til I Die” and “The Night Was So Young” that were on par with his best work in the days of Pet Sounds and Smile. The latter song appeared on 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You, which was spearheaded almost entirely by Wilson. He followed it up with an equally oddball album, Adult/Child, that the band shelved when Love You stiffed commercially. Re-recorded renditions of “Hey Little Tomboy” and “Shortenin’ Bread” were included on latter Beach Boys albums, and four Adult/Child songs appeared on the 1993 Good Vibrations box set, but most of it has never been released. It’s supposedly coming out in the near future on a box set with Love You and M.I.U., but they’ve yet to announce this officially.

On June 7, 1988, Bob Dylan started a tour that’s still going. He hit the 3,000 concert mark within the past year, and there’s no evidence he plans on stopping any time soon, even though he’s 84. And though we’re about to get the 18th volume of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, he’s yet to devote one to the project that’s consumed his life for the four decades. “First of all, the Never Ending Tour, as Bob said, isn’t the name of it,” a source close to the Dylan Camp told Rolling Stone in 2021. “Secondly, Bob continues to tour. Maybe we’ll understand it towards the end of it. We’ll look at it that way.”

When the time eventually comes around, they’ll face the rather frustrating issue that shows in the 1990s and early 2000s weren’t captured very well by Dylan’s team. “Some of them are recorded on DAT or other formats of the moment,” a source told Rolling Stone in 2017. “Who knew they wouldn’t last? For a lot of years during the 1990s, there were these two fans and they would go and each would wear recording equipment in their hats and they’d sit in different sections so that the stuff would be stereo. Those tapes sound better than our board tapes.”

That’s why they actually used audience tapes on the Time Out of Mind box set in 2023. And there’s more than enough pristine tapes out there to cobble together an incredibly impressive box set one day. We recommend they start with the Supper Club 1993, El Rey Theatre 1997, and basically anything from the Europe 2000 run.

When the Rolling Stones hit the road in 1972 to promote Exile on Main Street, they allowed directors Robert Frank and Daniel Seymour to tag along and film anything they wanted. This was the very height of the Stones’ wild years, and their cameras captured Mick Jagger snorting cocaine, a groupie shooting up heroin, and all sorts of sexual shenanigans. Frank and Seymour named the movie after a notorious song the Stones delivered to Decca in 1970 in order to fulfill their contact, knowing it was way too filthy for the label to even consider releasing. For understandable reasons, the Stones balked when they saw the finished movie and instead released the concert film Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones. An unusual deal was struck where Frank could present the movie a few times a year if he was physically present at the screenings. That means the movie has indeed been seen several times over the decade, and it’s easy to find online, but an official release remains elusive. We don’t imagine it’s happening any time soon. (There are, however, rumors of a Black and Blue box set in the near future.)

For reasons that remain very difficult to understand, the vast majority of the music that Bob Seger made in the first decade of his career — practically an album per year — has been out of print for several decades. It wasn’t issued on cassette or CD and certainly isn’t available digitally. The only way to access it through legal channels is to buy out-of-print vinyl records, often at a huge markup.

We’ve asked Seger many times, practically in pleading terms, to reissue them. “Jack White is always asking me about that,” Seger told Rolling Stone in 2018. “He wants to remix them all, and said he’d do it for free. But I’m always on to the next thing — the next album, the next tour. Maybe when I retire I’ll get serious about it.”

Bob, you’ve now been retired for six years. You just turned 80. For the love of God, let Jack White or someone equally talented loose on your catalog. Don’t let your legacy wither. While you’re at it, let a filmmaker create a documentary about your life and career. We’d also love to read a memoir. You’re one of the greats, and a truer peer of Bruce Springsteen. He’s done an excellent job curating his own history. He learned a lot from you. On this, learn from him.

In 1973, while mourning the loss of roadie Bruce Berry and Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, Neil Young recorded arguably the greatest album of his long career, Tonight’s the Night. It’s a raw, emotional work, created very quickly under a variety of heavy substances, that honors the dead and takes stock of life in the bitter aftermath. Initially, Young felt it was too intense to release, but relented about 18 months later. In the interim, he tinkered around with the mix, changed the track order, added a few songs, and removed the spoken-word interludes.

“Most people think Tonight’s the Night is the real deal,” Tonight’s the Night producer David Briggs told Young biographer Jimmy McDonough. “But I know better – it’s the watered down version. [The original] never lets up. There was no attempt to make it nicer…to tell you the truth, I can’t listen to Tonight’s the Night. I did the record, I thought it was fucking great, and Young and Elliot [Roberts] and the record company backpedaled. They ruined the real Tonight’s the Night, hid it on a shelf in a closet, like a monster thing.” It’s unclear if the original Briggs edit of Tonight’s the Night still even exists. If it doesn’t, there needs to be an attempt to recreate it. Fans have been dying to hear this for a very long time.

Dark Side of the Moon transformed Pink Floyd into one of the biggest acts on the planet. But they were still an art-rock band somewhere in their hearts, and they didn’t quite know what to do with success. Their first idea was to make a radically uncommercial, experimental album utilizing nothing but simple household objects like rubber bands, aerosol spray cans, beer bottles, and wine glasses. They actually spent several days recording songs like this at Abbey Road until they realized this would be an act of career suicide, and began putting together Wish You Were Here instead.

But the Household Items tapes remained in the vault, and elements were used on the opening of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” And in 2011, two Household Items tracks were released on the Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here Immersion box sets. But the full album has never been heard. Sony recently bought the Floyd catalog and are plotting yet another ambitious reissue campaign, so don’t be surprised if they find a way to get it out there in the near future.

Months before his death in 1970, Jimi Hendrix recorded 16 new songs with an acoustic guitar he planned to release on an album tentatively titled Black Gold. The tape passed through many hands throughout the decades, ultimately winding up with stepsister Janie. But somehow or another, despite the countless posthumous live albums, outtakes collections, and compilations, the Black Gold tape remains in the vault. It’s tough to separate myth from fact with Black Gold, but the songs are supposedly autobiographical in nature and trace the entire saga of his life. Hendrix fans have feverishly waited for an official release for years, but the day never seems to come. Maybe on the 60th anniversary of his death in 2030 we’ll finally be allowed to hear Black Gold?

Thanks to bootlegs and a flood of archival releases over the years, Bruce Springsteen fans have access to an incredible breadth of material from Springsteen’s 1973 to 1987 golden age studio output. The one exception is Tunnel of Love, since bootleggers never got their hands on the tapes, and it has yet to be the subject of a box set. That’s a shame since the demos, outtakes, and alternate takes would be fascinating to hear. Songs like “Beneath the Floodline,” “Don’t Go Givin’ Up,” “Pretty Baby, Will You Be Mine,” “Things Ain’t That Way,” and “Rain (In the Pourin’)” have never been heard anywhere. We only know they exist from session logs. Maybe in 2027 we’ll get Walk Like a Man – The Tunnel of Love sessions for the 40th anniversary. Until then, it’s the least explored era of Springsteen’s career.

Ezra Edelman’s 2016 film O.J.: Made in America is an astonishing work that can easily be called one of the greatest documentaries in history. And when news hit that he was following it up with a multi-part documentary about Prince, fully sanctioned by the estate, expectations were very high. Edelman spent five years on the film, interviewing nearly everyone who knew Prince well, and diving deep into the Paisley Park film and audio vault. He emerged with a nine-hour film that’s been called a “masterpiece.”

Tragically, power in the Prince estate changed hands during the long production of the movie, and the new leadership found the movie so objectionable that they canned it. Simply put, they worried the details about the way he treated women would damage the Prince brand. They also didn’t like the assertion of Wendy Melvoin that he said he’d get the old band back together only if she renounced homosexuality. This has caused Edelman no small degree of anguish, but there’s not much he can do about it.

We’re addressing this paragraph to the Prince estate: We know Prince wasn’t a saint. We know he mistreated women. We know he was a conspiracy theorist who developed some very questionable views later in life. We know he died of a drug overdose. We know he was a tortured person who left a lot of pain in his wake. But please, let us see this documentary. A genius-level filmmaker spent five years of his life making this thing. It’s a crime against art to keep it locked up.

We’re addressing this paragraph to anyone with access to The Book of Prince: Leak the damn thing. You’ll be doing the world a huge favor.