Alternate versions of some of the songs from the forthcoming 50th Anniversary Edition of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are beginning to appear on the web.

There’s this one, a stripped-back example of the title track, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Take 9 and Speech]’:

It’s interesting on a whole range of levels, not least because we now know exactly where Paul McCartney went for inspiration for his experimental album Liverpool Sound Collage, released back in the year 2000.

If you listen to the ‘Sgt. Pepper [Take 9]’ track at around 2’08” in, he’s singing the same words we hear on the track ‘Free Now’:

On the Liverpool Sound Collage album cover McCartney credits The Beatles (and collaborators the Super Furry Animals), but not exactly where the Beatle samples used across the album come from. Now we know the origins of at least one of them.

Alternate take tracks are being intentionally leaked to the media as part of the publicity for the big Pepper 50th Anniversary next month. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Take 9  and Speech]’ was played on the Chris Evans Radio Show (BBC Radio 2). It was also given to the British newspaper The Guardian, and to US radio station WCSX in Detroit, which has also played a preview of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends [Take 1 – False Start And Take 2 – Instrumental]’: