Beatles Back in Business

By Stephen M. Silverman

08/10/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Ex-Beatles member Paul McCartney, the highest-profile Beatle around, announced in London yesterday that he plans to release a new dance track that will feature outtakes from original recording sessions that the Fab Four made in clubs between 1965 and 1969. The 3 1/2-minute cut, "Free Now," is a collaboration with Welsh band Super Furry Animals and will be on the new CD "The Liverpool Sound Collage." ("Collage" is the operative word here: McCartney reportedly assembled the CD at the request of collage artist Peter Blake, who designed the Beatles' classic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album and who is now having a retrospective at a Liverpool art museum.) "It's a new little piece of Beatles," McCartney told reporters. "It's more underground than what you usually hear from me, but I like to be free enough to do this sort of thing." Among the sound bites: the late John Lennon, saying, "Okay Paul, you ready boy? This is it."