It was something that was going to, potentially, spotlight only Paul in a good way and I don't know that was something they collectively wanted." One of the few others to have heard "Carnival of Light", Barry Miles dismissed it as "really dreadful". He also said: "It doesn't bear being released. It's just masses of echo. It sounds like they put it through twice. It was the same thing that everybody was doing at home." In Ian MacDonald's opinion, unlike the sensitivity AMM brought to their work, "the Beatles merely bashed about at the same time, overdubbing without much thought, and relying on the Instant Art effects of tape-echo to produce something suitably 'far out'." In a 2001 interview with Ellen, reproduced on the Rocking Vicar website the following April, McCartney said he was working on a photo collage film of the Beatles that was similar to another film he had created, "Grateful Dead – A Photo Film" (1995). He said he was planning to use "Carnival of Light" in the soundtrack. As of 2006, this project had yet to be seen and no part of the track had surfaced. During a 2004 interview, McCartney confirmed he still owned the master tapes and that "the time has come for it to get its moment. I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off-piste." He would require the consent of Starr, Ono, and Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison to release the track. Music journalist Michael Gallucci has described "Carnival of Light" as "the holy grail of lost Beatles recordings". Ian Peel devotes a full chapter to the track in his 2002 book "The Unknown Paul McCartney: McCartney and the Avant-Garde". In his comments to Peel, David Vaughan said of the importance of this avant-garde piece to McCartney: "the idea of course was that he did it before John [Lennon]. They were a pain in the arse, the pair of them ... In fact they all were. They were always trying to upstage each other. I mean, who gives a f*** who was first for that one, do you know what I mean?" In a 2016 interview, McCartney stated that he was considering issuing unused Beatles recording takes and was still toying with the idea of releasing "Carnival of Light". Contrary to fans' expectations, it did not appear as a bonus track on the 50th anniversary editions of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".