Tomorrow Never Knows
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| "Tomorrow Never Knows" | ||
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| Song by The Beatles | ||
| from the album Revolver | ||
| Released | August 5, 1966 | |
| Recorded | April 6–June 21, 1966 | |
| Genre | Psychedelic Rock | |
| Length | 2 min 57 s | |
| Label | Parlophone | |
| Writer(s) | Lennon-McCartney | |
| Producer(s) | George Martin | |
| Revolver track listing | ||
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"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver, but it was the first to be recorded for the album. Though the songwriting credit is Lennon-McCartney, the song was written primarily by John Lennon. "Tomorrow Never Knows" ends the Revolver album in a more experimental fashion, probably contributing to Revolver's reputation as one of the group's most influential and expressive albums, in addition to consistently being regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 20th century; The album was voted as the greatest album of all time in the Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums.[1] (The slower and radically different first take of this song appears on the second of the series of Beatles out-take albums, Anthology 2.)
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[edit] Inspiration
John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, closely adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which they based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead with the understanding that the "Ego Death" experienced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is essentially similar to the dying process and requires similar guidance. At the time of the song's release, it was reputed to have been written to facilitate the "letting go" process of psychedelic voyagers. The book, The Love You Make, written by Beatles insider Peter Brown, claims that Lennon's only source of inspiration for the song came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which it says he read while tripping on LSD.
[edit] Title
The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics, but was instead taken from Ringo Starr's interesting collection of malapropisms. Lennon chose to do this because he was embarrassed about the spiritual theme of the lyrics in the song, so he decided to give the song a throwaway title. The piece was originally titled "Mark I". Although "The Void" is cited as another working title, according to Lewisohn, this is a fan created myth. The books The Love You Make: An Insiders Story of the Beatles, and The Beatles A to Z, both cite "The Void" as the original title.
[edit] Recording
The track is regarded as one of the first pieces of psychedelia, including highly compressed drums, reverse guitar, processed vocals and looped tape effects. Lennon told producer George Martin that he wished to sound as if he were the Dalai Lama singing from a mountain top. Engineer Geoff Emerick wired Lennon's voice through a Leslie speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect. (Lennon's earlier idea, to have a thousand Tibetan monks come to Abbey Road and chant on the record, was passed on as unfeasible.)
[edit] Experimentation
The song is the first by The Beatles to feature experimentation (in this case brought on by Paul McCartney) with tape loops. Many of the more prominent loops sound somewhat like laughing seagulls (Paul McCartney's laughter played backwards and sped up) and the Indian sitar. The backwards guitar solo is often reported as being the guitar solo from the song "Taxman;" however it is revealed to trained ears listening to the song backwards that this is not so (as well as the fact that "Taxman" was recorded weeks after "Tomorrow Never Knows").
The Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival Of Light", an as-yet-unreleased (even by bootleggers) McCartney piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, and "Revolution 9", a John Lennon experimentation released on The White Album. The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music, and is based upon a C drone. The "chord" over the drone is generally C major, with some changes to B flat major.
[edit] Tape Loops in Tomorrow Never Knows
According to Ian MacDonald, there were five tape loops in Tomorrow Never Knows. The Beatles A to Z says sixteen tape machines were used simultaneously at different speeds in order to achieve the strange sound effects. The birdlike sounds at the beginning and throughout the recording are actually a tape loop of Paul laughing played at a slower speed.
- A 'seagull'/'Red Indian' effect (actually McCartney laughing) made, like most of the other loops, by superimposition and acceleration (0:07)
- An orchestral chord of B flat major (0:19)
- A Mellotron Mk.II, played on the "flute" tape set (0:22)
- Another Mellotron played in 6/8 from B flat to C, using the "3 violins" tape set (0:38)
- A rising scalar phrase on a sitar, recorded with heavy saturation and acceleration (0:56)
All loops were run on separate tape machines fed into an auxiliary deck, which was in turn plugged into the main mixing desk. The loops were mixed live by the Beatles and EMI staff onto one track of the four track tape in studio two.[2]
[edit] Mono and stereo versions
One known difference between the mono and stereo mixes is the intro. The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version. The mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version there is a bit of feedback after the guitar solo which was edited out of the mono mix. There is also an alternate mono mix which only appeared on a limited number of early pressings of Revolver. This version has additional, though slight variations in the volume and timing of the "loop track", as well as a slightly less processed guitar solo (the common mono and stereo versions have the solo double tracked), and a slightly longer fadeout featuring Paul's piano.
[edit] Remix
On the Beatles remix album Love, the rhythm to "Tomorrow Never Knows" was mashed up with the vocals and melody from Within You Without You, creating a seamless harmonic musical atmosphere between the two songs. This, like all of the sounds on the album, were created and imagined by Beatles producer Sir George Martin with his son Giles.
[edit] Cover versions
Cover versions of the song include those by Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, U-Melt, 801, Danielle Dax, The Chameleons on Strange Times, Monsoon and by Phil Collins on his 1981 album Face Value; where a brief clip of Phil singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" at the end is quietly heard. Our Lady Peace also covered the song on The Craft soundtrack. Gov't Mule perform the song live, quite frequently, as a medley with She Said She Said. The song is also featured on Coldplay's Twisted Logic Tour when it plays as one of the introduction songs. Additionally, Ratdog (Bob Weir) has added the song to its repertoire, and it is featured often as a show-opener. Night Ranger covered the song as part of a medley of it and Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do" on their 1995 album Feeding Off The Mojo. David Lee Roth recorded it on his 2003 Diamond Dave album under the title "That Beatles Tune." Living Colour covered it on their Collidescope album in 2003. Michael Hedges recorded an acoustic version of the song for his 1996 album, Oracle. Noel Gallagher from Oasis also paired with the band Cornershop, to preform a live version of the song at a Cornershop Concert. Junior Parker's cover appears in the film Children of Men. Argentinan bass player Pedro Aznar also covered this song in his 2003 record "Mudras".
[edit] Extracts and references in other musical works
- The Oasis song "Morning Glory" mentions the phrase "tomorrow never knows" in the lyric.
- The Bangles's song "Everything I Wanted" which appeared on their Greatest Hits album, and was released as a single in Australia and parts of Europe (though not the UK), uses most of the "Tomorrow Never Knows" melody for its verses.
- Public Enemy recorded a track entitled "Psycho of Greed" for their album Revolverlution that contained a continuous looping sample from this track. However, the clearance fee demanded by Capitol Records and the surviving Beatles was so high that the group decided to pull the track from the album.
- The Dave Matthews Band sometimes alludes to the song during the introduction to their own songs titled "Minarets" and "Bartender" including but not limited to the opening lyric "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream."
- Australian rock band 'Silverchair' have a biography-type book entitled 'Tomorrow Never Knows'.
- The Chemical Brothers first UK number one "Setting Sun" features an uncannilly similar drumbeat.
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://archives.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/04/britain.albums/|CNN Article on the Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums Survey
- ^ MacDonald, Ian (2005). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, Second Revised Edition, London: Pimlico (Rand), 190-191. ISBN 1-844-13828-3.
