Tomorrow Never Knows

"Tomorrow Never Knows"
Song by The Beatles from the album Revolver
Released 5 August 1966
Recorded 6, 7 and 22 April 1966
EMI Studios, London
Genre Psychedelic rock, experimental rock
Length 2:57
Label Parlophone
Writer Lennon/McCartney
Producer George Martin
Revolver track listing
Music sample
"Tomorrow Never Knows"

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver but the first to be recorded. Credited as a Lennon/McCartney song, it was written primarily by John Lennon. Music critic Richie Unterberger of Allmusic said it was "the most experimental and psychedelic track on Revolver, in both its structure and production."[1]

The song has a vocal put through a Leslie speaker cabinet (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ) and uses automatic double tracking (ADT) to double the vocal image. Tape loops prepared by Paul McCartney were mixed in and out of the Indian-inspired modal backing underpinned by Ringo Starr's irregular drum pattern.

Contents

Composition

John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, with lyrics adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which in turn was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Although Peter Brown believed that Lennon's source for the lyric was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself, which, he said, Lennon read whilst consuming LSD,[2] George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary's, Alpert's and Metzner's book[3] and McCartney confirmed this, stating that he and Lennon had visited the newly opened Indica bookshop — Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche— and Lennon had found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream".[4]

Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book.[5][6] The book held 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.[7][8]

Title

The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics. In an interview McCartney revealed that, like "A Hard Day's Night", it was taken from one of Ringo Starr's inimitable intentional malapropisms.[9] The piece was originally titled "Mark I".[4] "The Void" is cited as another working title but according to Mark Lewisohn (and Bob Spitz) this is untrue, although the books, The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles and The Beatles A to Z both cite "The Void" as the original title.[2]

When the Beatles returned to London after their first visit to America in early 1964 they were interviewed by BBC Television. The interview included the following:

(John laughs)[10]

Recording

A cross-section showing the inner-workings of a Leslie speaker cabinet.

Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia.[11][12] McCartney remembered that, even though the song's harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was and said it was "rather interesting". 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.[13][14]

The 19-year-old Geoff Emerick was promoted to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album. This started at 8 p.m. on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.[4] Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. Lennon's suggestion was that he be suspended from a rope and—after being given a good push—he would sing as he spun around the microphone. This idea was rejected by Martin, but when asked by Lennon about it, he would only reply with, "We're looking into it."[15] Emerick finally came up with the idea of wiring Lennon's vocal through a Leslie rotating speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect without the need of a rope.[4][16] Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.[17][15]

A 7-inch reel of 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops.

As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio technical manager, created the first ADT system, taking the signal from the playback and recording heads and delaying them slightly. By altering the speed and frequencies he could create various effects, which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.[18] Lennon's vocal was clearly double-tracked on the first three verses of the song: the effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.[19]

The track included the highly compressed drums that the Beatles currently favoured, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambura drone.[16] McCartney supplied a bag of ¼ inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops.[14]

The numerous tapes McCartney supplied were played on five individual BTR3 tape machines, and controlled by EMI technicians in studio two at Abbey Road on 7 April.[20][16] The four Beatles controlled the faders of each machine while Martin varied the stereo panning.[21] The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration (0:07)[22][23] Martin explained that the finished mix of the tape loops could never be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.[24]

The tape loops contained:

The Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival of Light", an as-yet-unreleased McCartney piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, and in "Revolution 9", released on The Beatles (album).[25]

The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version while 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 a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo which was edited out of the mono mix.

Personnel

Personnel per Ian MacDonald[26]

The Love album remix

In 2006, Martin and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd.[27] On the Love album, the rhythm to "Tomorrow Never Knows" was mixed with the vocals and melody from "Within You Without You", creating a different version of the two songs. The soundtrack album from the show was released in 2006.[28][29] The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles: Rock Band music video game.[30]

Extracts and references in other musical works

The Love project, which combined "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Within You Without You".

Phil Collins did a cover version of the song on his 1981 album Face Value.

The Chemical Brothers' first UK number one "Setting Sun" features a similar drumbeat; their later single "Let Forever Be" also has some similarities. Lawyers for the (then) three remaining Beatles later wrote to the Chemical Brothers, claiming that they had sampled "Tomorrow Never Knows".

The Rutles' song "Joe Public" is based on this song.

Oasis also uses a similar drum patten on their single "Falling Down" in 2009.

Notes

  1. ↑ Unterberger 2009.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Brown & Gaines 1980.
  3. ↑ Harrison 1995.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Spitz 2005, p. 600.
  5. ↑ Lennon.
  6. ↑ Spitz 2005, pp. 600–601.
  7. ↑ The New York Times 1996.
  8. ↑ Summum 2009.
  9. ↑ The Beatles Interview Database 2009.
  10. ↑ The Beatles Interview Database 1964.
  11. ↑ Miles 1997, p. 290.
  12. ↑ Google Maps 2007.
  13. ↑ Miles 1997, pp. 291–292.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Spitz 2005, p. 601.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Spitz 2005, p. 602.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Miles 1997, p. 291.
  17. ↑ Martin 1995a.
  18. ↑ Spitz 2005, p. 603.
  19. ↑ "Tomorrow Never Knows" (Verses 4/7—1:27 until 2:47)
  20. ↑ McCartney 1995.
  21. ↑ MacDonald 1995.
  22. ↑ Miles 1997, p. 292.
  23. ↑ MacDonald 1995, p. 190.
  24. ↑ Martin 1995b.
  25. ↑ Marinucci 2007.
  26. ↑ MacDonald 2005, p. 185.
  27. ↑ Watson 2006.
  28. ↑ Paine 2006.
  29. ↑ CTV News 2006.
  30. ↑ Frushtick 2009.

References

External links