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Tomorrow Never Knows

March 08, 2023

For other uses, see Tomorrow Never Knows (disambiguation).

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney.[7] It was released in August 1966 as the final track on their album Revolver, although it was the first song recorded for the LP. The song marked a radical departure for the Beatles, as the band fully embraced the potential of the recording studio without consideration for reproducing the results in concert.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"
Cover of the Northern Songs sheet music (licensed to Sonora Musikförlag)
Song by the Beatles
from the album Revolver
Released5 August 1966 (1966-08-05)
Recorded6, 7 and 22 April 1966
StudioEMI, London
Genre
Length2:58
LabelParlophone
Songwriter(s)Lennon–McCartney
Producer(s)George Martin
Audio sample

When writing the song, Lennon drew inspiration from his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD and from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner. The Beatles' recording employed musical elements foreign to pop music, including musique concrète, avant-garde composition and electro-acoustic sound manipulation.[8] It features an Indian-inspired modal backing of tambura and sitar drone and bass guitar, with minimal harmonic deviation from a single chord, underpinned by a constant but non-standard drum pattern; added to this, tape loops prepared by the band were overdubbed "live" onto the rhythm track. Part of Lennon's vocal was fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet, normally used for a Hammond organ. The song's backwards guitar parts and effects marked the first use of reversed sounds in a pop recording, although the Beatles' 1966 B-side "Rain", which they recorded soon afterwards using the same technique, was issued over three months before Revolver.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was an early and highly influential recording in the psychedelic and electronic music genres, particularly for its pioneering use of sampling, tape manipulation and other production techniques. It also introduced lyrical themes that espoused mind expansion, anti-materialism and Eastern spirituality into popular music. On release, the song was the source of confusion and ridicule by many fans and journalists; it has since received praise as an effective representation of a psychedelic experience. Pitchfork placed the track at number 19 on its list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s", and Rolling Stone ranked it at number 18 on the magazine's list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs.

Background and inspiration

 
Timothy Leary before a crowd of university students during a lecture tour in 1969. In his lyrics to "Tomorrow Never Knows", Lennon drew from Leary's espousal of LSD as a means to transcend material concerns.

John Lennon wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows" in January 1966, with lyrics adapted from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, which was in turn adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.[9] Although Beatles aide Peter Brown believed that Lennon's source for the lyrics was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself, which, he said, Lennon had read while under the influence of LSD,[10] George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert and Metzner's book.[11] Paul McCartney recalled that when he and Lennon visited the newly opened Indica bookshop, Lennon had been looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines: "Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream."[12]

Lennon said he bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the text.[13][14] 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.[15][16] This is a state of being known by eastern mystics and masters as samādhi (a state of being totally aware of the present moment; a one-pointedness of mind).[citation needed] Harrison questioned whether Lennon fully understood the meaning of the song's lyrics:

Basically [the song] is saying what meditation is all about. The goal of meditation is to go beyond (that is, transcend) waking, sleeping and dreaming... I am not too sure if John actually fully understood what he was saying. He knew he was onto something when he saw those words and turned them into a song. But to have experienced what the lyrics in that song are actually about? I don't know if he fully understood it.[11]

The title never appears in the song's lyrics. Lennon later revealed that, like "A Hard Day's Night", it was taken from one of Ringo Starr's malapropisms.[13] In a television interview in early 1964, Starr had uttered the phrase "Tomorrow never knows" when laughing off an incident that took place at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, during which one of the guests had cut off a portion of his hair.[17][18] The piece was originally titled "Mark I"[12][19] and was referred to as such in the EMI studio documentation until the Beatles were remixing tracks for the Revolver album in June.[20] "The Void" is cited as another working title, but according to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, this resulted from Neil Aspinall, the band's road manager and assistant, referring to it as such in a contemporary issue of The Beatles Book.[21] Lennon said he settled on Starr's phrase "to sort of take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics".[22] He also said "The Void" would have been a more suitable title, but he was concerned about its obvious drug connotations.[23] According to Aspinall's account in The Beatles Monthly, the musical portion of the song was the result of all four Beatles working to ensure the music matched the power of Lennon's lyrics: "The basic tune was written during the first hours of the recording session."[24]

Musical structure

McCartney remembered that even though the song's harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C, George Martin, the Beatles' producer, accepted it as it was and said it was "rather interesting".[11][nb 1] The harmonic structure is derived from Indian music, a genre that Harrison had introduced to the Beatles' sound late in 1965 with his sitar part on "Norwegian Wood", and is based on a high volume C drone played on a tambura.[26] The song's musical key is C Mixolydian.[27] The chord over the drone is generally C major, but some changes to B♭ major result from vocal modulations, as well as orchestral and guitar tape loops.[28][29]

According to author Peter Lavezzoli, the composition is the first pop song to eschew formal chord changes altogether.[30][nb 2] Despite this limitation, musicologist Dominic Pedler sees the Beatles' harmonic ingenuity displayed in the upper harmonies – "Turn off your mind", for example, is a run of unvarying E melody notes, before "relax" involves an E–G melody-note shift and "float downstream" an E–C–G descent.[34] "It is not dying" involves a run of three G melody notes that rise on "dying" to a B♭, at the start of the verse's fifth bar,[35] creating a ♭VII/I (B♭/C) "slash" polychord.[34][nb 3] Due to Lennon's adherence to Leary's text, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was also the first song by the Beatles to depart from any form of rhyming scheme.[19]

Recording

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

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was the first song attempted during the sessions for Revolver,[37] which started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966,[38] in Studio 3 at EMI Studios (subsequently Abbey Road Studios).[12] Geoff Emerick, who was promoted to the role of the Beatles' recording engineer for Revolver, recalled that the band "encouraged us to break the rules" and ensure that each instrument "should sound unlike itself".[39] Lennon sought to capture the atmosphere of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony;[40] he told Martin that the song should sound like it was being chanted by a thousand Tibetan monks, with his vocal evoking the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop.[41][42] The latter effect was achieved by using a Leslie speaker. When the concept was explained to Lennon, he inquired if the same effect could be achieved by hanging him upside down and spinning him around a microphone while he sang into it.[12][43] Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the Leslie cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.[44][45]

 
A small gompa (Buddhist monastery) in Ladakh. Lennon sought to capture the mood of Tibetan monks chanting from a mountaintop.

Further to their approach when recording Rubber Soul late the previous year, the Beatles and Martin embraced the idea of the recording studio as an instrument on Revolver, particularly "Tomorrow Never Knows".[46] As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio's technical manager, developed an alternative form of double-tracking called artificial double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the sync head of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine.[47] The two tape machines used were not driven by mains electricity, but from a separate generator which put out a particular frequency, the same for both, thereby keeping them locked together.[47] By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.[48] Lennon's vocal is double-tracked on the first three verses of the song: the effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.[49]

The track includes the highly compressed drums that the Beatles favoured at the time, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, and sitar and tambura drone.[43] In the description of musicologist Russell Reising, the "meditative state" of a psychedelic experience is conveyed through the musical drone, enhancing the lyrical imagery, while the "buzz" of a drug-induced "high" is sonically reproduced in Harrison's tambura rhythm and Starr's heavily treated drum sound.[35] Despite the implied chord changes in the verses and repeatedly at the end of the song,[35] McCartney's bass maintains a constant ostinato in C.[50] Reising writes of the drum part:

Starr's accompaniment throughout the piece consists of a kind of stumbling march, providing a bit of temporal disruption ... [The] first accent of each bar falls on the measure's first beat and the second stress occurs in the second half of the measure's third quarter, double sixteenth notes in stuttering pre-emption of the normal rhythmic emphasis on the second backbeat – hardly a classic rock and roll gesture.[35]

The use of ¼-inch audio tape loops resulted primarily from McCartney's admiration for Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge.[51][52] 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.[51] 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.[29] After experimentation on their own, the various Beatles supplied a total of "30 or so" tape loops to Martin, who selected 16 for use on the song.[53] Each loop was about six seconds long.[53]

The overdubbing of the tape loops took place on 7 April.[43] The loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building[54] and controlled by EMI technicians in Studio Three.[55] Each machine was monitored by one technician, who had to hold a pencil within each loop to maintain tension.[53] The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters.[56][57] Eight of the tapes were used at one time, changed halfway through the song.[56] The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration.[58][59] According to Martin, the finished mix of the tape loops could not be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.[11] Harrison similarly described the mix of loops as "spontaneous", given that each run-through might favour different sounds over another.[11]

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

Five tape loops are prominent in the finished version of the song. According to author Ian MacDonald, writing in the 1990s, these loops contain the following:

  1. A recording of McCartney's laughter, sped up to resemble the sound of a seagull (enters at 0:07)
  2. An orchestral chord of B♭ major (0:19)
  3. A Mellotron on its flute setting (0:22)
  4. A Mellotron strings sound, alternating between B♭ and C in 6/8 time (0:38)
  5. A sitar playing a rising scalic phrase, recorded with heavy saturation and sped up (0:56).[60]

Author Robert Rodriguez writes that the content of the five loops has continued to invite debate among commentators, however, and that the manipulation applied to each of the recordings has made them impossible to decipher with authority.[61] Based on the most widely held views, he says that, aside from McCartney's laughter and the B♭ major chord, the sounds were two loops of sitar passages, both reversed and sped up, and a loop of Mellotron string and brass voicings.[62] In their 2006 book Recording the Beatles, Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew list two loops of sitar recordings yet, rather than Mellotron, list a mandolin or acoustic guitar, treated with tape echo.[17][63] Rather than revert to standard practice by having a guitar solo in the middle of the song, the track includes what McCartney described as a "tape solo".[64] This section nevertheless includes a lead guitar part played by Harrison[63] and recorded with the tape running backwards, to complement the sounds.[65]

The final overdubs were recorded on 22 April.[66] According to Lewisohn, who had access to EMI's studios logs and notes, these overdubs comprised Harrison's sitar and Lennon's Leslie-treated vocal part.[67][nb 4]

Lennon later told Beatles biographer Hunter Davies: "I should have tried to get near my original idea, the monks singing. I realise now that's what I wanted."[44][69] The discarded take 1 was issued on the Anthology 2 compilation in 1996.[69][42]

Previews and influence on Revolver project

While highlighting "Love You To" as an example of the Beatles fully exploring Indian musical form during the Revolver sessions, music historian Simon Philo identifies "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the track that "made few if any concessions to formula, and so confirmed that the Beatles had unequivocally moved on. 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was barely a song, let alone a pop song."[70] Musicologist William Echard describes it as an example of a raga rock song "rubb[ing] shoulders with the classical avant-garde".[4] After completing the recording, McCartney was eager to gauge the reaction of the band's contemporaries. On 2 May, he played the song to Bob Dylan at the latter's hotel suite in London; as the track started, Dylan said dismissively: "Oh, I get it. You don't want to be cute anymore."[71] According to Marianne Faithfull, who was also present, Dylan then walked out of the room.[72] McCartney recalled that when the Beatles played the song to members of the Rolling Stones and the Who, they "visibly sat up and were interested", whereas Cilla Black "just laughed".[73]

After experimenting with the techniques on "Tomorrow Never Knows", the Beatles used reversed sounds and tape-speed variation extensively throughout the Revolver sessions.[74][75] On "Rain", which was issued as the B-side of their "Paperback Writer" single in May 1966, part of Lennon's vocal track was reprised backwards over the coda,[76] while Harrison planned and recorded his lead guitar parts for "I'm Only Sleeping" with the tape direction reversed, in order to achieve a dislocated effect.[77][78][nb 5]

Tony Hall, a music industry figure and journalist with a reputation for predicting trends, was also given a preview of the song, along with other tracks from early in the sessions.[80] Writing in his column for Record Mirror in the issue dated 14 May, Hall especially highlighted "The Void" when describing the new songs as "the most revolutionary ever made by a pop group".[nb 6] Focusing on the otherworldly electronic effects, he wrote: "Sound-wise, it's like an hypnotically horrific journey through the dark never-ending jungle of someone's mind ... And the effect is of shapes and sounds and colours looming over and above one and zooming in and out of a monotonous drone."[82] Hall added that the track was "as revolutionary as Ornette Coleman appeared to the jazz scene a decade ago", before concluding: "[The Beatles] are so far ahead. And I'm longing to hear your reaction when the album is eventually issued."[81]

Release

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was the most experimental and psychedelic track on Revolver, in both its structure and production ... [T]he lyrics were philosophical, existential, sometimes inscrutable reflections on the state of being: a heavy subject for popular music, whether in 1966 or any other year.[83]

– Music critic Richie Unterberger

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was sequenced as the final track on Revolver, which EMI's Parlophone label issued on 5 August 1966.[84][85] According to author Mark Hertsgaard, as the first song recorded during the Revolver sessions, its sequencing ensures that the track serves as "the summit to which the entire album ascends".[86] In his design for the LP cover, Klaus Voormann drew inspiration from the song, recognising the need for artwork that would capture the Beatles' new direction[87] and the avant-garde aspect of the recording.[88] Voormann later said that he found "Tomorrow Never Knows" "frightening", adding that it was "so far away from the early Beatles stuff that even I myself thought, well, the normal kind of Beatles fan won't want to buy this record. But they did."[89] In an interview in October 1966, Harrison described the song as "easily the most amazing new thing we've ever come up with", but acknowledged that it might represent "a terrible mess of a sound" to listeners who approached the track without "open ears". He added: "It's like the Indian stuff. You mustn't listen to Eastern music with a Western ear."[63]

In advance of the release, EMI had issued the songs to radio stations throughout July, in increments, to prepare the Beatles' audience for the new music. "Tomorrow Never Knows" was the last track to receive a public airing, a few days before the album was issued commercially.[90] Reaction to Revolver was "generally ecstatic", according to MacDonald, with listeners marvelling at the album's "aural invention".[91] To the Beatles' less progressive fans, however, the radical changes in the band's sound were the source of confusion.[92][93] The editor of the Australian teen magazine Mirabelle wrote: "Everyone, from Brisbane to Bootle, hates that daft song Lennon sang at the end of Revolver."[73] Recalling the release in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner commented that whereas the group's more traditional fans warmed to McCartney's new songs, "some people thought Lennon was sprouting complete gibberish, and concluded that the poor lad had slid off the deep end."[94][nb 7]

Aged 16 in 1966, author and academic Nick Bromell says that psychedelic drugs were a year away from "erupting" into American youth culture, and most contemporary listeners heard "strangeness, undiluted and outrageous strangeness" in the song.[96] He adds: "'Tomorrow Never Knows' was an enigma they would understand only gradually, through many listenings and over many months. They heard it first and foremost as a place to dwell, not as an answer or as a deliverance."[97]

Critical reception

In his album review for the NME, Allen Evans expressed confusion over "Tomorrow Never Knows".[98] In response to the lyric's exhortation to "relax and float downstream", he wrote: "But how can you relax with the electronic, outer-space noises, often sounding like seagulls? ... Only Ringo's rock-steady drumming is natural."[99] Peter Jones of Record Mirror commented: "You need some sort of aural microscope to get the message from this. But it's darned compelling listening."[100] Disc and Music Echo's review of Revolver took the form of a track-by-track rundown by Ray Davies of the Kinks, who, in author Steve Turner's opinion, took the opportunity to air his longstanding bitterness towards the Beatles.[101] Davies was unimpressed with the track,[102] and concluded that the band must have had "George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this".[103]

Writing in the recently launched Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams derided "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the album's single, "Yellow Submarine", saying of Lennon's song: "A good artist doesn't publish first drafts."[104] Edward Greenfield of The Guardian described the track as "the most remarkable item on a compulsive new record". He said the lyrics were a "curious sort of poetry" that conveyed the concept of "pop-music as a substitute, both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion", as teenagers followed in the long societal tradition of disengaging the mind and surrendering "to the tribal leader, the priest, or now the pop-singer". Greenfield concluded by saying, "Thank goodness Lennon is being satirical: at least one hopes so."[105]

Reporting from London for The Village Voice, Richard Goldstein said that Revolver had opened up electronic music as a commercial proposition, adding, "John Cage move over – the Beatles are now reaching a super-receptive audience with electronic soul." He recognised "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the key track in this regard and concluded that "The boundaries [of pop music] will now have to be re-negotiated."[106] Maureen Cleave of The Evening Standard described the song as a "lengthy and monstrous piece of nonsense about love being all and love being everyone, punctuated by what appear to be bagpipes and Zulu noises", adding: "Even this is gripping. Never have I been able to recommend an LP with more conviction."[107]

In 2006, Pitchfork ranked "Tomorrow Never Knows" at number 19 on its list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s"[108] and Q magazine placed the track 75th on a list of "The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time".[17] "Tomorrow Never Knows" appears at number 18 on Rolling Stone's list of the best Beatles songs[109] and at number 4 on similar lists compiled by Uncut in 2001[110] and Mojo in 2006.[111] In 2018, the music staff of Time Out London ranked it at number 2 on their list of the best Beatles songs.[112] According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 157th most celebrated song in popular music history.[113]

Love remix

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

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.[114] 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.[115][116]

Reviewing the album for PopMatters, Zeth Lundy wrote: "The 'Within You Without You'/'Tomorrow Never Knows' mash-up, perhaps the most thrilling and effective track on the entire disc, fuses two especially transcendental songs into one: ... a union of two ambiguous, open-ended declarations of spiritual pursuit."[117] In their chapter on the Beatles' psychedelic period in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, authors Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc describe "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the most musically and visually stunning segment" of the Cirque du Soleil show.[118] The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles: Rock Band.[119]

Influence and legacy

In popular culture

Nicholas Schaffner said that listeners who had been confused by the song's lyrics were most likely unfamiliar with hallucinogenic drugs and Timothy Leary's message, but that the transcendental quality became clear during the build-up to the 1967 Summer of Love.[120] According to Colin Larkin, writing in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, "Tomorrow Never Knows" has been recognised as "the most effective evocation of a LSD experience ever recorded".[121]

Ian MacDonald says that the song's message represented a revolutionary concept in mainstream society in 1966, and by introducing LSD and Leary's "psychedelic revolution" to Western youth, it is "one of the most socially influential records The Beatles ever made".[122] He adds: "'Tomorrow Never Knows' launched the till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient, utterly alien to Western thought in their anti-materialism, rapt passivity, and world-sceptical focus on visionary consciousness."[123]

According to Simon Philo, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was the most groundbreaking track on an album that announced the arrival of the "underground London" sound.[124] Barry Miles also sees it as the experimental highpoint of Revolver, which he recalls as an "advertisement for the underground" and a work that resounded on the level of experimental jazz among members of the movement, including those who soon founded the UFO Club.[125]

In music

Hernan Campbell of Sputnikmusic recognises "Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the most important Psychedelic composition in the history of the genre" and "the epitome of everything that psychedelia stands for".[126] In the opinion of former Mojo editor Paul Trynka, the track benefited most from the Beatles' ability to channel their ideas into a recognisable song form, a discipline that ensured their psychedelic recordings were superior to those by the Grateful Dead and other contemporary San Francisco acts.[127] In the 1997 Mojo feature article "Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics", Jon Savage listed the April 1966 recording as the first item in his chronological history of UK psychedelia,[128] adding that the song "immediately impacted on pop culture".[129] According to Bromell, writing in his book Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s, the track is "regarded by many critics as the most important rock song of the decade".[130]

In his book Electronic and Experimental Music, Thom Holmes includes "Tomorrow Never Knows" in his list of the "pioneering works" in electronic music. He credits the song with "usher[ing] in a new era in the use of electronic music in rock and pop music".[2] Music historians David Luhrssen and Michael Larson say that with Revolver the Beatles "erased boundaries of time and culture", adding: "Ancient met modern on 'Tomorrow Never Knows' as sitars encountered tape loops. 'Tomorrow Never Knows' reintroduced the sustained repetition of the drone, absent in Western music since the Middle Ages and only recently discovered by avant-garde composer La Monte Young."[131] According to Peter Lavezzoli, in his book The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, "'Tomorrow Never Knows' was the most groundbreaking production to date in popular music" and he says it "still retains a terrifying visceral power".[30]

Musicologist Walter Everett describes Revolver as "an innovative example of electronic music" and says that "Tomorrow Never Knows" was also "highly influential" on psychedelic rock.[132][nb 8] He identifies its studio effects and musical form as central to Pink Floyd's "Pow R. Toc H." and recognises the same use of extreme tape-speed manipulation in subsequent recordings by Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, and backwards tapes in the work of Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Byrds, the Who, the Electric Prunes, Spirit, Tomorrow, Soft Machine and the First Edition. He also identifies the Leslie-treated vocal as a precedent for similar experimentation by Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Moody Blues, Cream, Yes, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.[134]

Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic at The New York Times, has described "Tomorrow Never Knows" as "a portal to decades of music to come".[135] Steve Turner highlights the sound sampling and tape manipulation as having had "a profound effect on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jay Z".[136] Having introduced these techniques to mainstream pop, Turner writes, "Tomorrow Never Knows" inspired the sampling that became commonplace over ten years later – such as in Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and other examples of an artist taking a well-known riff or musical motif from an existing song; in David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, with its use of assorted spoken-word and vocal samples; in recordings by Big Audio Dynamite, which included samples from film soundtracks; and in Moby's Play, with its incorporation of little-known and disparate vocal tracks.[136] In 2011, DJ Spooky said that the Beatles' song remained "in the DNA of so much going on these days" and that the use of "tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think that Brian Eno's idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.[137]

Recalling his introduction to "Tomorrow Never Knows" in 1966, American producer Tony Visconti has said: "It was incredible how the music matched the lyrics and, previous to this album, nobody was writing like that." He also said that Revolver "showed how the studio could be used as an instrument" and contributed to his decision to relocate to London, because, "I had to learn how people made records like this."[138] In his 2004 book Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings, David Howard pairs Martin's work on "Tomorrow Never Knows" with Phil Spector's 1966 production of "River Deep – Mountain High" as the two "visionary achievements in sound" that ensured that "the recording studio was now its own instrument: record production had been elevated into art."[139][nb 9]

The song is referenced in the lyric to Oasis' 1995 song "Morning Glory": "Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon".[141][142][nb 10] The Chemical Brothers have referred to "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the template for their music;[144] their 1996 track "Setting Sun" is a direct tribute to it, as is "Let Forever Be". John Foxx of Ultravox also cited "Tomorrow Never Knows" as an influence, saying that "As soon as I heard it, I knew it contained almost everything that I would want to investigate for the rest of my life."[127] In 2012, the song was included as the title track of the Beatles' iTunes compilation album Tomorrow Never Knows, which the band's website described as a collection of "the Beatles' most influential rock songs".[145]

Cover versions

  • 801, an experimental rock group that included Brian Eno and his former Roxy Music bandmate Phil Manzanera, performed the song live at their three concerts in 1976, under the name "TNK (Tomorrow Never Knows)". The final performance at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall was released on their album 801 Live. Author and musician Alan Clayson cites 801's adoption of the track as evidence that the Beatles' musical influence remained strong among 1970s glam rock artists, and that the latter scene lacked the generational divisiveness that would soon characterise punk rock.[146] Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock ranks 801's version at number 6 in his list of the "10 Most Unique Beatles Cover Versions", saying that the band transform the song in an arrangement that features "Funky bass lines, squabbling synths and the guitar dynamics of Manzanera".[147]
  • In 2007, Oasis set "Within You Without You" to the music of "Tomorrow Never Knows" as their contribution to the BBC's 40th anniversary tribute to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.[17]

In television and film

The song was parodied, as "L.S. Bumblebee", as part of a satirical sketch on the Swinging London phenomenon in the Not Only ... But Also 1966 Christmas TV special,[148] which included a cameo appearance by Lennon.[149] Sung by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, both of whom are dressed in Indian clothing, the song evokes the seagull sounds of "Tomorrow Never Knows" through the presence of a bird squawking in the studio, and includes lyrics playing on the sensory contradictions of lines such as "Listen to the colour of your dreams" from the Beatles track.[148][150]

In 1967, Bruce Conner used "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the soundtrack to his LSD-inspired experimental film Looking for Mushrooms.[151] When reworking the film for a 1996 presentation, Conner replaced the song with an instrumental piece by avant-garde composer Terry Riley.[6]

The title of the song inspired the title of James Bond's 1997 adventure Tomorrow Never Dies, when screenwriter Bruce Feirstein, still looking for a title, heard the song on the radio. The original title of the film then was Tomorrow Never Lies, but a typo changed it into the eventual title.[152]

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was featured during the final scene of the 2012 Mad Men episode "Lady Lazarus". Don Draper's wife Megan gives him a copy of Revolver, calling his attention to a specific track and suggesting, "Start with this one".[153] Draper, an advertising executive, is struggling to understand youth culture, but after contemplating the song for a few puzzled moments, he shuts it off.[154] The track also played over the closing credits.[155] The rights to the song cost the producers around $250,000,[154] "about five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for TV".[153]

The fact that Tomorrow Never Knows has been used twice in a non-Apple produced American television program using the original master recording (i.e. master rights) is unique for a Beatles song. Whether it is true or not, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lionsgate claimed the 2012 use of this song marked "the first time a master recording by the Beatles has been licensed for a television show."[156]

Personnel

According to Ian MacDonald:[157]

The Beatles

Additional musician

Notes

  1. ^ Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia, London.[25]
  2. ^ Limited chord changes, typical of Indian classical music, were a characteristic of several of the songs the Beatles recorded early in the sessions for Revolver.[31][32] Harrison's "Love You To" similarly features an implied ♭VII chord as its only departure from the I chord (of C major).[33]
  3. ^ This is a prominent device in Beatles songs such as "All My Loving", "A Hard Day's Night", "Help!", "Norwegian Wood", "Hey Jude", "Revolution", "Dear Prudence" and "Get Back".[36]
  4. ^ According to author John Winn, however, Lewisohn is mistaken. Winn says the overdubs that day were: organ, tambourine and piano, all on one track of the multitrack tape; Lennon manually doubling his non-Leslie vocal over the first two verses; and lead guitar (possibly played by McCartney) recorded with the tape direction reversed.[68] Steve Turner also identifies this session as the date when the "backwards" lead guitar was added, although he credits Harrison as the player,[63] as does Mark Hertsgaard.[65]
  5. ^ The band experimented further with tape loops in their later projects. Examples include "Carnival of Light", an unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions; the Sgt. Pepper track "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"; and "Revolution 9", released on The Beatles.[79]
  6. ^ Hall emphasised that the titles were not yet finalised, adding: "The boys talk about it as 'The Void'. But I very much doubt if it will end up as that."[81]
  7. ^ In her 2014 book Beatleness, sociologist Candy Leonard quotes the reaction of contemporary fans to the song. One recalls that his anxiety was heightened by the album's sequencing: "['Tomorrow Never Knows'] was the last thing they were leaving me with ... I was hoping they don't completely go this way."[95]
  8. ^ In his book Turn on Your Mind, which he titled in recognition of the song, Jim DeRogatis lists Revolver in first place in his "Ultimate Psychedelic Rock Library", and ranks "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the best of all the Beatles' psychedelic rock songs, ahead of "Rain".[133]
  9. ^ Writing for Classic Rock in 2014, Jon Anderson of Yes recalled first hearing the song in 1966 and likened the experience to "listening to music for the first time". He added that, while he and his fellow musicians already looked to the Beatles as the leaders in pop's evolution at the time, "You've got no concept of how they put it together, and how they came up with the lyrics, or any of it. 'Tomorrow Never Knows' had an effect on me, and on everybody, because it was so revolutionary."[140]
  10. ^ In his foreword to Mojo's list of "The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs" in 2006, Noel Gallagher described "Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the sound of the counterculture".[143]

References

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External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Revolver (Beatles album).
  • Full lyrics for the song at the Beatles' official website
  • Alan W. Pollack's Notes on "Tomorrow Never Knows"

March 08, 2023
tomorrow, never, knows, other, uses, disambiguation, song, english, rock, band, beatles, written, primarily, john, lennon, credited, lennon, mccartney, released, august, 1966, final, track, their, album, revolver, although, first, song, recorded, song, marked,. For other uses see Tomorrow Never Knows disambiguation Tomorrow Never Knows is a song by the English rock band the Beatles written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon McCartney 7 It was released in August 1966 as the final track on their album Revolver although it was the first song recorded for the LP The song marked a radical departure for the Beatles as the band fully embraced the potential of the recording studio without consideration for reproducing the results in concert Tomorrow Never Knows Cover of the Northern Songs sheet music licensed to Sonora Musikforlag Song by the Beatlesfrom the album RevolverReleased5 August 1966 1966 08 05 Recorded6 7 and 22 April 1966StudioEMI LondonGenrePsychedelic rock 1 electronic music 2 acid rock 3 raga rock 4 drone rock 5 avant pop 6 Length2 58LabelParlophoneSongwriter s Lennon McCartneyProducer s George MartinAudio sample source source filehelpWhen writing the song Lennon drew inspiration from his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD and from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner The Beatles recording employed musical elements foreign to pop music including musique concrete avant garde composition and electro acoustic sound manipulation 8 It features an Indian inspired modal backing of tambura and sitar drone and bass guitar with minimal harmonic deviation from a single chord underpinned by a constant but non standard drum pattern added to this tape loops prepared by the band were overdubbed live onto the rhythm track Part of Lennon s vocal was fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet normally used for a Hammond organ The song s backwards guitar parts and effects marked the first use of reversed sounds in a pop recording although the Beatles 1966 B side Rain which they recorded soon afterwards using the same technique was issued over three months before Revolver Tomorrow Never Knows was an early and highly influential recording in the psychedelic and electronic music genres particularly for its pioneering use of sampling tape manipulation and other production techniques It also introduced lyrical themes that espoused mind expansion anti materialism and Eastern spirituality into popular music On release the song was the source of confusion and ridicule by many fans and journalists it has since received praise as an effective representation of a psychedelic experience Pitchfork placed the track at number 19 on its list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s and Rolling Stone ranked it at number 18 on the magazine s list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs Contents 1 Background and inspiration 2 Musical structure 3 Recording 4 Previews and influence on Revolver project 5 Release 6 Critical reception 7 Love remix 8 Influence and legacy 8 1 In popular culture 8 2 In music 8 2 1 Cover versions 8 3 In television and film 9 Personnel 10 Notes 11 References 12 Sources 13 External linksBackground and inspiration Edit Timothy Leary before a crowd of university students during a lecture tour in 1969 In his lyrics to Tomorrow Never Knows Lennon drew from Leary s espousal of LSD as a means to transcend material concerns John Lennon wrote Tomorrow Never Knows in January 1966 with lyrics adapted from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner which was in turn adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead 9 Although Beatles aide Peter Brown believed that Lennon s source for the lyrics was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself which he said Lennon had read while under the influence of LSD 10 George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary Alpert and Metzner s book 11 Paul McCartney recalled that when he and Lennon visited the newly opened Indica bookshop Lennon had been looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines Whenever in doubt turn off your mind relax float downstream 12 Lennon said he bought the book went home took LSD and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the text 13 14 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 15 16 This is a state of being known by eastern mystics and masters as samadhi a state of being totally aware of the present moment a one pointedness of mind citation needed Harrison questioned whether Lennon fully understood the meaning of the song s lyrics Basically the song is saying what meditation is all about The goal of meditation is to go beyond that is transcend waking sleeping and dreaming I am not too sure if John actually fully understood what he was saying He knew he was onto something when he saw those words and turned them into a song But to have experienced what the lyrics in that song are actually about I don t know if he fully understood it 11 The title never appears in the song s lyrics Lennon later revealed that like A Hard Day s Night it was taken from one of Ringo Starr s malapropisms 13 In a television interview in early 1964 Starr had uttered the phrase Tomorrow never knows when laughing off an incident that took place at the British Embassy in Washington DC during which one of the guests had cut off a portion of his hair 17 18 The piece was originally titled Mark I 12 19 and was referred to as such in the EMI studio documentation until the Beatles were remixing tracks for the Revolver album in June 20 The Void is cited as another working title but according to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn this resulted from Neil Aspinall the band s road manager and assistant referring to it as such in a contemporary issue of The Beatles Book 21 Lennon said he settled on Starr s phrase to sort of take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics 22 He also said The Void would have been a more suitable title but he was concerned about its obvious drug connotations 23 According to Aspinall s account in The Beatles Monthly the musical portion of the song was the result of all four Beatles working to ensure the music matched the power of Lennon s lyrics The basic tune was written during the first hours of the recording session 24 Musical structure EditMcCartney remembered that even though the song s harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C George Martin the Beatles producer accepted it as it was and said it was rather interesting 11 nb 1 The harmonic structure is derived from Indian music a genre that Harrison had introduced to the Beatles sound late in 1965 with his sitar part on Norwegian Wood and is based on a high volume C drone played on a tambura 26 The song s musical key is C Mixolydian 27 The chord over the drone is generally C major but some changes to B major result from vocal modulations as well as orchestral and guitar tape loops 28 29 According to author Peter Lavezzoli the composition is the first pop song to eschew formal chord changes altogether 30 nb 2 Despite this limitation musicologist Dominic Pedler sees the Beatles harmonic ingenuity displayed in the upper harmonies Turn off your mind for example is a run of unvarying E melody notes before relax involves an E G melody note shift and float downstream an E C G descent 34 It is not dying involves a run of three G melody notes that rise on dying to a B at the start of the verse s fifth bar 35 creating a VII I B C slash polychord 34 nb 3 Due to Lennon s adherence to Leary s text Tomorrow Never Knows was also the first song by the Beatles to depart from any form of rhyming scheme 19 Recording Edit A cross section showing the inner workings of a Leslie speaker cabinet Tomorrow Never Knows was the first song attempted during the sessions for Revolver 37 which started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966 38 in Studio 3 at EMI Studios subsequently Abbey Road Studios 12 Geoff Emerick who was promoted to the role of the Beatles recording engineer for Revolver recalled that the band encouraged us to break the rules and ensure that each instrument should sound unlike itself 39 Lennon sought to capture the atmosphere of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony 40 he told Martin that the song should sound like it was being chanted by a thousand Tibetan monks with his vocal evoking the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop 41 42 The latter effect was achieved by using a Leslie speaker When the concept was explained to Lennon he inquired if the same effect could be achieved by hanging him upside down and spinning him around a microphone while he sang into it 12 43 Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the Leslie cabinet and then re recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker 44 45 A small gompa Buddhist monastery in Ladakh Lennon sought to capture the mood of Tibetan monks chanting from a mountaintop Further to their approach when recording Rubber Soul late the previous year the Beatles and Martin embraced the idea of the recording studio as an instrument on Revolver particularly Tomorrow Never Knows 46 As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals Ken Townsend the studio s technical manager developed an alternative form of double tracking called artificial double tracking ADT system taking the signal from the sync head of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine 47 The two tape machines used were not driven by mains electricity but from a separate generator which put out a particular frequency the same for both thereby keeping them locked together 47 By altering the speed and frequencies he could create various effects which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver 48 Lennon s vocal is double tracked on the first three verses of the song the effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the backwards guitar solo 49 The track includes the highly compressed drums that the Beatles favoured at the time with reverse cymbals reverse guitar processed vocals looped tape effects and sitar and tambura drone 43 In the description of musicologist Russell Reising the meditative state of a psychedelic experience is conveyed through the musical drone enhancing the lyrical imagery while the buzz of a drug induced high is sonically reproduced in Harrison s tambura rhythm and Starr s heavily treated drum sound 35 Despite the implied chord changes in the verses and repeatedly at the end of the song 35 McCartney s bass maintains a constant ostinato in C 50 Reising writes of the drum part Starr s accompaniment throughout the piece consists of a kind of stumbling march providing a bit of temporal disruption The first accent of each bar falls on the measure s first beat and the second stress occurs in the second half of the measure s third quarter double sixteenth notes in stuttering pre emption of the normal rhythmic emphasis on the second backbeat hardly a classic rock and roll gesture 35 The use of inch audio tape loops resulted primarily from McCartney s admiration for Stockhausen s Gesang der Junglinge 51 52 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 concrete 51 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 29 After experimentation on their own the various Beatles supplied a total of 30 or so tape loops to Martin who selected 16 for use on the song 53 Each loop was about six seconds long 53 The overdubbing of the tape loops took place on 7 April 43 The loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building 54 and controlled by EMI technicians in Studio Three 55 Each machine was monitored by one technician who had to hold a pencil within each loop to maintain tension 53 The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters 56 57 Eight of the tapes were used at one time changed halfway through the song 56 The tapes were made like most of the other loops by superimposition and acceleration 58 59 According to Martin the finished mix of the tape loops could not be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music 11 Harrison similarly described the mix of loops as spontaneous given that each run through might favour different sounds over another 11 A 7 inch reel of 1 4 inch wide 6 4 mm audio recording tape which was the type used to create the song s tape loops Five tape loops are prominent in the finished version of the song According to author Ian MacDonald writing in the 1990s these loops contain the following A recording of McCartney s laughter sped up to resemble the sound of a seagull enters at 0 07 An orchestral chord of B major 0 19 A Mellotron on its flute setting 0 22 A Mellotron strings sound alternating between B and C in 6 8 time 0 38 A sitar playing a rising scalic phrase recorded with heavy saturation and sped up 0 56 60 Author Robert Rodriguez writes that the content of the five loops has continued to invite debate among commentators however and that the manipulation applied to each of the recordings has made them impossible to decipher with authority 61 Based on the most widely held views he says that aside from McCartney s laughter and the B major chord the sounds were two loops of sitar passages both reversed and sped up and a loop of Mellotron string and brass voicings 62 In their 2006 book Recording the Beatles Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew list two loops of sitar recordings yet rather than Mellotron list a mandolin or acoustic guitar treated with tape echo 17 63 Rather than revert to standard practice by having a guitar solo in the middle of the song the track includes what McCartney described as a tape solo 64 This section nevertheless includes a lead guitar part played by Harrison 63 and recorded with the tape running backwards to complement the sounds 65 The final overdubs were recorded on 22 April 66 According to Lewisohn who had access to EMI s studios logs and notes these overdubs comprised Harrison s sitar and Lennon s Leslie treated vocal part 67 nb 4 Lennon later told Beatles biographer Hunter Davies I should have tried to get near my original idea the monks singing I realise now that s what I wanted 44 69 The discarded take 1 was issued on the Anthology 2 compilation in 1996 69 42 Previews and influence on Revolver project EditWhile highlighting Love You To as an example of the Beatles fully exploring Indian musical form during the Revolver sessions music historian Simon Philo identifies Tomorrow Never Knows as the track that made few if any concessions to formula and so confirmed that the Beatles had unequivocally moved on Tomorrow Never Knows was barely a song let alone a pop song 70 Musicologist William Echard describes it as an example of a raga rock song rubb ing shoulders with the classical avant garde 4 After completing the recording McCartney was eager to gauge the reaction of the band s contemporaries On 2 May he played the song to Bob Dylan at the latter s hotel suite in London as the track started Dylan said dismissively Oh I get it You don t want to be cute anymore 71 According to Marianne Faithfull who was also present Dylan then walked out of the room 72 McCartney recalled that when the Beatles played the song to members of the Rolling Stones and the Who they visibly sat up and were interested whereas Cilla Black just laughed 73 After experimenting with the techniques on Tomorrow Never Knows the Beatles used reversed sounds and tape speed variation extensively throughout the Revolver sessions 74 75 On Rain which was issued as the B side of their Paperback Writer single in May 1966 part of Lennon s vocal track was reprised backwards over the coda 76 while Harrison planned and recorded his lead guitar parts for I m Only Sleeping with the tape direction reversed in order to achieve a dislocated effect 77 78 nb 5 Tony Hall a music industry figure and journalist with a reputation for predicting trends was also given a preview of the song along with other tracks from early in the sessions 80 Writing in his column for Record Mirror in the issue dated 14 May Hall especially highlighted The Void when describing the new songs as the most revolutionary ever made by a pop group nb 6 Focusing on the otherworldly electronic effects he wrote Sound wise it s like an hypnotically horrific journey through the dark never ending jungle of someone s mind And the effect is of shapes and sounds and colours looming over and above one and zooming in and out of a monotonous drone 82 Hall added that the track was as revolutionary as Ornette Coleman appeared to the jazz scene a decade ago before concluding The Beatles are so far ahead And I m longing to hear your reaction when the album is eventually issued 81 Release Edit Tomorrow Never Knows was the most experimental and psychedelic track on Revolver in both its structure and production T he lyrics were philosophical existential sometimes inscrutable reflections on the state of being a heavy subject for popular music whether in 1966 or any other year 83 Music critic Richie Unterberger Tomorrow Never Knows was sequenced as the final track on Revolver which EMI s Parlophone label issued on 5 August 1966 84 85 According to author Mark Hertsgaard as the first song recorded during the Revolver sessions its sequencing ensures that the track serves as the summit to which the entire album ascends 86 In his design for the LP cover Klaus Voormann drew inspiration from the song recognising the need for artwork that would capture the Beatles new direction 87 and the avant garde aspect of the recording 88 Voormann later said that he found Tomorrow Never Knows frightening adding that it was so far away from the early Beatles stuff that even I myself thought well the normal kind of Beatles fan won t want to buy this record But they did 89 In an interview in October 1966 Harrison described the song as easily the most amazing new thing we ve ever come up with but acknowledged that it might represent a terrible mess of a sound to listeners who approached the track without open ears He added It s like the Indian stuff You mustn t listen to Eastern music with a Western ear 63 In advance of the release EMI had issued the songs to radio stations throughout July in increments to prepare the Beatles audience for the new music Tomorrow Never Knows was the last track to receive a public airing a few days before the album was issued commercially 90 Reaction to Revolver was generally ecstatic according to MacDonald with listeners marvelling at the album s aural invention 91 To the Beatles less progressive fans however the radical changes in the band s sound were the source of confusion 92 93 The editor of the Australian teen magazine Mirabelle wrote Everyone from Brisbane to Bootle hates that daft song Lennon sang at the end of Revolver 73 Recalling the release in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever Nicholas Schaffner commented that whereas the group s more traditional fans warmed to McCartney s new songs some people thought Lennon was sprouting complete gibberish and concluded that the poor lad had slid off the deep end 94 nb 7 Aged 16 in 1966 author and academic Nick Bromell says that psychedelic drugs were a year away from erupting into American youth culture and most contemporary listeners heard strangeness undiluted and outrageous strangeness in the song 96 He adds Tomorrow Never Knows was an enigma they would understand only gradually through many listenings and over many months They heard it first and foremost as a place to dwell not as an answer or as a deliverance 97 Critical reception EditIn his album review for the NME Allen Evans expressed confusion over Tomorrow Never Knows 98 In response to the lyric s exhortation to relax and float downstream he wrote But how can you relax with the electronic outer space noises often sounding like seagulls Only Ringo s rock steady drumming is natural 99 Peter Jones of Record Mirror commented You need some sort of aural microscope to get the message from this But it s darned compelling listening 100 Disc and Music Echo s review of Revolver took the form of a track by track rundown by Ray Davies of the Kinks who in author Steve Turner s opinion took the opportunity to air his longstanding bitterness towards the Beatles 101 Davies was unimpressed with the track 102 and concluded that the band must have had George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this 103 Writing in the recently launched Crawdaddy Paul Williams derided Tomorrow Never Knows and the album s single Yellow Submarine saying of Lennon s song A good artist doesn t publish first drafts 104 Edward Greenfield of The Guardian described the track as the most remarkable item on a compulsive new record He said the lyrics were a curious sort of poetry that conveyed the concept of pop music as a substitute both for jungle emotions and for the consolations of religion as teenagers followed in the long societal tradition of disengaging the mind and surrendering to the tribal leader the priest or now the pop singer Greenfield concluded by saying Thank goodness Lennon is being satirical at least one hopes so 105 Reporting from London for The Village Voice Richard Goldstein said that Revolver had opened up electronic music as a commercial proposition adding John Cage move over the Beatles are now reaching a super receptive audience with electronic soul He recognised Tomorrow Never Knows as the key track in this regard and concluded that The boundaries of pop music will now have to be re negotiated 106 Maureen Cleave of The Evening Standard described the song as a lengthy and monstrous piece of nonsense about love being all and love being everyone punctuated by what appear to be bagpipes and Zulu noises adding Even this is gripping Never have I been able to recommend an LP with more conviction 107 In 2006 Pitchfork ranked Tomorrow Never Knows at number 19 on its list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s 108 and Q magazine placed the track 75th on a list of The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time 17 Tomorrow Never Knows appears at number 18 on Rolling Stone s list of the best Beatles songs 109 and at number 4 on similar lists compiled by Uncut in 2001 110 and Mojo in 2006 111 In 2018 the music staff of Time Out London ranked it at number 2 on their list of the best Beatles songs 112 According to Acclaimed Music it is the 157th most celebrated song in popular music history 113 Love remix Edit The Love project which combined Tomorrow Never Knows and Within You Without You 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 114 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 115 116 Reviewing the album for PopMatters Zeth Lundy wrote The Within You Without You Tomorrow Never Knows mash up perhaps the most thrilling and effective track on the entire disc fuses two especially transcendental songs into one a union of two ambiguous open ended declarations of spiritual pursuit 117 In their chapter on the Beatles psychedelic period in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles authors Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc describe Within You Without You Tomorrow Never Knows as the most musically and visually stunning segment of the Cirque du Soleil show 118 The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles Rock Band 119 Influence and legacy EditIn popular culture Edit Nicholas Schaffner said that listeners who had been confused by the song s lyrics were most likely unfamiliar with hallucinogenic drugs and Timothy Leary s message but that the transcendental quality became clear during the build up to the 1967 Summer of Love 120 According to Colin Larkin writing in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music Tomorrow Never Knows has been recognised as the most effective evocation of a LSD experience ever recorded 121 Ian MacDonald says that the song s message represented a revolutionary concept in mainstream society in 1966 and by introducing LSD and Leary s psychedelic revolution to Western youth it is one of the most socially influential records The Beatles ever made 122 He adds Tomorrow Never Knows launched the till then elite preserved concept of mind expansion into pop simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient utterly alien to Western thought in their anti materialism rapt passivity and world sceptical focus on visionary consciousness 123 According to Simon Philo Tomorrow Never Knows was the most groundbreaking track on an album that announced the arrival of the underground London sound 124 Barry Miles also sees it as the experimental highpoint of Revolver which he recalls as an advertisement for the underground and a work that resounded on the level of experimental jazz among members of the movement including those who soon founded the UFO Club 125 In music Edit Hernan Campbell of Sputnikmusic recognises Tomorrow Never Knows as the most important Psychedelic composition in the history of the genre and the epitome of everything that psychedelia stands for 126 In the opinion of former Mojo editor Paul Trynka the track benefited most from the Beatles ability to channel their ideas into a recognisable song form a discipline that ensured their psychedelic recordings were superior to those by the Grateful Dead and other contemporary San Francisco acts 127 In the 1997 Mojo feature article Psychedelia The 100 Greatest Classics Jon Savage listed the April 1966 recording as the first item in his chronological history of UK psychedelia 128 adding that the song immediately impacted on pop culture 129 According to Bromell writing in his book Tomorrow Never Knows Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s the track is regarded by many critics as the most important rock song of the decade 130 In his book Electronic and Experimental Music Thom Holmes includes Tomorrow Never Knows in his list of the pioneering works in electronic music He credits the song with usher ing in a new era in the use of electronic music in rock and pop music 2 Music historians David Luhrssen and Michael Larson say that with Revolver the Beatles erased boundaries of time and culture adding Ancient met modern on Tomorrow Never Knows as sitars encountered tape loops Tomorrow Never Knows reintroduced the sustained repetition of the drone absent in Western music since the Middle Ages and only recently discovered by avant garde composer La Monte Young 131 According to Peter Lavezzoli in his book The Dawn of Indian Music in the West Tomorrow Never Knows was the most groundbreaking production to date in popular music and he says it still retains a terrifying visceral power 30 Musicologist Walter Everett describes Revolver as an innovative example of electronic music and says that Tomorrow Never Knows was also highly influential on psychedelic rock 132 nb 8 He identifies its studio effects and musical form as central to Pink Floyd s Pow R Toc H and recognises the same use of extreme tape speed manipulation in subsequent recordings by Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa and backwards tapes in the work of Hendrix Pink Floyd the Byrds the Who the Electric Prunes Spirit Tomorrow Soft Machine and the First Edition He also identifies the Leslie treated vocal as a precedent for similar experimentation by Hendrix the Grateful Dead the Moody Blues Cream Yes Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath 134 Jon Pareles the chief pop music critic at The New York Times has described Tomorrow Never Knows as a portal to decades of music to come 135 Steve Turner highlights the sound sampling and tape manipulation as having had a profound effect on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jay Z 136 Having introduced these techniques to mainstream pop Turner writes Tomorrow Never Knows inspired the sampling that became commonplace over ten years later such as in Sugarhill Gang s Rapper s Delight and other examples of an artist taking a well known riff or musical motif from an existing song in David Byrne and Brian Eno s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with its use of assorted spoken word and vocal samples in recordings by Big Audio Dynamite which included samples from film soundtracks and in Moby s Play with its incorporation of little known and disparate vocal tracks 136 In 2011 DJ Spooky said that the Beatles song remained in the DNA of so much going on these days and that the use of tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully I also think that Brian Eno s idea of the studio as instrument comes from this kind of recording 137 Recalling his introduction to Tomorrow Never Knows in 1966 American producer Tony Visconti has said It was incredible how the music matched the lyrics and previous to this album nobody was writing like that He also said that Revolver showed how the studio could be used as an instrument and contributed to his decision to relocate to London because I had to learn how people made records like this 138 In his 2004 book Sonic Alchemy Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings David Howard pairs Martin s work on Tomorrow Never Knows with Phil Spector s 1966 production of River Deep Mountain High as the two visionary achievements in sound that ensured that the recording studio was now its own instrument record production had been elevated into art 139 nb 9 The song is referenced in the lyric to Oasis 1995 song Morning Glory Tomorrow never knows what it doesn t know too soon 141 142 nb 10 The Chemical Brothers have referred to Tomorrow Never Knows as the template for their music 144 their 1996 track Setting Sun is a direct tribute to it as is Let Forever Be John Foxx of Ultravox also cited Tomorrow Never Knows as an influence saying that As soon as I heard it I knew it contained almost everything that I would want to investigate for the rest of my life 127 In 2012 the song was included as the title track of the Beatles iTunes compilation album Tomorrow Never Knows which the band s website described as a collection of the Beatles most influential rock songs 145 Cover versions Edit 801 an experimental rock group that included Brian Eno and his former Roxy Music bandmate Phil Manzanera performed the song live at their three concerts in 1976 under the name TNK Tomorrow Never Knows The final performance at London s Queen Elizabeth Hall was released on their album 801 Live Author and musician Alan Clayson cites 801 s adoption of the track as evidence that the Beatles musical influence remained strong among 1970s glam rock artists and that the latter scene lacked the generational divisiveness that would soon characterise punk rock 146 Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock ranks 801 s version at number 6 in his list of the 10 Most Unique Beatles Cover Versions saying that the band transform the song in an arrangement that features Funky bass lines squabbling synths and the guitar dynamics of Manzanera 147 In 2007 Oasis set Within You Without You to the music of Tomorrow Never Knows as their contribution to the BBC s 40th anniversary tribute to the Beatles Sgt Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band album 17 In television and film Edit The song was parodied as L S Bumblebee as part of a satirical sketch on the Swinging London phenomenon in the Not Only But Also 1966 Christmas TV special 148 which included a cameo appearance by Lennon 149 Sung by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore both of whom are dressed in Indian clothing the song evokes the seagull sounds of Tomorrow Never Knows through the presence of a bird squawking in the studio and includes lyrics playing on the sensory contradictions of lines such as Listen to the colour of your dreams from the Beatles track 148 150 In 1967 Bruce Conner used Tomorrow Never Knows as the soundtrack to his LSD inspired experimental film Looking for Mushrooms 151 When reworking the film for a 1996 presentation Conner replaced the song with an instrumental piece by avant garde composer Terry Riley 6 The title of the song inspired the title of James Bond s 1997 adventure Tomorrow Never Dies when screenwriter Bruce Feirstein still looking for a title heard the song on the radio The original title of the film then was Tomorrow Never Lies but a typo changed it into the eventual title 152 Tomorrow Never Knows was featured during the final scene of the 2012 Mad Men episode Lady Lazarus Don Draper s wife Megan gives him a copy of Revolver calling his attention to a specific track and suggesting Start with this one 153 Draper an advertising executive is struggling to understand youth culture but after contemplating the song for a few puzzled moments he shuts it off 154 The track also played over the closing credits 155 The rights to the song cost the producers around 250 000 154 about five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for TV 153 The fact that Tomorrow Never Knows has been used twice in a non Apple produced American television program using the original master recording i e master rights is unique for a Beatles song Whether it is true or not the Wall Street Journal reported that Lionsgate claimed the 2012 use of this song marked the first time a master recording by the Beatles has been licensed for a television show 156 Personnel EditAccording to Ian MacDonald 157 The Beatles John Lennon vocals Hammond organ Mellotron 158 tape loops Paul McCartney bass guitar tape loops George Harrison sitar tambura lead guitar tape loops Ringo Starr drums tambourine tape loopsAdditional musician George Martin tack piano 158 Notes Edit Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein s house at 24 Chapel Street Belgravia London 25 Limited chord changes typical of Indian classical music were a characteristic of several of the songs the Beatles recorded early in the sessions for Revolver 31 32 Harrison s Love You To similarly features an implied VII chord as its only departure from the I chord of C major 33 This is a prominent device in Beatles songs such as All My Loving A Hard Day s Night Help Norwegian Wood Hey Jude Revolution Dear Prudence and Get Back 36 According to author John Winn however Lewisohn is mistaken Winn says the overdubs that day were organ tambourine and piano all on one track of the multitrack tape Lennon manually doubling his non Leslie vocal over the first two verses and lead guitar possibly played by McCartney recorded with the tape direction reversed 68 Steve Turner also identifies this session as the date when the backwards lead guitar was added although he credits Harrison as the player 63 as does Mark Hertsgaard 65 The band experimented further with tape loops in their later projects Examples include Carnival of Light an unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions the Sgt Pepper track Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite and Revolution 9 released on The Beatles 79 Hall emphasised that the titles were not yet finalised adding The boys talk about it as The Void But I very much doubt if it will end up as that 81 In her 2014 book Beatleness sociologist Candy Leonard quotes the reaction of contemporary fans to the song One recalls that his anxiety was heightened by the album s sequencing Tomorrow Never Knows was the last thing they were leaving me with I was hoping they don t completely go this way 95 In his book Turn on Your Mind which he titled in recognition of the song Jim DeRogatis lists Revolver in first place in his Ultimate Psychedelic Rock Library and ranks Tomorrow Never Knows as the best of all the Beatles psychedelic rock songs ahead of Rain 133 Writing for Classic Rock in 2014 Jon Anderson of Yes recalled first hearing the song in 1966 and likened the experience to listening to music for the first time He added that while he and his fellow musicians already looked to the Beatles as the leaders in pop s evolution at the time You ve got no concept of how they put it together and how they came up with the lyrics or any of it Tomorrow Never Knows had an effect on me and on everybody because it was so revolutionary 140 In his foreword to Mojo s list of The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs in 2006 Noel Gallagher described Tomorrow Never Knows as the sound of the counterculture 143 References Edit DeRogatis 2003 pp 14 48 a b Holmes 2012 p 468 Vance Joel February 1972 The Fragmentation of Rock PDF Stereo Review p 64 Retrieved 30 July 2021 a b Echard 2017 p 6 Martin Garrett 28 August 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Tao of Bond Film Naming Vanity Fair No January a b Jurgensen John 7 May 2012 How Much Mad Men Paid for The Beatles wsj com Retrieved 27 September 2014 Don Draper unsheathed a Revolver LP and cued up the song Tomorrow Never Knows The general reaction on Twitter was Whoa That sentiment was immediately followed by something like How much did that cost them Answer about 250 000 according to people familiar with the deal That s about five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for TV In an interview series creator Matthew Weiner disputed that figure but declined to discuss financial details of the deal The surviving Beatles along with Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison signed off on the Mad Men usage a b Itzkoff Dave Sisario Ben 7 May 2012 How Mad Men Landed the Beatles All You Need Is Love and 250 000 The New York Times Retrieved 12 August 2012 Leeds Sarene 7 May 2012 Mad Men Recap Secrets and Lies Rolling Stone Retrieved 7 May 2012 Jurgensen John 7 May 2012 How Much Mad Men Paid for The Beatles Wall Street Journal ISSN 0099 9660 Retrieved 28 October 2022 MacDonald 2005 p 185 a b Rodriguez 2012 p 109 Sources EditThe Beatles 2000 The Beatles Anthology San Francisco CA Chronicle Books ISBN 0 8118 2684 8 Brend Mark 2005 Strange Sounds Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop San Francisco CA Backbeat Books ISBN 9 780879 308551 Bromell Nick 2002 Tomorrow Never Knows Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s Chicago IL University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 07562 1 Brown Peter Gaines Steven 1980 The Love You Make An Insider s Story of The Beatles Methuen Publishing ISBN 978 0 451 20735 7 Clayson Alan 2003 George Harrison London Sanctuary ISBN 1 86074 489 3 DeRogatis Jim 2003 Turn on Your Mind Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock Milwaukee WI Hal Leonard ISBN 978 0 634 05548 5 Echard William 2017 Psychedelic Popular Music A History through Musical Topic Theory Bloomington Indiana Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0253026590 Everett Walter 1999 The Beatles as Musicians Revolver Through the Anthology New York NY Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 512941 5 Harris Mark 2012 Countercultural Intoxication An Aesthetics of Transformation In Auther Elissa Lerner Adam eds West of Center Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America 1965 1977 Minneapolis MN University of Minnesota Press ISBN 978 0 8166 7725 2 Harry Bill 2000 The Beatles Encyclopedia London Virgin Publishing ISBN 0 7535 0481 2 Hertsgaard Mark 1996 A Day in the Life The Music and Artistry of the Beatles London Pan Books ISBN 0 330 33891 9 Holmes Thom 2012 Electronic and Experimental Music Technology Music and Culture 4th edn New York NY Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 89636 8 Howard David N 2004 Sonic Alchemy Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings Milwaukee WI Hal Leonard ISBN 0 634 05560 7 Lavezzoli Peter 2006 The Dawn of Indian Music in the West New York NY Continuum ISBN 0 8264 2819 3 Leonard Candy 2014 Beatleness How the Beatles and Their Fans Remade the World New York NY Arcade Publishing ISBN 978 1 62872 417 2 Lewisohn Mark 2005 1988 The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962 1970 London Bounty Books ISBN 978 0 7537 2545 0 Luhrssen David Larson Michael 2017 Encyclopedia of Classic Rock Santa Barbara CA Greenwood ISBN 978 1 4408 3513 1 MacDonald Ian 1998 Revolution in the Head The Beatles Records and the Sixties London Pimlico ISBN 978 0 7126 6697 8 MacDonald Ian 2005 Revolution in the Head The Beatles Records and the Sixties 2nd rev ed London Pimlico ISBN 1 84413 828 3 Martin George with Pearson William 1994 Summer of Love The Making of Sgt Pepper London Macmillan ISBN 0 333 60398 2 Miles Barry 1997 Paul McCartney Many Years from Now Vintage ISBN 0 7493 8658 4 Miles Barry 2001 The Beatles Diary Volume 1 The Beatles Years London Omnibus Press ISBN 0 7119 8308 9 Miles Barry July 2006 Revolver The Tripping Point Mojo pp 70 77 Pedler Dominic 2003 The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles London Omnibus Press ISBN 978 0 7119 8167 6 Philo Simon 2015 British Invasion The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence Lanham MD Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0 8108 8626 1 Reising Russell 2002 Introduction Of the beginning In Reising Russell ed Every Sound There Is The Beatles Revolver and the Transformation of Rock and Roll Farnham UK Ashgate Publishing ISBN 978 0 7546 0557 7 Reising Russell LeBlanc Jim 2009 Magical Mystery Tours and Other Trips Yellow submarines newspaper taxis and the Beatles psychedelic years In Womack Kenneth ed The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 68976 2 Rodriguez Robert 2012 Revolver How the Beatles Reimagined Rock n Roll Milwaukee WI Backbeat Books ISBN 978 1 61713 009 0 Savage Jon 2015 1966 The Year the Decade Exploded London Faber amp Faber ISBN 978 0 571 27763 6 Spitz Bob 2005 The Beatles The Biography New York NY Little Brown and Company ISBN 1 84513 160 6 Schaffner Nicholas 1978 The Beatles Forever New York NY McGraw Hill ISBN 0 07 055087 5 Turner Steve 2016 Beatles 66 The Revolutionary Year New York NY Ecco ISBN 978 0 06 247558 9 Winn John C 2009 That Magic Feeling The Beatles Recorded Legacy Volume Two 1966 1970 New York NY Three Rivers Press ISBN 978 0 307 45239 9 Womack Kenneth 2014 The Beatles Encyclopedia Everything Fab Four Santa Barbara CA ABC CLIO ISBN 978 0 313 39171 2 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Revolver Beatles album Full lyrics for the song at the Beatles official website Alan W Pollack s Notes on Tomorrow Never Knows Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Tomorrow Never Knows amp oldid 1137809295, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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