Tomorrow Never Knows
| "Tomorrow Never Knows" | |
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| Song |
"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 daring experimental fashion, no doubt contributing to Revolver's ongoing 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. (An alternate take appears on the second of the series of Beatles out-take albums, Anthology 2.)
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.
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 a fan created myth.
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.)
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.
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.
Cover versions
Cover versions of the song include those by Jimi Hendrix, 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 [i]Oracle[/i]. Noel Gallagher from Oasis also paired with the band Cornershop, to preform a live version of the song at a Cornershop Concert.
Extracts and references in other musical works
- The song's characteristic drum pattern was adapted by The Chemical Brothers for their songs "Setting Sun" and "Let Forever Be" as well as playing an integral part in their current stage show, looping the lyric "Surrender to the void" as their introduction.
- The Oasis song "Morning Glory" features the lyric "Tomorrow Never Knows what it doesn't know too soon".
- The influence of this song is difficult to miss on Beck's song "The New Pollution" from his album titled Odelay. Just like in "Tomorrow Never Knows", Beck's song is constructed of one repeating chord and a strikingly similar drum pattern. On top of the beat is a bass line which sounds as if it were lifted directly from Taxman the opening track of Revolver.
- 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'
