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Tomorrow Never Knows

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For the Mr. Children song, see Tomorrow Never Knows (Mr. Children song).
For the Cowboy Mouth song, see Uh-Oh (Cowboy Mouth album).
"Tomorrow Never Knows"
Song

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver. It is credited as a Lennon/McCartney song, but was written primarily by John Lennon. Although it was the first song that was recorded, it was the last track on the album.

The song is significant because it contains the first example of a vocal being put through a Leslie speaker cabinet to obtain a vibrato effect (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ) and the use of an ADT system (Automatic double-tracking) to double the vocal image.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" ends the Revolver album in a more experimental fashion than earlier records, which contributed to Revolver's reputation as one of the group's most influential and expressive albums.[1]

Inspiration

File:Timbres imprégnés de LSD.jpg
Perforated blotting paper for use with LSD, which influenced Lennon when writing the lyrics.

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, and quotes from, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The understanding from the book was 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.[2][3]

Peter Brown claimed that Lennon's only source of inspiration for the song came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which he says Lennon read whilst consuming LSD.[4] George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book.[5] McCartney confirmed this by stating that he and Lennon once visited the newly opened Indica bookshop—as Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche—and Lennon found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, which quoted the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream".[6] Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book.[5][7]

Title

The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics, but was instead taken from Ringo Starr's 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.[8] The piece was originally titled "Mark I".[6] "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.[4]

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.[9][10] McCartney remembered that even though the song was only one chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was, and even said that 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.[11][12]

19-year-old Geoff Emerick was hired to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album that started at 8 p.m. on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.[6]

Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted it 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").[13] Emerick finally came up with the idea to wire Lennon's voice through a Leslie speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect, and without the need of a rope.[6][14] The effect was achieved by putting Lennon's vocal through the cabinet—which meant Emerick having to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet—and then re-recording the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker. This created a vibrato effect that was normally used for a Hammond organ.[13][5]

As Lennon always hated doing a second take to double the sound of his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio technical manager, went home that night and created the world's first ADT system by taking the signal from the playback and recording heads and delaying them slightly, thereby creating two sound images and not just one. By altering the speed and frequencies he could also create other different types of effects, which The Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.[15] It must be noted that Lennon's vocal was clearly double-tracked on the first three verses of the song—due to the varying differences in the singing—but the full effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.[16]

Experimentation and tape loops

The track was one of the first pieces of psychedelic rock, including highly compressed drums with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambur drone,[14] similar to Harrison's later composition, "Within You Without You".

A 7-inch reel of ¼ inch-wide audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops.

McCartney supplied a bag of ¼ inch-wide audio tape loops he had made by himself at home, which he started making after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. McCartney found out that if he took off the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooled a continuous loop of tape through the machine, anything he recorded would constantly keep overdubbing itself; creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effect and create their own loops.[12]

The numerous tapes McCartney supplied were played on five individual BTR3 tape machines, and controlled by nonplussed EMI technicians in studio two at Abbey Road on 7 April.[14][5] The four Beatles controlled the faders of each machine, while Martin varied the stereo panning.[17] The tapes created a seagull/American Indian effect (which was McCartney shouting/laughing) and were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration (0:07)[18] 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.[5]

The tape loops also contained:

  • An orchestral chord of B flat major (0:19)
  • A Mellotron Mk.II, played on the "flute" tape set (0:22)
  • Another Mellotron played in 6/8 from B flat to C, using the "3 violins" tape set (0:38)
  • A sitar-like ascending scalar phrase (actually played on an electric guitar, reversed and severely sped up), recorded with heavy saturation and acceleration (0:56)
  • The guitar solo from The Beatles' Taxman was also superimposed onto the second half of the instrumental break. The solo was cut up, reversed and transposed down a tone.[19]

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 "Revolution 9", a John Lennon experimentation released on The Beatles (album).[20]

Mono and stereo versions

One difference between the mono and stereo mixes is the intro: The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version, but 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

The Love album 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 Beatle music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd.[21] 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.[22][23]

Extracts and references in other musical works

The Chemical Brothers' first UK number one "Setting Sun" features a similar drumbeat. Their later single Let Forever Be also has some similarities. Both records feature Noel Gallagher on vocals, who is known for his appreciation of Beatles' music. Lawyers for the (then) three remaining Beatles later wrote to the Chemical Brothers, claiming that they had sampled "Tomorrow Never Knows". Virgin Records hired a musicologist to prove that they had not sampled the song.[24][25] The Rutles' song "Joe Public" is based on this song.

Cover versions

As listing every cover version would make this list too long, here is a list of important cover versions:

The Grateful Dead performed this song often in the early 1990s. A live version of this song was released on Dick's Picks Vol. 27 from a concert at Oakland Coliseum on December 16, 1992. Gov't Mule also often perform an instrumental version of "Tomorrow never knows" usually as the end piece of a Beatles covers segue. The most usual combinations include "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band" > "Tomorrow Never Knows", "She Said She said" > "Tomorrow Never knows", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" > "She Said She Said" > "Tomorrow Never Knows" and a rarely played combination with two of Warren Haynes' compositions "Life Before Insanity" > "Tomorrow Never Knows" > "Indifference".

Notes

  1. ^ Beatles, Radiohead albums voted best ever archives.cnn.com - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  2. ^ Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75 – 1 June 1996 nytimes.com - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  3. ^ The first English language translation of the famous Tibetan death text summum.us - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  4. ^ a b Brown "The Love You Make" (1980)
  5. ^ a b c d e "The Beatles Anthology" DVD 2003 (Special Features—Back at Abbey Road May 1995— 0:10:59) Harrison talking about the influences of The Psychedelic Experience on Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" lyrics. Cite error: The named reference "TheBeatlesAnthologyDVD" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b c d Spitz 2005 p600 Cite error: The named reference "Spitzp600" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ Spitz 2005 pp600-601
  8. ^ Lennon: "I took one of Ringo's malapropisms as the title." geocities.com - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  9. ^ Miles 1997 p290
  10. ^ 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia google.co.uk - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  11. ^ Miles 1997 pp291–292
  12. ^ a b Spitz 2005 p601
  13. ^ a b Spitz 2005 p602
  14. ^ a b c Miles 1997 p291
  15. ^ Spitz 2005 p603
  16. ^ "Tomorrow Never Knows" (Verses 4/7 - 1:27 until 2:47)
  17. ^ MacDonald - "Revolution in the Head" - 2005.
  18. ^ Miles 1997 p292
  19. ^ "The Beatles Bible: Tomorrow Never Knows". Retrieved 2008-12-02.
  20. ^ The "Carnival of Light" tapes abbeyrd.best - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  21. ^ Love unveils new angle on Beatles bbc.co.uk - Retrieved: 21 September 2007
  22. ^ Legendary producer returns to Abbey Road bbc.co.uk - Retrieved: 21 September 2007
  23. ^ Beatles smash hits now a mashup ctv.ca/servlet - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  24. ^ The Chemical Brothers "tribute" playphone.com - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  25. ^ "Sly homage" artistdirect.com - Retrieved 27 October 2007
  26. ^ Children of Men soundtrack imdb.com - Retrieved 28 October 2007

Los Lobos on el Cancionero:Mas y mas

Jimi Hendrix at Jamming Live At The Scene Club 8: 21"

References

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