The Beatles Songs: Tomorrow Never Knows

Tomorrow Never Knows

Working title: Mark I
Written by: John Lennon (100%)
(credited to Lennon-McCartney)
Recorded: April 6, 7 and 22, 1966 (Studio 2, Abbey Road Studios, London, England)
Mixed: April 27, June 6 and 22, 1966
Length: 2:55
Takes: 3

Musicians:

John Lennon: lead vocals (double-tracked), organ (Hammond RT-3), tape effects
Paul McCartney: bass guitar (1964 Rickenbacker 400IS), lead guitar (1965 Epiphone E230TD(V) Casino), tape effects
George Harrison: tamboura, tape effects
Ringo Starr: drums (Ludwig), tambourine, tape effects
George Martin: piano (1905 Steinway Vertegrand "Mrs. Mills"), tape effects

Available on: (CDs in bold)
Revolver (UK: UK: Parlophone PMC 7009; PCS 7009; US: Capitol (S)T 2576; Parlophone CDP 7 46441 2)
History:

• "Mark I" was the original working title for this, the first song recorded for the Revolver sessions. It was a historic occurrence, not just because of the quality of the final product, but because "Tomorrow Never Knows" would be the first Beatles song utterly incapable of being rendered on stage (at least with the technology available at the time). This may have been the impetus behind John's original title; the band's horrific 1966 tour was still to come, but the group was likely already thinking about becoming a studio-only entity.
• It was also notable for being the first Beatles song to not use rhymed lyrics. This was, in part, born of necessity: Lennon's inspiration for the song, Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, was a primer of sorts on how to best experience an LSD "trip," and as such was written as a series of instructions on how to prepare one's mind. The introduction states, in part, "Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream," which Lennon kept almost intact as the first line of his song.
• The book obviously made an extreme impression on John: a mere five days after purchasing it at the Indica Bookshop in London, he was in Abbey Road 2 with the rest of the band, working out a blueprint for the song it inspired. The first version of "Tomorrow Never Knows," which can be heard on Anthology 2, is fairly prescient in its own right: it slows down Ringo's backing beat and some other instruments so drastically that the result sounds like electronic music. Lennon wasn't happy with the track, however, and at the same session, a new approach was taken.
• That approach was largely instigated by Paul, who decided that, given John's desire to sound like "thousands of monks chanting," the song should feature a steady but droning backbeat to match its Indian color. Ringo came up with another of his off-time tom-tom patterns (clearly the descendant of earlier rhythms in "Ticket to Ride" and "In My Life"). Engineer Geoff Emerick, newly promoted in place of the departing Norman "Hurricane" Smith, decided to enhance the sound by loosening the tom-toms, stuffing a sweater into the bass drum, miking it very closely, and compressing it heavily. To this booming sound Paul added a steady C note that ran throughout the song, and George added the aforementioned color with a droning tamboura, an open-tuned, fretless Indian guitar often confused with the more demanding sitar. All of this was accomplished on April 7, 1966, the album's second session, as well as John's initial run at a vocal.
• The next day Paul, inspired by his recent introduction to the work of avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, brought in several tape loops of non-musical effects, to be mixed into the song live. This proved to be the final touch the song needed. McCartney presented George Martin with 27 of these loops; 16 were selected as potential candidates, and five of these made it into the eventual recording. That day, Martin and the band members stood around the studio tending to his own length of tape, spooled onto pencils, while Emerick worked the console faders as if he were giving a live performance on an instrument, bringing in one sound effect in one place and then replacing it with another somewhere else. After a few takes, he got a "performance" that the band decided to keep.

  Onto Take 3 were laid the following sound effects, all sped up a great deal:

  1. Paul laughing dramatically, reversed and distorted to sound like seagulls crying out into the sky. (Heard at 0:08, 0:31, 1:07, 1:57, 2:36. This is sometimes confused with a sped-up guitar track, but slowing down the loop clearly reveals laughter.)
  2. An extended orchestral note (B flat) from Sibelius' 7th Symphony. (0:19, 0:34, 0:49, 1:12, 1:20. 1:23, 1:50, 2:06, 2:21, 2:29, 2:36)
  3. A Mellotron set on what sounds like a flute or oboe setting; reversed. (0:23, 0:45, 1:15, 1:24, 2:09)
  4. Another Mellotron performance, possibly on a horn setting; reversed. (0:38, 0:45, 0:53, 1:04. 1:44, 1:54, 2:30)
  5. A complex guitar piece, possibly overdubbed on Paul's home tape recorder. (0:57, 1:25, 1:32, 2:17, 2:25, 2:52)
• On the 22nd, Lennon re-cut his vocal, and, wanting it to sound otherworldly ("monks on a hill"), two new techniques were applied. First, studio engineer Ken Townsend found a way to feed the vocal take back onto itself and add a slight delay, creating a process called Artificial Double Tracking (ADT), which eliminated the need to boost John's voice by recording multiple takes. This was applied for the first half of the song, but for the last verses, Emerick decided to run John's voice through the rotating Leslie speaker of the group's Hammond organ, creating a wobbly drone which perfectly meshed with the rest of the track. The group were so struck by both innovations they were used forever after.
• That same day, Martin added the honky-tonk piano noodling heard at the end of the song (appearing at 2:43), and a guitar solo was specifically recorded for the track, almost certainly by Paul. (Many assume George to be the lead guitarist, but the tone and technique are almost exactly like Paul's on "Taxman," recorded five days earlier. In fact, some assume the solo is from "Taxman," or from the outtakes, but there's no evidence of it.) At 1:28 is heard one solitary B-flat note, just after the backwards guitar solo and just before John sings the last verse. Some sources assume this to be a wineglass being rubbed, since that was indeed one of the sound effect tapes brought in by the band, but it's unlikely the band would have included a one-note sound effect in Emerick's "performance." The more plausible and accepted explanation is that the note's merely a bit of stray feedback from the beginning of Paul's solo, which reversed, would place it at the very end. (Of the beginning.)

Trivia:

• Lennon, in later years, still proclaimed himself unsatisfied with the recording of "Tomorrow Never Knows," having failed to get his original "monks on a hill" vision on record.
• In interviews before the record's release, Paul talked up the song, claiming that they'd already played the final version for The Rolling Stones, The Who, and English chanteuse Cilla Black. Reportedly, The Stones and The Who were stunned. Cilla just laughed.
• The "live performance of tape loops" concept was later used in Pink Floyd's "On The Run" segment from its landmark 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon.
• The Chemical Brothers' 1996 electronic dance hit "Setting Sun" featured a lurching, staccato drum track and a psychedelic flavor that reminded many of "Tomorrow Never Knows." As a nod to the influence, they began mixing the original recording into "Setting Sun" during their concerts.
• John has himself admitted that the eventual title of "Tomorrow Never Knows" was added in order to make the song seem a little less pretentious; the phrase is a Ringo malapropism that John adored. Interestingly, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was also considered, for a time, as the title of the Beatles' second film, after "A Hard Day's Night" had worked so well, borne of a similarly strange Ringo phrase. We know this because Ringo utters the phrase as far back as February 22, 1964, during an interview with the BBC:

  Q: "Now Ringo, I hear you were manhandled at the Embassy Ball. Is this right?"
  RINGO: "Not really. Someone just cut a bit of my hair, you see."
  Q: "What happened exactly?"
  RINGO: "I was talking away and I looked 'round, and there was about 400 people just smiling. So, you know-- what can you say!"
  JOHN: "What can you say!"
  RINGO: "Tomorrow never knows."
  JOHN: (laughs)
  

Covered by: Phil Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Mission UK, David Lee Roth, Living Colour, Our Lady Peace, Danielle Dax, Chameleons UK, Bongwater, Daniel Johnston / Jad Fair, The Pink Fairies, Helio Sequence, Wailing Souls, Monsoon, Trouble, Matt Jorgensen, Michael Hedges, Carla Azar / Alison Mosshart, Violeta de Outono, Marshmallow Overcoat, Suns of Arqa, Yukihiro Takahashi, A Witness, Venus, Don Randi, Beatallica