"Tomorrow Never Knows" (Lennon – August 8, 1966)
Revolver – Side 2, Track 7 (2:57)
YouTube
From Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, About.com, and Google –
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:
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.)
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)
A Mellotron set on what sounds like a flute or oboe setting; reversed. (0:23, 0:45, 1:15, 1:24, 2:09)
Another Mellotron performance, possibly on a horn setting; reversed. (0:38, 0:45, 0:53, 1:04. 1:44, 1:54, 2:30)
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.)
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver but the first to be recorded. Credited as a Lennon/McCartney song, it was written primarily by John Lennon. Music critic Richie Unterberger of Allmusic said it was "the most experimental and psychedelic track on Revolver, in both its structure and production."
The song has a vocal put through a Leslie speaker cabinet (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ) and uses automatic double tracking (ADT) to double the vocal image. Tape loops prepared by the Beatles were mixed in and out of the Indian-inspired modal backing underpinned by Ringo Starr's constant but non-standard drum pattern. The song is also one of the first uses of a flanger effect on any instrument.
Composition –
John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, with lyrics adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which in turn was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Although Peter Brown believed that Lennon's source for the lyric was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself, which, he said, Lennon read whilst consuming LSD, George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary's, Alpert's and Metzner's book and Paul McCartney confirmed this, stating that he and Lennon had visited the newly opened Indica bookshop — Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche — and Lennon had found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream".
Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book. 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.
Title –
The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics. In an interview McCartney revealed that, like "A Hard Day's Night", it was taken from one of Ringo Starr's malapropisms. The piece was originally titled "Mark I". "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.
When The Beatles returned to London after their first visit to America in early 1964 they were interviewed by David Coleman of BBC Television. The interview included the following:
Interviewer: "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." Interviewer: "Let's have a look. You seem to have got plenty left."
Ringo: (turns head) "Can you see the difference? It's longer, this side."
Interviewer: "What happened exactly?"
Ringo: "I don't know. I was just talking, having an interview (exaggerated voice). Just like I am NOW!"
(John and Paul begin lifting locks of his hair, pretending to cut it)
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)
Recording –
Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia. McCartney remembered that, even though the song's harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was and said it was "rather interesting". The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based upon a C drone. The "chord" over the drone is generally C major, with some changes to B flat major.
The 19-year-old Geoff Emerick was promoted to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album. This started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.
Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. Lennon's suggestion was that he be suspended from a rope and—after being given a good push—he would sing as he spun around the microphone. This idea was rejected by Martin, but when asked by Lennon about it, he would only reply with, "We're looking into it." Emerick finally came up with the idea of wiring Lennon's vocal through a Leslie rotating speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect without the need of a rope. Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.
A 7-inch reel of 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops.
As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio technical manager, developed an early form of double-tracking called Automatic double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the playback and recording heads of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine. 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. By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which The Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver. 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.
The track included the highly compressed drums that The Beatles currently favoured, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambura drone. McCartney supplied a bag of ¼-inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops. 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. Each loop was about six seconds long.
The tape loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building and controlled by EMI technicians in studio two at Abbey Road on 7 April. Each machine was monitored by one technician, who had to keep a pencil within each loop to maintain tension. The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters. Eight of the tapes were used at one time, changed halfway through the song. The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration (0:07). According to Martin, the finished mix of the tape loops cannot be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.
The tape loops contained:
A "seagull" or "American Indian" whooping effect (which was the sound of Harrison's guitar sped up).
An orchestral chord of B flat major (from a Sibelius symphony) (0:19) A Mellotron Mk.II, played with the "brass" 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 Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival of Light", an as-yet-unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, and in "Revolution 9", released on The Beatles.
The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version while the mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape-loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo, exactly halfway through the song, but is edited out of the mono mix.
ennon was later quoted as saying that "I should have tried to get my original idea, the monks singing. I realize now that's what I wanted." Take one of the recording was released on the Anthology 2 album.
Takes: 3
Personnel
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 (Challen upright), tape effects
The Love album remix –
In 2006, Martin and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. 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. The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles: Rock Band music video game.
In popular culture –
DJ Spooky said of the track in 2011:
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is one of those songs that’s in the DNA of so much going on these days that it’s hard to know where to start, Its tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think thatBrian Eno’s idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.
The song has been covered by numerous musicians:
A 1968 cover by Jimi Hendrix is included on the 1980 posthumous bootleg Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead.
The Pink Fairies played extended versions of the song at many 1970s pop festivals.
On 3 September 1976 a live, full-scale rearrangement was recorded by the band 801, with personnel including Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno.
Phil Collins covered the song on his 1981 album Face Value, ending with an a cappella snippet of "Over the Rainbow."
The Mission recorded their version in 1986 for the "Severina" single. It was later included on the singles compilation The First Chapter.
The Chameleons also recorded a version, included as a bonus track on their 1986 album Strange Times.
Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston covered the song on their 1989 album It's Spooky, adding a twist to the lyrics after the final verse when Johnston enters shouting:"No! No! Ladies and gentlemen, do not surrender to the void! The darkness surrounds you—don't relax! You'll never get out of that pit! No! No! It isn't love—the demons will enter! No! No! No!"
Listed in set lists as "TNK," The Grateful Dead performed the song 12 times in the 1990s, always segueing out of The Who's "Baba O'Riley". Subsequently, former Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Vince Welnick have played the song in their post-Dead projects.
Reggae group The Wailing Souls included a version on their 1998 all-cover album Psychedelic Souls.
Portland band Helio Sequence, covered the song on their 2000 album Com Plex.
David Lee Roth covered the song on his 2003 album Diamond Dave, listed in the track list as "That Beatles Tune."
Parody band Beatallica recorded a mashup of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and Metallica's "The Day That Never Comes" entitled "Tomorrow Never Comes," on their 2009 album Masterful Mystery Tour.
Herbie Hancock recorded a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for his 2010 album The Imagine Project featuring Dave Matthews on vocals. Also, Matthews often performs an excerpt of "Tomorrow Never Knows" during live versions of his band's song "Minarets."
The song is referenced in the lyrics to the 1995 Oasis song "Morning Glory": "Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon.
The Chemical Brothers refer to "Tomorrow Never Knows" as their "manifesto"; their 1996 track "Setting Sun" is a direct tribute to it.
Our Lady Peace recorded a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the 1996 film The Craft and a cover by Carla Azar and Alison Mosshart is featured in the 2011 motion picture Sucker Punch.
The song 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." Draper, an advertising executive, is struggling to understand youth culture, but after contemplating the song for a few puzzled moments, he shuts it off. The song also played over the closing credits. According to The New York Times, the rights to the song cost the producers over $250,000.
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.
Today in Beatles History (From The Internet Beatles Album) March 23 –
1962 – Performance at the Cavern, with Gerry and the Pacemakers.
1963 – Concert at the City Hall, Newcastle (Chris Montez and Tommy Roe tour).
1964 – In His Own Write'is published,
– US EP release: "The Beatles' ('Souvenir Of Their Visit To America')".
– US single release: "Do You Want To Know A Secret" / "Thank You Girl".
– BBC's Frankly Speaking is broadcast, with Brian's interview recorded on 7 March 1964.
– Ceremony at EMI House, London. Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas are presented with silver discs by Sir Joseph Lockwood. Brian attends.
– Evening: Empire Rooms, Leicester Square, London. Annual Carl-Alan awards dinner.
Revolver – Side 2, Track 7 (2:57)
YouTube
From Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, About.com, and Google –
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:
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.)
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)
A Mellotron set on what sounds like a flute or oboe setting; reversed. (0:23, 0:45, 1:15, 1:24, 2:09)
Another Mellotron performance, possibly on a horn setting; reversed. (0:38, 0:45, 0:53, 1:04. 1:44, 1:54, 2:30)
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.)
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver but the first to be recorded. Credited as a Lennon/McCartney song, it was written primarily by John Lennon. Music critic Richie Unterberger of Allmusic said it was "the most experimental and psychedelic track on Revolver, in both its structure and production."
The song has a vocal put through a Leslie speaker cabinet (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ) and uses automatic double tracking (ADT) to double the vocal image. Tape loops prepared by the Beatles were mixed in and out of the Indian-inspired modal backing underpinned by Ringo Starr's constant but non-standard drum pattern. The song is also one of the first uses of a flanger effect on any instrument.
Composition –
John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, with lyrics adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which in turn was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Although Peter Brown believed that Lennon's source for the lyric was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself, which, he said, Lennon read whilst consuming LSD, George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary's, Alpert's and Metzner's book and Paul McCartney confirmed this, stating that he and Lennon had visited the newly opened Indica bookshop — Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche — and Lennon had found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream".
Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book. 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.
Title –
The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics. In an interview McCartney revealed that, like "A Hard Day's Night", it was taken from one of Ringo Starr's malapropisms. The piece was originally titled "Mark I". "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.
When The Beatles returned to London after their first visit to America in early 1964 they were interviewed by David Coleman of BBC Television. The interview included the following:
Interviewer: "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." Interviewer: "Let's have a look. You seem to have got plenty left."
Ringo: (turns head) "Can you see the difference? It's longer, this side."
Interviewer: "What happened exactly?"
Ringo: "I don't know. I was just talking, having an interview (exaggerated voice). Just like I am NOW!"
(John and Paul begin lifting locks of his hair, pretending to cut it)
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)
Recording –
Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia. McCartney remembered that, even though the song's harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was and said it was "rather interesting". The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based upon a C drone. The "chord" over the drone is generally C major, with some changes to B flat major.
The 19-year-old Geoff Emerick was promoted to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album. This started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.
Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. Lennon's suggestion was that he be suspended from a rope and—after being given a good push—he would sing as he spun around the microphone. This idea was rejected by Martin, but when asked by Lennon about it, he would only reply with, "We're looking into it." Emerick finally came up with the idea of wiring Lennon's vocal through a Leslie rotating speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect without the need of a rope. Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.
A 7-inch reel of 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops.
As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio technical manager, developed an early form of double-tracking called Automatic double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the playback and recording heads of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine. 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. By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which The Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver. 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.
The track included the highly compressed drums that The Beatles currently favoured, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambura drone. McCartney supplied a bag of ¼-inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops. 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. Each loop was about six seconds long.
The tape loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building and controlled by EMI technicians in studio two at Abbey Road on 7 April. Each machine was monitored by one technician, who had to keep a pencil within each loop to maintain tension. The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters. Eight of the tapes were used at one time, changed halfway through the song. The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration (0:07). According to Martin, the finished mix of the tape loops cannot be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.
The tape loops contained:
A "seagull" or "American Indian" whooping effect (which was the sound of Harrison's guitar sped up).
An orchestral chord of B flat major (from a Sibelius symphony) (0:19) A Mellotron Mk.II, played with the "brass" 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 Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival of Light", an as-yet-unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, and in "Revolution 9", released on The Beatles.
The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version while the mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape-loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo, exactly halfway through the song, but is edited out of the mono mix.
ennon was later quoted as saying that "I should have tried to get my original idea, the monks singing. I realize now that's what I wanted." Take one of the recording was released on the Anthology 2 album.
Takes: 3
Personnel
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 (Challen upright), tape effects
The Love album remix –
In 2006, Martin and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. 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. The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles: Rock Band music video game.
In popular culture –
DJ Spooky said of the track in 2011:
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is one of those songs that’s in the DNA of so much going on these days that it’s hard to know where to start, Its tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think thatBrian Eno’s idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.
The song has been covered by numerous musicians:
A 1968 cover by Jimi Hendrix is included on the 1980 posthumous bootleg Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead.
The Pink Fairies played extended versions of the song at many 1970s pop festivals.
On 3 September 1976 a live, full-scale rearrangement was recorded by the band 801, with personnel including Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno.
Phil Collins covered the song on his 1981 album Face Value, ending with an a cappella snippet of "Over the Rainbow."
The Mission recorded their version in 1986 for the "Severina" single. It was later included on the singles compilation The First Chapter.
The Chameleons also recorded a version, included as a bonus track on their 1986 album Strange Times.
Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston covered the song on their 1989 album It's Spooky, adding a twist to the lyrics after the final verse when Johnston enters shouting:"No! No! Ladies and gentlemen, do not surrender to the void! The darkness surrounds you—don't relax! You'll never get out of that pit! No! No! It isn't love—the demons will enter! No! No! No!"
Listed in set lists as "TNK," The Grateful Dead performed the song 12 times in the 1990s, always segueing out of The Who's "Baba O'Riley". Subsequently, former Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Vince Welnick have played the song in their post-Dead projects.
Reggae group The Wailing Souls included a version on their 1998 all-cover album Psychedelic Souls.
Portland band Helio Sequence, covered the song on their 2000 album Com Plex.
David Lee Roth covered the song on his 2003 album Diamond Dave, listed in the track list as "That Beatles Tune."
Parody band Beatallica recorded a mashup of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and Metallica's "The Day That Never Comes" entitled "Tomorrow Never Comes," on their 2009 album Masterful Mystery Tour.
Herbie Hancock recorded a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for his 2010 album The Imagine Project featuring Dave Matthews on vocals. Also, Matthews often performs an excerpt of "Tomorrow Never Knows" during live versions of his band's song "Minarets."
The song is referenced in the lyrics to the 1995 Oasis song "Morning Glory": "Tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon.
The Chemical Brothers refer to "Tomorrow Never Knows" as their "manifesto"; their 1996 track "Setting Sun" is a direct tribute to it.
Our Lady Peace recorded a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the 1996 film The Craft and a cover by Carla Azar and Alison Mosshart is featured in the 2011 motion picture Sucker Punch.
The song 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." Draper, an advertising executive, is struggling to understand youth culture, but after contemplating the song for a few puzzled moments, he shuts it off. The song also played over the closing credits. According to The New York Times, the rights to the song cost the producers over $250,000.
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.
Today in Beatles History (From The Internet Beatles Album) March 23 –
1962 – Performance at the Cavern, with Gerry and the Pacemakers.
1963 – Concert at the City Hall, Newcastle (Chris Montez and Tommy Roe tour).
1964 – In His Own Write'is published,
– US EP release: "The Beatles' ('Souvenir Of Their Visit To America')".
– US single release: "Do You Want To Know A Secret" / "Thank You Girl".
– BBC's Frankly Speaking is broadcast, with Brian's interview recorded on 7 March 1964.
– Ceremony at EMI House, London. Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas are presented with silver discs by Sir Joseph Lockwood. Brian attends.
– Evening: Empire Rooms, Leicester Square, London. Annual Carl-Alan awards dinner.
– Brian and the Beatles attend. The Beatles receive two awards from the Duke of Edinburgh. It is announced that they have also won 5 Ivor Novello awards for 1963.
– A special award is made to Epstein and Martin for outstanding services to British music.
– Beginning of shootings at the Scala Theater for A Hard Day's Night.
– BBC Lime Grove Studios, London. John's appearance on BBC-TV's 'Tonight'. Broadcast live.
– A special award is made to Epstein and Martin for outstanding services to British music.
– Beginning of shootings at the Scala Theater for A Hard Day's Night.
– BBC Lime Grove Studios, London. John's appearance on BBC-TV's 'Tonight'. Broadcast live.
1966 – Rubber Soul, 16th week in the Top 10 (UK New Musical Express chart).
1967 – Studio 2. 7.00pm-3.45am. Recording: "Getting Better" (overdub onto take 14, tape reduction take 14 into take 15, overdub onto take 15). Mono mixing: "Getting Better" (remixes 1-3, from take 15). Producer and Engineer: Peter Vince; 2nd Engineer: Ken Scott.
– Re-recording of vocals for "Getting Better".
– Brian flies to New York to attend the opening night of the Who and Cream in Murray the K's package show at the RKO Theater.
– Re-recording of vocals for "Getting Better".
– Brian flies to New York to attend the opening night of the Who and Cream in Murray the K's package show at the RKO Theater.
1968 – Private screening of Around the World In 80 Days, at the Coliseum Cinerama. Ringo attends. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton host the event. After this, Ringo, Taylor and Burton go to the Dorchester Hotel for a supper party.
1970 – Abbey Road, Room 4. Time unknown. Stereo mixing: "I've Got A Feeling" (remixes 1, 2); "Dig A Pony" (remixes 1, 2); "I've Got A Feeling" (remixes 3-6); "The One After 909" (remixes 1-3); "I Me Mine" (remixes 1-3, from take 16); "Across The Universe" (remixes 1-8, from take 8). Editing: '"'ve Got A Feeling" (of stereo remixes 1, 2, called remix stereo 3; of stereo remixes 4, 5, 6, called remix stereo 4); "I Me Mine" (of stereo remixes 1, 2, 3, called remix stereo 2). Producer: Phil Spector; Engineer: Peter Bown; 2nd Engineer: Roger Ferris.
– Mixes of "I Me Mine" and "Across The Universe", guides for the orchestra.
– Start of work of Phil Spector and on Let It Be.
– Studio 3 (control room only). 3.00-7.00pm. Paul and Tony Clark oversee the making of copy master tapes for LP McCartney.
– Studio 3 (control room only). 3.00-7.00pm. Paul and Tony Clark oversee the making of copy master tapes for LP McCartney.
1973 – Single release: "My Love".
1993 – Paul's concert in Paramatta, Sydney (The New World Tour).
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