Tomorrow Never Knows
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney.[9] 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.
For other uses, see Tomorrow Never Knows (disambiguation)."Tomorrow Never Knows"
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.[10] 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 two months before the release of 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.
Musical structure[edit]
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".[13][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.[29] The song's musical key is C Mixolydian.[30] 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.[31][32]
According to author Peter Lavezzoli, the composition is the first pop song to eschew formal chord changes altogether.[33][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.[37] "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,[38] creating a ♭VII/I (B♭/C) "slash" polychord.[37][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.[22]
Previews and influence on Revolver project[edit]
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."[73] 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."[74] According to Marianne Faithfull, who was also present, Dylan then walked out of the room.[75] 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".[76]
After experimenting with the techniques on "Tomorrow Never Knows", the Beatles used reversed sounds and tape-speed variation extensively throughout the Revolver sessions.[77][78] 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,[79] 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.[80][81][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.[83] 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."[85] 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."[84]
Critical reception[edit]
In his album review for the NME, Allen Evans expressed confusion over "Tomorrow Never Knows".[101] 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."[102] 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."[103] 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.[104] Davies was unimpressed with the track,[105] and concluded that the band must have had "George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this".[106]
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."[107] 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."[108]
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."[109] 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."[110]
In 2006, Pitchfork ranked "Tomorrow Never Knows" at number 19 on its list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s"[111] and Q magazine placed the track 75th on a list of "The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time".[20] "Tomorrow Never Knows" appears at number 18 on Rolling Stone's list of the best Beatles songs[112] and at number 4 on similar lists compiled by Uncut in 2001[113] and Mojo in 2006.[114] In 2018, the music staff of Time Out London ranked it at number 2 on their list of the best Beatles songs.[115]
Influence and legacy[edit]
In 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.[122] 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".[123]
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".[124] 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."[125]
According to Simon Philo, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was the most groundbreaking track on an album that announced the arrival of the "underground London" sound.[126] 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.[127]
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".[128] 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.[129] 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,[130] adding that the song "immediately impacted on pop culture".[131] 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".[132]
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".[6] 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."[133] 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".[33]
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.[134][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.[136]
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".[137] Steve Turner highlights the sound sampling and tape manipulation as having had "a profound effect on everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Jay Z".[138] 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.[138] 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.[139]
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."[140] 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."[141][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".[143][144][nb 10] The Chemical Brothers have referred to "Tomorrow Never Knows" as the template for their music;[146] 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."[129] 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".[147]
According to Ian MacDonald:[158]
The Beatles
Additional musician