Published in 1966
Author: Lennon/McCartney
Track 14 on “Revolver“
Beatles quotes about “Tomorrow Never Knows”
JOHN 1968: “‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ …I didn’t know what I was saying, and you just find out later. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig, I know that somewhere people will be looking at them.”
JOHN 1968: “Often the backing I think of early-on never comes off. With ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ I’d imagined in my head that in the background you would hear thousands of munks chanting. That was impractical, of course, and we did something different. It was a bit of a drag, and I didn’t really like it. I should have tried to get near my original idea, the munks singing. I realize now that was what I wanted.”
JOHN 1972 “This was my first psychedelic song.”
JOHN 1980 “That’s me in my ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ period. I took one of Ringo’s malapropisms as the title, to sort of take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics.”
PAUL 1984: “That was one of Ringo’s malapropisms. John wrote the lyrics from Timothy Leary’s version of the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead.’ It was a kind of Bible for all the psychedelic freaks. that was an LSD song. Probably the only one. People always thought ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was but it actually ‘wasn’t’ meant to say LSD.”
JOHN 1968: “‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ …I didn’t know what I was saying, and you just find out later. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig, I know that somewhere people will be looking at them.”
JOHN 1968: “Often the backing I think of early-on never comes off. With ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ I’d imagined in my head that in the background you would hear thousands of munks chanting. That was impractical, of course, and we did something different. It was a bit of a drag, and I didn’t really like it. I should have tried to get near my original idea, the munks singing. I realize now that was what I wanted.”
JOHN 1972 “This was my first psychedelic song.”
JOHN 1980 “That’s me in my ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ period. I took one of Ringo’s malapropisms as the title, to sort of take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics.”
PAUL 1984: “That was one of Ringo’s malapropisms. John wrote the lyrics from Timothy Leary’s version of the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead.’ It was a kind of Bible for all the psychedelic freaks. that was an LSD song. Probably the only one. People always thought ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was but it actually ‘wasn’t’ meant to say LSD.”
About “Tomorrow Never Knows”
“Tomorrow Never Knows” was written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. Their first song recorded for the album Revolver, it was released as the last track on the LP in August 1966. In the recording studio, the Beatles fully utilized the possibilities of recording without considering the possibility of reproducing the results on stage.
During the writing of 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.
There were a number of musical elements used by The Beatles in their recording, such as musique concrète, avant-garde composition, and electroacoustic sound manipulation, all of which were foreign to pop music. A constant, non-standard drum pattern is underpinned by an Indian-inspired modal backing of tambura and sitar drone and bass guitar, with minimal harmonic deviations from a single chord; additionally, tape loops prepared by the band were overdubbed “live” onto the rhythm track. Lennon’s vocals were fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet, normally used for a Hammond organ. Although the Beatles’ 1966 B-side “Rain“, which they recorded shortly after using the same technique, was issued over three months before Revolver, the song’s backwards guitar parts and effects marked the first use of reversed sounds in a pop recording.
Its pioneering use of sampling, tape manipulation, and other production techniques made “Tomorrow Never Knows” a highly influential recording in the psychedelic and electronic music genres. Additionally, it introduced lyrical themes that advocated mind expansion, anti-materialism, and Eastern spirituality into popular music. As soon as the song was released, many fans and journalists ridiculed it. Since then, it has been praised as an effective representation of a psychedelic experience. The song was ranked number 19 on Pitchfork’s list of “The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s”, and number 18 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs.
Personnel
- John Lennon – vocals, Hammond organ, Mellotron, tape loops
- Paul McCartney – bass guitar, tape loops
- George Harrison – sitar, tambura, lead guitar, tape loops
- Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine, tape loops
- George Martin – tack piano
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