Tomorrow Never Knows

On this day in Beatles history [April 6, 1966], the Beatles began recording their seventh album, Revolver. The first song to be recorded was John Lennon’s Tomorrow Never Knows. This is probably John’s weirdest song [just a tad weirder than I Am the Walrus], which of course makes it one of my favorites. The lyrics are inspired by what John called his “Tibetan Book of the Dead period.” Specifically, it was a book written by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert [later known as Baba Ram Dass], and Ralph Metzner entitled The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream,
It is not dying, it is not dying

Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,
Is it shining? Is it shining?

That you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being

Love is all and love is everyone
Is it knowing? Is it knowing?

That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing

But listen to the color of your dreams
Is it not living, is it not living

Or play the game "Existence" to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning

The production of the music is the “everything including the kitchen sink” approach. The first half of the vocal track utilizes Automatic Double Tracking, known as ADT. John Lennon hated the process of singing overdubs to his own voice, so he prodded the Abbey Road staff to come up with a technical solution. This technique, invented for the Beatles by Abbey Road studio technical manager Ken Townsend, linked two tape recorders together to automatically create a double track. You can hear the slight delay between the voices when listening on headphones. John told producer George Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred monks chanting from the Himilayas. He suggested to Martin that he be suspended from a rope and [with a good push] sing into the microphone as he spun around it. George Martin thought that idea was unworkable, but recording engineer Geoff Emerick came up with an idea. He figured out how to route John’s vocal through a Hammond organ’s rotating Leslie speaker. You can hear the effect starting at 1:27 into the song […Love is all and love is everyone…], the second half of the vocal track. That’s just the vocals…

The music itself was an Indian drone in C. Usually Western music has several chord changes, but not Tomorrow Never Knows. You have the bass playing the same notes through the song, and a very heavy drum sound that was achieved when Geoff Emerick took a huge sweater and put it inside Ringo’s bass drum and close-miking the entire drum kit. Lots of compression was added as well. George Harrison plays a sitar and a tambura droning over the bass and drums. Then there are all the sound effects. These effects were created by utilizing tape loops. Paul McCartney had been listening to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic music, and thus inspired during this time he experimented on a home tape recorder. He discovered that by removing the erasure head from his tape recorder, he could keep recording over the same piece of tape, saturating it with sound. He brought a bag full of these tape loops for the session for Tomorrow Never Knows. During the session, the Beatles had about five of these loops playing at the same time while George Martin and Geoff Emerick moved the faders of each tape machine up and down at random. Since all the tapes were going at the same time, it was a “live” performance of the mix, which prompted George Martin to state that the finished mix of the song could never be duplicated. The effects ranged from a “seagull” [which is really Paul McCartney laughing, or so I've read], a Mellotron playing on the flute setting, another Mellotron playing on a ‘violin” setting, and an orchestral chord recorded from a Sibelius symphony. They mixed those with a tape of the guitar solo from Taxman, which was cut up, reversed and overdubbed onto Tomorrow Never Knows at a later date.

There are currently three versions of Tomorrow Never Knows available to the general public. The best known version is the last song on Revolver. The second version released [which is actually the very first take of the song] can be found on Anthology 2. Minus all the tape loops and Indian instruments, this one has a Hammond organ, drums and John’s voice that all sounds like it was recorded underwater. The third version can be found on the LOVE soundtrack. This particular version begins with the turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying, it is not dying vocal, then the bass/drum rhythm track comes in with the vocals and melody of Sgt Pepper’s Within You Without You mixed in. Both tunes are based on Indian music, and the combination works well.

I asked Carol and Mark how they would describe Tomorrow Never Knows -

Carol: "Kind of like a boat on a river. A trance."
Mark: "It's kinda weird."
Greg was sleeping and unavailable for comment, but I know he loves the song.
My comment: "Genius!"

Enjoy!


The Revolver version...


The making of Tomorrow Never Knows...


Take 1 from Anthology 2...


The Tomorrow Never Knows/Within You Without You version from LOVE...

Main sources
Mark Lewisohn - The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Original Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970

Geoff Emerick with Howard Massey - Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles