Tomorrow Never Knows

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Tomorrow Never Knows
The Beatles
publication 5th August 1966
length 3 min 2 s
Genre (s) Psychedelic rock , experimental rock
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album revolver

Tomorrow Never Knows ( English No one knows what tomorrow is [accordingly]) is a song by the Beatles in 1966, written and sung by John Lennon (despite the usual Autorenangabe Lennon / McCartney ). He appeared on the album Revolver .

Text and title

The text was based on writings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead , which in turn was used as a source by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert in his handbook for expanding consciousness, The Psychedelic Experience . It considers the use of LSD for psychiatric treatment purposes and provides instructions for a controlled high . John Lennon was consuming LSD at the time.

The title Tomorrow Never Knows , which is never sung as text at any point in the song, is a malapropism by Ringo Starr , similar to A Hard Day's Night . Starr uttered this phrase in an interview in 1964, which should mean "Nobody knows what tomorrow will be".

Music and production

This song ends the album Revolver , but was recorded as the first track. The recordings in the Abbey Road Studios began on April 6, 1966. The producer was George Martin , the 20-year-old Geoff Emerick was hired as a sound engineer , who contributed numerous technical ideas.

In terms of production technology, the Beatles once again broke new ground. In addition to Lennon's vocals, the song mainly consists of a continuous drum and bass loop and tape loops running backwards . The musicians also experimented with this technique on other songs in order to expand their musical expression. Paul McCartney played a guitar solo, which was also mixed backwards.

Lennon's voice has been alienated throughout with the help of the flanging effect invented by Ken Townsend . In the second half of the piece, it is also passed through a Leslie loudspeaker because it should sound distant and thin - according to George Martin, Lennon said: “I want to sound like I'm the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountain peak and still hear the words I'm singing. ”To achieve such an effect, Emerick and his team modified the circuitry of a Hammond organ to use the Leslie loudspeaker built into it. From then on, the Beatles used this revolutionary technique for a wide variety of instruments.

Most of the time, the track remains harmoniously in a C major chord (above the organ point of the bass loop), which only changes towards the end of the stanzas to the double subdominant B major . The vocal melody is in the Mixolydian key .

This title went through many stages of development before the final version was recorded. It is to be regarded as a pure studio product and could not have been performed live with the technology at the time. This way of working soon became typical of the Beatles; since they no longer went on tour, their songs no longer had to be limited to stage technology.

Cover versions

Like numerous other Beatles songs, this one was also covered by other artists (selection):

Others

With Tomorrow Never Came , Lana Del Rey and Sean Lennon recorded a homage to Tomorrow Never Knows for their album Lust for Life . TC Boyle added a quote from Tomorrow Never Knows as the motto of his novel Das Licht (2019) .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tilman Baumgärtel: Loops. On the history and aesthetics of the loop . Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2015, p. 295-314 .