Tomorrow Never Knows
John Lennon wrote the lyrics to Tomorrow Never Knows in January 1966. He drew these words from a book titled The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner authored this text. Paul McCartney recalled finding the book at the Indica bookshop while Lennon searched for Nietzsche. The page contained lines that read "Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream." Lennon took LSD and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the text. George Harrison later questioned whether John fully understood the meaning behind those lyrics. Harrison noted that meditation aims to transcend waking, sleeping, and dreaming states. He expressed uncertainty about if Lennon truly grasped the depth of what he was singing. The title itself never appears within the song's actual lyrics. Ringo Starr had used the phrase during a television interview in early 1964. He laughed off an incident where a guest cut his hair at the British Embassy in Washington DC. Lennon chose this malapropism to soften the heavy philosophical weight of the verses.
Recording sessions for Revolver began at 8 pm on the 6th of April 1966 in Studio Three at EMI Studios. Geoff Emerick served as the recording engineer and encouraged the band to break all rules. Lennon wanted the track to sound like a thousand Tibetan monks chanting from a mountaintop. Engineers achieved this effect by running Lennon's vocal through a Leslie speaker cabinet. This device normally amplified Hammond organs but created a swirling sound when modified. Ken Townsend developed artificial double tracking to avoid having Lennon sing twice. Two tape machines ran on separate generators to keep their frequencies locked together. Paul McCartney admired Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge and decided to create tape loops himself. Technicians disabled the erase head on a recorder and spooled continuous tape through the machine. Each loop measured about six seconds long. The Beatles supplied thirty or so loops, and George Martin selected sixteen for the final mix. Eight tapes played simultaneously while technicians held pencils inside the loops to maintain tension. Five specific loops appeared prominently in the finished version. One loop contained McCartney's laughter sped up to resemble a seagull entering at 0:07. Another featured an orchestral chord of B major appearing at 0:19.
The song relies heavily on a high volume C drone played on a tambura instrument. George Harrison had introduced Indian musical elements to the group late in 1965 with his sitar part on Norwegian Wood. The harmonic structure derives directly from Indian music traditions rather than Western progressions. The key is C Mixolydian, which maintains a constant bass line throughout the entire track. Peter Lavezzoli identified this composition as the first pop song to eschew formal chord changes altogether. Despite this limitation, Dominic Pedler noted the band displayed harmonic ingenuity in upper harmonies. Lennon's vocal melody runs unvarying E notes before shifting to G during the word relax. A run of three G melody notes rises to a B at the start of the verse's fifth bar. This creates what musicologists call a slash polychord. Ringo Starr's drum pattern acts as a stumbling march that disrupts normal rhythmic emphasis. His first accent falls on the measure's first beat while the second stress occurs in the third quarter. This double sixteenth note stutter pre-empts the standard rock backbeat. The result conveys a meditative state similar to a psychedelic experience through sustained repetition.
EMI issued the album Revolver on the 5th of August 1966 through its Parlophone label. The editor of an Australian teen magazine called Mirabelle wrote that everyone from Brisbane to Bootle hated the daft song. Nicholas Schaffner recalled that some people thought Lennon was sprouting complete gibberish. Allen Evans expressed confusion over the electronic noises sounding like seagulls in his NME review. Peter Jones of Record Mirror stated you needed an aural microscope to get the message. Ray Davies of the Kinks concluded the band must have had George Martin tied to a totem pole. Paul Williams derided the track saying a good artist does not publish first drafts. Edward Greenfield of The Guardian described the lyrics as curious poetry but hoped Lennon was being satirical. Richard Goldstein reported for The Village Voice that the boundaries of pop music would now have to be re-negotiated. Maureen Cleave of The Evening Standard called it a lengthy and monstrous piece of nonsense about love. Despite this initial backlash, Pitchfork ranked the track at number 19 on its list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s. Rolling Stone placed it at number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs.
Thom Holmes included Tomorrow Never Knows in his book Electronic and Experimental Music as a pioneering work. He credited the song with ushering in a new era for electronic music in rock and pop. David Luhrssen and Michael Larson wrote that ancient met modern when sitars encountered tape loops. Walter Everett identified the studio effects as central to Pink Floyd's Pow R. Toc H. Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa used similar extreme tape-speed manipulation in subsequent recordings. Jon Pareles described the track as a portal to decades of music to come. Steve Turner highlighted how sound sampling had a profound effect from Jimi Hendrix to Jay Z. DJ Spooky stated the use of tape collage makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. Tony Visconti recalled moving to London because he needed to learn how people made records like this. The Chemical Brothers referred to the song as the template for their own music. Their 1996 track Setting Sun serves as a direct tribute to the original composition. John Foxx of Ultravox cited the song as containing almost everything he wanted to investigate for the rest of his life.
The song appeared as the fifth episode of the third season of The Beatles Cartoon on the 14th of October 1967. The band fell down an extremely deep well and emerged inverted among Mesoamerican Mayan people. Bruce Conner used Tomorrow Never Knows as the soundtrack to his LSD-inspired experimental film Looking for Mushrooms in 1967. James Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein heard the song on the radio while looking for a title for the 1997 adventure Tomorrow Never Dies. The rights to the song cost producers around $250,000 during the final scene of Mad Men's Lady Lazarus episode. This amount was about five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for television. Lionsgate claimed the 2012 use marked the first time a master recording by the Beatles had been licensed for a TV show. A satirical sketch on Not Only But Also featured comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore dressed in Indian clothing. They parodied the track as L.S. Bumblebee with lyrics playing on sensory contradictions like listening to the color of dreams. Martin and his son Giles remixed the rhythm with vocals from Within You Without You for the Love album in 2006.
Up Next
Continue Browsing
Common questions
Who wrote the lyrics to Tomorrow Never Knows and what book inspired them?
John Lennon wrote the lyrics to Tomorrow Never Knows in January 1966. He drew these words from a book titled The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead authored by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner.
When did recording sessions for Revolver begin and where were they held?
Recording sessions for Revolver began at 8 pm on the 6th of April 1966 in Studio Three at EMI Studios. Geoff Emerick served as the recording engineer during this process.
What musical instruments and techniques define the sound of Tomorrow Never Knows?
The song relies heavily on a high volume C drone played on a tambura instrument with George Harrison introducing Indian musical elements. Engineers achieved a swirling effect by running Lennon's vocal through a Leslie speaker cabinet and using thirty tape loops created by technicians.
How was Tomorrow Never Knows received upon the release of Revolver on the 5th of August 1966?
Initial reception included harsh criticism from publications like NME and Record Mirror which described the track as nonsense or gibberish. Despite this backlash Pitchfork ranked the track at number 19 on its list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s and Rolling Stone placed it at number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs.
Which later artists and bands have cited Tomorrow Never Knows as an influence on their music?
Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and The Chemical Brothers used similar extreme tape-speed manipulation or referenced the song in their work. John Foxx of Ultravox cited the song as containing almost everything he wanted to investigate for the rest of his life while DJ Spooky stated the use of tape collage makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully.
In what media productions has Tomorrow Never Knows appeared since its original release?
The song appeared as the fifth episode of the third season of The Beatles Cartoon on the 14th of October 1967 and served as the soundtrack to Bruce Conner's film Looking for Mushrooms in 1967. It was also licensed for the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and the Mad Men episode Lady Lazarus with rights costing producers around $250,000.