Revolver
Side Two, Track Seven
“Tomorrow Never Knows”: The First Shall Be Last
by Jude Southerland Kessler
For the last 18 months, our Fest Blog has been replete with deep dives into the songs comprising The Beatles’ remarkable LP, Revolver. At long last, we’ve reached the final track…a track which, oddly enough, was the first recorded during the sessions for the album. Innovative, a bit bizarre, and fascinating, “Tomorrow Never Knows” was a game-changer. Indeed, the very title of the track was thought-provoking. It summarized the feelings of so many fans after listening to the new record. In only three short years, The Beatles had swiveled from “She Loves You” to “In My Life” to this! What a tremendous difference. In the summer of 1966, the question on everyone’s mind was, “What will happen next?” And the answer… “Tomorrow never knows.”
What’s Standard:
Date Recorded: Wednesday, 6 April 1966
Place Recorded: Studio Three
Time Recorded: Evening Session from 8.00 p.m. – 1.15 a.m.
Technical Team
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Geoff Emerick (newly promoted to fill this slot)
Second Engineer: Phil McDonald (Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, 70 and Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 105)
On this day: The Beatles begin work on their seventh studio LP with the recording of John Lennon’s song originally entitled “Mark I” and eventually known by a Ringo-ism, “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
Take One featured John playing a four-note melody on EMI studio’s 1965 Lowrey DSO-I Heritage Organ, Harrison playing a distorted tremolo electric guitar (one of three that he had in studio including his 1961 Fender Stratocaster with synchronized tremolo, his 1964 Gibson Maestro Vibrola vibrato, or his 1965 Epiphone ES-230TD Casino with Bigsby B7 vibrato, and finally, Starr on his 1964 Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl “Super Classic” drum set. Take One was recorded faster than the playback speed. Hammack tells us that when played at a normal speed, the music would sound “thicker and deeper.” (Hammack, 105) After Take One, there were two superimpositions added: Ringo added a second drum part, this time at the regular speed while John added his vocals, amplified through a Leslie speaker to give them a “flange-like distortion.” (Hammack, 106)
Then, Lennon asked to do another take that would provide a completely different backing track for “Mark I.” Take Two failed, but Take Three featured Starr on drums (“heavy backbeat,” Hammack tells us) and McCartney on his 1964 Rickenbacker 4001S. Take Three was selected to receive further attention as “best.” (Hammack, 106)
Second Date Recorded: Thursday, 7 April 1966
Place Recorded: Studio Three
Time Recorded: 2.30 p.m. – 7.15 p.m.
Technical Team
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Second Engineer: Phil McDonald
(Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, 70 and Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 105)
On this day: The Beatles returned to studio to complete additional work on Take Three of “Mark I.” Both John and Ringo had supplied “tape loops” for the recording on April 6, but now Paul and George arrived with loops as well. George Martin listened to all of the tape loops and selected 16 to use on the recording. Then, with the help of The Beatles, this selection was narrowed down again to only five loops. (See the “What’s Changed” segment of this blog for a thorough discussion of “tape loops.”) Recording the tape loops (a highly tedious process) was the work of this day. (Hammack, 107)
Also, on this second day of work, John recorded a second vocal without the Leslie effect. This would be used in the first 87 seconds of the completed song. (Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 106 and Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, 72)
Third Date Recorded: Friday, 22 April 1966
Place Recorded: Studio Two
Time: 2.30 p.m. – 11.30 p.m.
Technical Team
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Second Engineer: Phil McDonald (Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, 72 and Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 107)
On this day: The Beatles returned to Studio Two for the last session of superimpositions onto Take Three of “Mark I.” Lennon double-tracked his vocals from 7 April and then decided to replace the back-half of the original vocals from the 7 April session with a brand-new performance. This time, Lennon’s voice was run through the Leslie 122 speaker. (Note: This starts 87 seconds into the song. Lewisohn tells us that prior to this time mark, Lennon’s voice “was just treated with ADT,” Artificial Double Tracking. (The Beatles Recording Sessions, p. 72)
George Harrison added sitar work and a performance on the tambura, a very cumbersome “Indian four or five-stringed droning instrument” (Hammack, 107). McCartney added a backwards lead guitar riff (played on the Epiphone Casino) and Starr added tambourine. McCartney also added piano work on EMI’s 1905 Steinway upright piano. One of The Beatles (or perhaps George Martin) supplied some work on organ as well.
This very complicated, highly layered song was at last completed. Mixing work would follow.
Sources:
Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, 70-72, Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Chronicle, 216-217, Miles, The Beatles Diary, Vol. 1, 225 and 228, Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere, 111-113, Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 105-108, The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 209-210, Rodriguez, Revolver: How The Beatles Reimagined Rock’n’Roll, 106-111, Womack, Sound Pictures, The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, 31-34, Harry, The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia, 652, Harry, The John Lennon Encyclopedia, 911-912, Miles, The Beatles Diary, Vol. 1, 228 and 239, Winn, That Magic Feeling, 7-8, Gould, Can’t Buy Me Love, 317-320, Spizer, The Beatles for Sale on Parlophone Records, 216-217, Turner, Beatles ’66, 134-147, Turner, A Hard Day’s Write, 115-116, Margotin and Guesdon, All the Songs, 352-355, Pascal, Ed. The Beatles: The Fabulous Story of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, 3, Riley, Tell Me Why, 199-201, MacDonald, Revolution in the Head, 148-153, Spizer, The Beatles From Rubber Soul to Revolver, 222-223, Everett, The Beatles as Musicians, Revolver Through Anthology, 34-38, Davies, The Beatles Lyrics, 176-178, Spignesi and Lewis, 100 Best Beatles Songs, 130-132, and Mellers, Twilight of the Gods, 81-82.
What’s Changed:
- Individual Composition vs. Collaboration – Many of The Beatles’ songs on 1965’s Rubber Soul had been the result of teamwork. Regularly, Paul had motored out to Kenwood where, after lunch, John and Paul would work on the songs together. (This is very much the case with “Drive My Car” and “Michelle,” for example.) But in The Fabulous Story of John, Paul, George and Ringo, we are told that by the spring of 1966 and the advent of Revolver, “the two writers were progressing along divergent paths.” (p. 30)
This holds true in the creation of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” one of the earliest compositions completed for Revolver. John had the multifaceted song ready to record by the first week of April 1966, after working on it for several months in his new third-floor Kenwood home studio. (Miles, The Beatles Diary, Vol. 1, 225) In fact, in Sound Pictures, The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, Womack tells us that “a few days before [The Beatles’] April 6 recording session, [John] premiered his new song for Martin and McCartney at Brian Epstein’s Belgravia home during a planning session for their new long-player.” (p. 32)
By 1966, the days of shoulder-to-shoulder collaborations were gradually coming to an end. But when one of the boys created something unusual or fantastic, the others were inspired to participate.
In Here, There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick tells us that in late 1965 or early 1966, “…all four Beatles…had gone out and bought themselves open reel tape recorders… [and] they conducted sonic experiments in their respective homes. They would often bring in bits of tape and say, ‘Listen to this!’ as they tried to outdo one another in a de facto ‘weird sound’ contest.” (p. 111) And even though most of the compositions for Revolver were the product of individual experimentation, a song like “Tomorrow Never Knows” inspired collaborative creative efforts. This collaboration occurred in the studio, as The Beatles supplied their own individually created pieces as a way to “come together.”
We all know that John wrote the lyrics and music for “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and he explained in lavish detail the “aura” that he sought for the song. Then, John and Ringo showcased a recording of loop effects that they had created for the new track. (Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere, 111)
Emerick says that, “Paul [then] sat up all night composing a whole series of short tape loops for the song…an extraordinary collection of bizarre sounds…” (p. 111-112) And George Harrison created loops as well. (Hammack, 106) Upon hearing this collection of oddities, “George Martin and [Emerick] huddled over the console,” playing the various loops, “raising and lowering faders to shouted instructions from John, Paul, George, and Ringo.”(p. 112)
Several weeks later, Emerick tells us, “George Harrison showed up with the tamboura…Harrison…said that the tamboura drone would be the perfect complement to John’s song, and he was right.” (p. 112-113) Clearly, The Beatles worked together as a team to perfect “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and the result was a “grand finale” that left listeners wide-eyed over the artistic, groundbreaking record.
- The Use of Tape Loops – In his Beatles Recording Reference Manual, 2, Jerry Hammack observes that in 1966, “The Beatles…having conquered the world of pop music…had earned the opportunity to do whatever they wanted.” (p. 105) And with their very first song recorded for Revolver, they did precisely that. One of the newest and most exciting of their innovative techniques involved the creation and application of tape loops.
In The Beatles Diary, Vol. 1, Barry Miles reports that during the first week of January 1966, “John installed a home studio at Kenwood, and over the next months he experimented with creating many avant garde sounds, plus one-man demos of his new compositions.” (p. 225) One of the novelties that most fascinated John was the tape loop. John explained the creation of a loop in this way: “Paul and I are very keen on electronic music. You make it clinking a couple of glasses together, or with bleeps from the radio, then you loop the tape so that it repeats the same noises at intervals. Some people build up whole symphonies from it.” (p. 228)
Jerry Hammack, in The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, gives a more technical explanation of tape loops: “Tape loops are short segments of audiotape containing previously recorded sounds that are connected in a continuous loop at the top and tail of the tape. The repetition of the ‘loop’ creates an audio pattern, the duration determined by the length of the tape.” (p. 106) Hammack goes on to say that the sound effects in this song “were all created in this manner.” (p. 106) Indeed, in Tell Me Why, Riley describes the tape loops in “Tomorrow Never Knows” as “…noises, backwards guitars, and eerie bird sounds swoop[ing] all around [The Beatles]. The swirls of motion are the product of…tape loops mixed randomly together for a blizzard effect…” (p. 199)
Each of The Beatles contributed to the 20 tape loops that were presented to George Martin who selected 16 as viable. Then together, The Beatles and Martin narrowed the choices down to five. (Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 107) Hammack tells us that the five chosen loops were: “McCartney’s laughter, sped up and sounding like a seagull; a B-flat major orchestral chord from a Jan Sibelius recording; two sitar parts, played backwards; and miscellaneous Mellotron sounds.” (Hammack, The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Vol. 2, 107) These unique sounds helped to create the signature other-worldly effect of “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
***Our discussion of tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” is far from comprehensive. I highly recommend the discussion of “Tomorrow Never Knows” in Robert Rodriguez’s work Revolver: How The Beatles Reimagined Rock’n’Roll, pp. 106-111.
- A Song About Life After Death or The Best Way to Experience LSD – The Beatles had written and/or sung about myriad topics including love, money, fame, deception, betrayal, anger, dancing, boys, and girls, but they had never tackled the miles-from-Chuck-Berry topic of life-after-death…or, as others suggest, the best way to experience LSD. John’s willingness to approach these weighty topics and Martin’s willingness to place “Tomorrow Never Knows” as the concluding song on the new Beatles’ LP demonstrated a vast shift in who The Beatles were in 1966 and who they would become in the years ahead.
If you view this song as a guidebook to life after death, then Spignesi and Lewis’s summary of Lennon’s thesis applies: “In ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ John offers departed souls two choices. The first is to become one with the void and escape the cycle of life and death and rebirth; the second, to continue on, be reborn, and ‘play the game ‘existence’ to the end.’” (p. 130) A serious focus on death and its implications had been central to John’s life since the 1955 loss of his Uncle George (his truest father figure), the tragic loss of his mother, Julia, in 1958, and the loss of his soul mate, Stu Sutcliffe, in 1962. Thoughts of death were never far from John’s mind. So, certainly, this may be one element of the song.
However, in 1965, John was reading Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner’s The Psychedelic Experience (which offered a loosely translated presentation of Leary’s philosophies based on Leary’s interpretation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead). In Part Two of The Psychedelic Experience, Leary and his co-authors offer “a user’s manual for an acid trip,” (Gould, 319) and the advice given in this part of the book spoke to John, who had found LSD to be revelatory. Somewhat echoing Leary – though, as Gould points out, John later refers to it as “that stupid book of Leary’s,” (Gould, p. 319) – John began to pen lyrics urging others to “release the ego” when experiencing the effects of LSD. Quoting Leary’s words, John offered his own guidebook for navigating the realm of LSD. Indeed, Womack reminds us that it was Leary, not Lennon, who first urged his readers to “turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.” (Sound Pictures, The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, 32)
Womack further proposes that Leary – and John – are talking about sublimating the ego as a “valuable means for preparing the acid-dropper to experience the life-altering throes of an LSD trip, which for many users, [George] Harrison included, took on death-like proportions.” (Sound Pictures, The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, p. 32)
However one interprets the lyrics of this first song recorded for Revolver, it is easy to see that things in the world of The Beatles had dramatically changed. Spizer, in The Beatles from Rubber Soul to Revolver, notes, “John had grown from ‘Love, love me do/You know I love you” to: ‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream/ It is not dying, it is not dying/ Lay down all thought, surrender to the void/ It is shining, it is shining.’” (p. 222)
Even the instruments that The Beatles selected to convey this mystical message were dramatically different: the tambura, sitar, mellotron, tambourine…and vocals transmitted through a Leslie speaker. For many fans, this new sound was incredible: “it [was] shining, it was shining.” But for others, the fab boys who had won their hearts with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had been replaced by strange, unrecognizable artists.
- A Preponderance of “Firsts” – There are so many “firsts” surrounding “Tomorrow Never Knows.” John himself said it is his first psychedelic song. It’s the first song in which a Leslie speaker is used to modulate the sound of a human voice. (Spignesi and Lewis, 130) We’ve already discussed tape loops. And this is the first Beatles song which does not include the title in the lyrics. Once this traditional barrier was swept aside, many others like it would follow: “A Day in the Life,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” “Yer Blues,” “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” and “The Inner Light.” Rubber Soul was an innovative LP, but Revolver was a complete transformation.
NEXT MONTH: Robert Rodriguez will have “the last word” on Revolver.
