The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

Turn off your minds, relax and float downstream.

Album: Revolver (7th album)
Recorded: London, England
Genre: Rock, Psychedelic Rock
Album Release: August 5th 1966
Length: 2:59
Producer: George Martin
Vocalist: John Lennon
Label: Parlophone Records

Official Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 40 million
YouTube Music: Over 20 million

Credits

Bass, drums, guitar, organ, sitar, tambourine, tambura

Details

• 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was the first Beatles song from their psychedelic era and drew inspiration from the The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which John Lennon would read the book while tripping on LSD. The fifth precept of Buddhism is to refrain from using intoxicants, so I suppose Lennon overlooked that part. With lyrics like "you may see the meaning of within, it is being" the song is clearly influenced by Eastern philosophy.
  
  'Tomorrow Never Knows' production makes it particularly noteworthy because it was decades ahead of its time. It sounds like something Primal Scream or The Chemical Brothers would release 30 years later and, as such, 'Tomorrow Never Knows' is a key touchstone in the popularisation of electronic music. While avant-garde artists, such as Pierre Henry and Robert Moog, had previously used similar techniques on an intellectual basis, it was The Beatles who proved they could work in mainstream music.
  
  The song employed production techniques, such as sampling and looping that would become crucial in electronic dance music and hip hop. The band would record their instruments individually, and then play the tape backwards, speeding it up or slowing it down as necessary to find interesting sounds to include in the final version.
  
  The chosen samples would then be physically cut, taped, and layered in such a way that made it impossible to play live. They effectively used the recording studio as an extra member of the band. That they did this in 1966, decades before the wider industry would catch up, shows the visionary thinking and willingness to experiment that defined The Beatles. 
  
  
• The song builds a steady bass grove that plays throughout and gives it a hypnotic quality.
• On the Oasis track 'Morning Glory' they call 'Tomorrow Never Knows' their favourite tune. 
  
• First song recorded for Revolver.
• The TV series Mad Men paid around $250,000 to use 'Tomorrow Never Knows' in the episode 'Lady Lazarus'.
  

Artwork