Sobre "Tomorrow Never Knows" (The Beatles)

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is the final track of The Beatles' 1966 studio album Revolver. It is credited as a Lennon/McCartney song, but was written primarily by John Lennon. Although it was the first song that was recorded, it was the last track on the album.

The song is significant because it contains the first example of a vocal being put through a Leslie speaker cabinet to obtain a vibrato effect (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ) and the use of an ADT system (Automatic double-tracking) to double the vocal image.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" ends the Revolver album in a more experimental fashion than earlier records, which contributed to Revolver's reputation as one of the group's most influential and expressive albums.

John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, closely adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which they based on, and quotes from, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The understanding from the book was that the "ego death" experienced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is essentially similar to the dying process and requires similar guidance.

Peter Brown claimed that Lennon's only source of inspiration for the song came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which he says Lennon read whilst consuming LSD.[4] George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert, and Metzner's book.[5] McCartney confirmed this by stating that he and Lennon once visited the newly opened Indica bookshop—as Lennon was looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche—and Lennon found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, which quoted the lines: "When in doubt, relax, turn off your mind, float downstream".[6] Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book

Title

The title never actually appears in the song's lyrics, but was instead taken from Ringo Starr's collection of malapropisms. Lennon chose to do this because he was embarrassed about the spiritual theme of the lyrics in the song, so he decided to give the song a throwaway title.[8] The piece was originally titled "Mark I".[6] "The Void" is cited as another working title—but according to Mark Lewisohn (and Bob Spitz) this is untrue, although the books, The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles and The Beatles A to Z both cite "The Void" as the original title.

Recording
A cross-section showing the inner-workings of a Leslie speaker cabinet.

Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia.[9][10] McCartney remembered that even though the song was only one chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was, and even said that it was, "rather interesting". The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music, and is based upon a C drone. The "chord" over the drone is generally C major, with some changes to B flat major.

19-year-old Geoff Emerick was hired to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album that started at 8 p.m. on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.

Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted it to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. Lennon's suggestion was that he be suspended from a rope and—after being given a good push—he would sing as he spun around the microphone. (This idea was rejected by Martin, but when asked by Lennon about it, he would only reply with, "We're looking into it").[13] Emerick finally came up with the idea to wire Lennon's voice through a Leslie speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect, and without the need of a rope.[6][14] The effect was achieved by putting Lennon's vocal through the cabinet—which meant Emerick having to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet—and then re-recording the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker. This created a vibrato effect that was normally used for a Hammond organ.

As Lennon always hated doing a second take to double the sound of his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio technical manager, went home that night and created the world's first ADT system by taking the signal from the playback and recording heads and delaying them slightly, thereby creating two sound images and not just one. By altering the speed and frequencies he could also create other different types of effects, which The Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.[15] It must be noted that Lennon's vocal was clearly double-tracked on the first three verses of the song—due to the varying differences in the singing—but the full effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.

Experimentation and tape loops

The track was one of the first pieces of psychedelic rock, including highly compressed drums with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambur drone,similar to Harrison's later composition, "Within You Without You".
A 7-inch reel of inch-wide audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops.

McCartney supplied a bag of inch-wide audio tape loops he had made by himself at home, which he started making after listening to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. McCartney found out that if he took off the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooled a continuous loop of tape through the machine, anything he recorded would constantly keep overdubbing itself; creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effect and create their own loops.

The numerous tapes McCartney supplied were played on five individual BTR3 tape machines, and controlled by nonplussed EMI technicians in studio two at Abbey Road on 7 April.[14][5] The four Beatles controlled the faders of each machine, while Martin varied the stereo panning.[17] The tapes created a seagull/American Indian effect (which was McCartney shouting/laughing) and were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration (0:07)[18] Martin explained that the finished mix of the tape loops could never be repeated, because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.

The tape loops also contained:

* An orchestral chord of B flat major (0:19)
* A Mellotron Mk.II, played on the "flute" tape set (0:22)
* Another Mellotron played in 6/8 from B flat to C, using the "3 violins" tape set (0:38)
* A sitar-like ascending scalar phrase (actually played on an electric guitar, reversed and severely sped up), recorded with heavy saturation and acceleration (0:56)
* The guitar solo from The Beatles' Taxman was also superimposed onto the second half of the instrumental break. The solo was cut up, reversed and transposed down a tone.[19]

The Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival of Light"—an as-yet-unreleased McCartney piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions—and "Revolution 9", a John Lennon experimentation released on The Beatles (album).[20]

Mono and stereo versions

One difference between the mono and stereo mixes is the intro: The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version, but the mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape-loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo which was edited out of the mono mix.