"Tomorrow Never Knows" today. I hadn't heard it in quite a while, and it happened to come up on my iPod.
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LaZboyfriend — 13 years ago(November 04, 2012 11:58 AM)
The other two songs you mentioned were released for radio play. Just like Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby from the same album. Mainstream singles tend to reflect what's popular at the time rather than something that's "alternative".
I've read this over a few times, trying very hard to see how it relates to the point I'm making, and for the life of me, I don't see it.
The point I was making is that "Tomorrow Never Knows" was produced in the year 1966 and was released on an album in the year 1966, but in no way, in my opinion, sounds like the year 1966.
Strip Lennon's vocals from it (the only thing that might "date" this song, in the sense that we know he's no longer living) and listen strictly to what's happening in this song MUSICALLY, and it could very well be an "alternative rock" song today.
This is an incredible feat for a song from the year 1966.
It was light-years ahead of its time.
Room for one more, honey. -
jp3183 — 13 years ago(November 04, 2012 10:12 PM)
Right, but replace Barbara Ann & These Boots are Made for Walkin' with Yellow Submarine & Eleanor Rigby and you pretty much got the same point. My point ain't so much about you saying that "Tomorrow Never Knows" is ahead of its time, da0but about the fact that you mentioned those two songs specifically in your "consider for a moment" statement.
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spyders — 13 years ago(November 06, 2012 10:52 AM)
Hi Lazyboyfriend,
I agree with you that this song was well ahead of it's time. John mentioned to George Martin that he wanted to do a song without a chord progression. The entire song is based on one chord. This may well have been the first modern western song to have no chord progression. When John brought this idea to George Martin, he was quite intrigued by it and was very enthusiastic.
Perhaps the biggest factor in making this song come off like it did was Geoff Emerick. The Beatles' enginneer for the first several albums, Norman Smith had decided to move in another direction and so for the Revolver album, Geoff Emerick was offered and accepted the job of engineering The Beatles. It was a monumental move which changed The Beatles sound forever and revolutionized the recording process. Geoff was only 20 years old. He had been Norman Smith's assistant but was full of new ideas and was unencumbered by old stodgy rules and procedures. He was ready to experiment with sound and this being the first chance he had to engineer a song, began experimenting immediately.
John and Paul had brought in bags of tape loops (of all kinds of crazy sounds) they had made at home and at one point Geoff had 5 tape machines running at the same time with people hand spooling tape loops through the machines while Geoff was bringing the sounds up and down on the mixing board as he saw fit. He also ignored many Abbey Road rules and edicts about how to use the equipment and did many things with the equipment that he certainly would have gotten in a great deal of trouble for had he been engineering any other band besides The Beatles. For example, in miking Ringo's drums, he put the microphones right up next to the drums which was strictly against Abbey Road rules and it changed the way the drums sounded when recorded. The Beatles loved it and so management at Abbey Road looked the other way. He decided to experiment with the Leslie speaker in the studio, he literally opened the cabinet and changed the circuitry so that he could run John's voice through the Leslie. Once again, this was strictly against the rules but The Beatles loved it and so management looked the other way. This was the first time anyone had ever used a Leslie speaker for anything other than an organ.
John told George Martin that he wanted his voice to sound like "the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountain top" and John was extremely pleased with the sound Martin and Emerick achieved.
So Yeah, this song was way, way ahead of it's time and set the path for many Beatles' recordings to follow.
Spyders -
OobuJoobu — 13 years ago(March 23, 2013 04:32 PM)
Last year I put together a big playlist on my iPod with a load of classic albums from the 60s, but had them all in chronological order.
I then spent the next couple of weeks listening to nothing but this playlist, in order, so I could get a real sense of how music progressed through the decade (I wasn't around to see/hear it first hand).
Anyway, a few things struck me on the journey - The Doors debut album had never really impressed me before, but hearing it in context, of where it fitted, amazed me. An album like that just SHOULDN'T have been made for at least another year! Same with The Velvet Underground And Nico.
Now, when it came to Revolver (yes, I know, that came before either of the 2 albums mentioned so far so I listened to it before them), I didn't really expect much of an experience purely because I know the album so well. Yes, it would be great, it's Revolver for gods sake, but surely it won't hold any surprises right? WRONG!
I'd just listened to Blonde On Blonde and Pet Sounds (released on the same day as each other, what a day!), yet Revolver just came bang out of nowhere, "I'm not ready for this yet, we shouldn't be at this point yet!" How the hell had these guys come up with something so beyond what had preceded it?
Eleanor Rigby, She Said She Said, and especially Tomorrow Never Knows just seemed to come from another planet. I've listened to Revolver probably a few hundred times since I first heard it nearly 25 years ago, but I never heard it sounds as good as it did that day last year. -
cbartal — 13 years ago(April 01, 2013 03:51 PM)
I appreciate Tomorrow Never Knows to a certain extent. It is daring in many ways.
But what made the Beatles was mostly melody. Sonic innovation was a c5b4lose second, but L and M secured their genius based on melody.
I will say that there is some true sonic innovation behind TNK because of Emerick and the Beatles willingness to experiment.
But a song like I'm Only Sleeping, for instance, combines the melody with the experimentation. It's defined by melody, and the innovation is the icing on the cake.
TNK is sonically intriguing. But the melody is lacking. Of course, it is a one chord drone, but an interesting melody can be built even from one chord. Elvis Costello made a point of purposely making great one chord melodies with songs like Big Boys, some of Green Shirt, Uncomplicated, or Tokyo Storm Warning off of Blood And Chocolate.
Look, I love TNK, but I just prefer the melody driven stuff. I'm Only Sleeping was just as sonically innovative, but that melody. Yeesh. -
jdhowes1138 — 11 years ago(September 28, 2014 06:27 PM)
I hear 'Tomorrow never Knows' as the Beatles basically inventing rap music. A repeated drumbeat, practically 'spoken' lyrics (not sung), with the tape loops being the analogue equivalent of digital samples. Once in the early 90's I was at a nightclub where this was played in among the 'hits of the day' and no-one even twigged that it was an 'old' song. In a club setting it sounded 'contemporary'. All that's missing are the cuss words.
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TectorGorch — 11 years ago(April 05, 2015 05:00 PM)
Have you heard the "Anthology," "Mark One" version? It lacks the sound loops, and the timing is a little off at points, but it's fascinating all the same. So many of their demos are, to my ears, better than the released songs.
"Eight Mile High," by the Byrds, still sounds very good today. I think it was released before "Revolver" hit the shelves, and it's one of the early psychedelic songs. I've always wondered if John was mocking them in "And Your Bird Can Sing," as the initial version of the song had a very Byrd-like quality to it.