Beatles’ acid trip: “Tomorrow Never Knows”

Genius.com edited by Wisdom Quarterly

• See Part 1: Acid meditation: “Tom. Never Knows” (Beatles)

Originally titled "The Void"

“Tomorrow Never Knows” is The Beatles’ most Buddhist song, seeing as the book it is based on.* It is the final track of their classic album Revolver.

It is sung by John Lennon and primarily written by him, although it’s credited as Lennon-McCartney, like all other songs written by Paul or John.

The song is considered revolutionary with the use of reversed sounds, tape loops, as well as the experimental instrumentation and recording.

Psychedelic Experience: Tibetan Book of the Dead

This is the first pop song that contains reversed sounds. (Even though “Rain” came out earlier, it was recorded after).

Typical for The Beatles, the drums are highly compressed. The Indian influence is apparent, as it contains modified sounds of sitar and tanpura.

To create the rich vocal sound, instead of a second vocal take, Automatic Double Tracking was used. In one vocal take, a second tape is recorded with a delay.

Furthermore, some of Lennon’s vocals were recorded while played by a Leslie speaker, which modifies the sound by rotating the loudspeakers. This effect can be heard after the reversed guitar solo in the middle of the song.

What's The Void? It's no thing, not nothing.

The working title of this song was “The Void” [Ākiṃcanyāyatana, the “Sphere of Nothingness”], a title which Lennon ultimately rejected because he felt that it would sound too pretentious, especially since it was the album’s final track.

As an alternative he gave the song a throwaway title, based on one of Ringo Starr’s malapropisms. Ringo uttered the title while being interviewed about their visit to the US, where someone apparently cut a bit of his hair.

LSD: side effects, risks, help (verywellmind.com)

The song’s origins find themselves in Lennon tripping on LSD, while listening to his own spoken-word recording of passages from *The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on [the Vajrayana Buddhist text known as] The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Source