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Tomorrow Never Knows |
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I really enjoyed recording this tribute to The Beatles' Revolver album. It stemmed initially from thinking about doing an album of my favourite songs by other artists. Then I thought, rather than doing an album of covers, why not do a cover of an album? From there it was only a few short moments before I knew it had to be Revolver. That was February 2006 and I realised if I wanted to celebrate its 40th anniversary properly I had to get the hell on with it. Tomorrow Never Knows was arranged, recorded and mixed in 4 months and I'm very proud of it (yeah, I know, the Beatles recorded their first album in about 13 hours so 4 months is an eternity in comparison).
Revolver is one of the best albums ever recorded. EVER! It's credited with being the first psychedelic album and it was the last one The Beatles recorded just before giving up touring and retiring to the studio. It's always in the Top 10 best-albums-ever recorded lists (often at No. 1) and some see it as The Beatles' transition album from their pop albums to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But I've done it a little differently. I wanted the styles I used to both pre-date and post-date the Beatles. So "let me tell you how it will be" when you hear it: 1. Taxman The Jam stole the bassline from "Taxman" and recorded a song called "Start" so I borrowed the bassline from The Jam's "A Town Called Malice" and modified it to fit this track (I thought it was only fair). Using that bassline completely changed the feeling of the original "Taxman", it has a much rockier, punchier feel. 2. Eleanor Rigby To reflect the monotonous, repetitive existence of both Eleanor Rigby AND Father MacKenzie (I think his life in this song is as lacking in hope and reward as Eleanor's) I recorded what is otherwise quite a gentle acoustic track but with a heavily distorted rhythm guitar in the background. It has quite a menacing drone but it's quite subtle (I love it). 3. I'm only sleeping I played around with the chords a little and did a bit of restructuring. And I love my guitar solos in this. Such a mix of styles. I also got a friend of mine to join me on the vocals, Mike Warwick from The Lost and Found Department (that's Mike talking at the beginning). But perhaps most significant of all is that this was the first time I've ever used handclaps - I used some Yugoslavs for the purpose (don't ask) and from the amount of editing we had to do, apparently handclaps are harder to do than you'd think. 4. Love you to Well, for a song with no chords and loads of sitar, it makes for a very good dance track (complete with 70s German-porn wah guitar). 5. Here, there and everywhere This is going to sound a little vain (and it may not go down too well with other Beatles fans) but I like my version better than the original. I took a few liberties with the melody, I'll admit, and the two lap steel guitar parts get me everytime. If I heard this version done by someone else I would wish I had done it. 6. Yellow submarine I have to admit that I've never really liked this song. It never seemed to fit on Revolver (to my ears) and I thought initially about maybe not recording this song at all. But decided I had to include it or it wouldn't be the full Revolver album. I did think about hiring the Russian Naval Choir but I couldn't afford them (and the reference to submarines might have been thought insensitive - at the time of the album's release a Russian nuclear submarine had recently sunk and everyone on board had died). So I did it as an old English sea shanty. I had to do a bit of research to do this one justice and I even learned to play the accordian especially (albeit it was very basic). I'm really glad I decided to keep this one in, I think it works really well. 7. She said, she said This is so 1980s! Fantastic! One of my favourites on the album (the original AND this one). 8. Good day, sunshine I was trying to be a bit more "fairground" on this one. Mike makes another appearance playing the guitar solo although you'd be forgiven for missing it under all my "la la la" stuff. It actually sounds a bit more Kinks than Beatles (for any kids reading this, that's like Brit Pop but earlier ... much earlier ... and way better). 9. And your bird can sing This is one of my favourite moments on the original so I kept those harmony guitars. Everything else on this track is completely different. 10. For no one This is one of the first songs that I started to record but one of the last to finish. I really took this song apart, slowed it down, changed the time signature and, again, took liberties with the melody line. While I always thought the original was okay ... whadya know? ... it turns out that this song has an absolutely brilliant lyric. It was just hiding under a mid-tempo chirpy piano song. Well, not anymore it isn't. 11. Doctor Robert I glammed this one up a bit, à la Rachel Stamp and complete with "Je Suis Maisée" keyboard. 12. I want to tell you I slowed this one right down, too. Sounds fantastic. The original melody line is on the backing vocal so again I took some liberties with the upfront melody line. The chorus really kicks off but in the mixing stage we decided it was better without drums so we left them off. I've never heard anyone do that before, kick off in the chorus without drums. But I assure you it was deliberate (so no emails saying, "I think you forgot the drums"). 13. Got to get you into my life Howlin' Wolf, eat your heart out. This one didn't take long to record but it took me ages to rehearse and it was the very last song I recorded. I spent months practicing and working out a lap steel part (but only about an hour on the harmonica). A lot of the Beatles' stuff was quite bluesy ("Old Brown Shoe" and "Don't Let Me Down", for example) and, of course, the blues had a large indirect influence via R&B and rock'n'roll. But the Beatles rarely did out-and-out blues - off the top of my head I can only think of "Yer Blues" from the White Album (I'm sure there are other Beatles fans out there who will email to correct me). Having recently been given a lap steel for my birthday, and because this song is in G, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have some bluesy fun with it. 14. Tomorrow never knows Industrial glam. Think Iggy Pop's The Idiot meets Goldfrapp's Supernature.
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