Tag Archives: knows

#1392: The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows

Leave a reply

I saw this song was next after writing the previous post, and it got me wondering. When and how did I listen to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’? The thought got me looking back on that final third of 2009 when I really started listening to The Beatles, and surprisingly, it unlocked a memory that hadn’t been in the mental plane for a while. When I was on my Beatles discovery, trying to find out anything about any kind of song, I came across this person’s video. Made in the golden age of YouTube when everything was made on Windows Movie Maker, the video was a bunch of facts about ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ laid over the music, with some pictures here and there. My introduction to the Beatles was through songs like ‘Penny Lane’, ‘The Night Before’, ‘One After 909’… Songs that sound like a band made them. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was not like one of those. It was unlike any song I’d heard before. I was only 14 then, so that’s no exaggeration. And I don’t think it was too long after that that I found it was on Revolver and listened through the whole album.

The Beatles were meant to spend the first four months of 1966 making a film, which would have been their third in the four-film contract they had with some company. They said no and took a break instead. In January, John Lennon bought a book, took LSD and followed the instructions as exactly stated within the pages. The opening lyrics, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream”, are taken almost verbatim from it. April came around, it was time for the band to start recording a new album again, and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was the first song they worked on. Lennon wanted to translate the hallucinogenic experience into song, and the Beatles threw everything they had into it. They all brought in tape loops, which they manually overdubbed in a session, McCartney spurring up the idea. George Harrison played a sitar and tambura on the track, bringing his firmly established Indian inspirations into the mix. Lennon wanted to be hung upside-down and spun around a microphone while recording his vocal. New engineer Geoff Emerick tampered with a Leslie-speaker cabinet to get something to that effect. And in addition the banging drum take, Ringo Starr provided the song’s title. Not intentionally, but it was his words.

The problem with Beatles posts is that I don’t want to turn them into a casual rewrite of a Wikipedia page, and there’s a Wikipedia article for every Beatles track, I think. So any technical stuff or further insight you might want, it’s probably best you went over there. My personal take is hopefully what people are here for, so I’mma give it to you. I can’t imagine how people in 1966 reacted when this arrived as the final song on Revolver. To me, it feels like an intentional mark on the band’s part, showing that they were just on another level compared to their contemporaries. A lot of the public must have thought they’d gone insane or too weird. Or had been taking too many drugs, which isn’t wrong a judgement. This is a song that was worked on 60 years ago next week, and there are songs and bands today that solely exist to sound like it but pale in comparison. That pretty much sums up The Beatles too, honestly. A lot of people don’t want you to believe it these days, but those guys, they made some really good music.

#930: They Might Be Giants – No One Knows My Plan

1 Reply

They Might Be Giants’ 1994 album John Henry was the first where Johns Linnell and Flansburgh were accompanied by a live band rather than the drum machines and synth-instruments that had been their go-to method up to that point. Upon the album’s arrival, fans were greeted with guitar-prominent instrumentals, an actual bass guitar and live drums, and brass. There’s a lot of horns on this album. Today’s track, ‘No One Knows My Plan’, is one of those tracks to feature them. Brass can sometimes be one of those instrumental groups where, if heard too much in one sitting, they can be a bit overbearing. But you’ve got to appreciate the instrumental melody of the trumpet that triumphantly opens this song. Once you do that, it’s plain sailing from there.

The track arrives at the album’s midpoint, acting as something of an opener to its second half. With its conga-esque rhythms and ascending/descending scale riffs, it helps pick up the momentum after the contemplative turn the preceding song takes. In ‘No One Knows…’, the narrator is planning an escape from a prison cell, and the track is practically the tale of the narrator’s thoughts, feelings and experiences they’ve had while trying to fulfil this act. They tried to escape before, but have since realised that they’ve had to change their tactics. They’re always scheming, but they’ll never tell anyone the full angle. All this described under a skipping drum pattern, a horn group that undergo the role that a rhythm guitar would usually cover, and with a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave put in for good measure.

This one’s been a favourite of mine for the longest time. Not just from John Henry, but out of the whole TMBG catalogue. The melody’s so infectious. Once you’ve got that in your head, it’s hard to get rid of it. I’ll go ahead and admit that the album in particular isn’t one of my favourites by They, but it’s not without its highlights. ‘No One Knows…’ is for sure one of them. Back in the day, someone at the Cartoon Network offices must have liked the track too. It was used as the intro music to Cartoon Planet for a while.

#929: Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows

Leave a reply

I think just about anyone who’s into rock music likes this track, right? One of those songs you know without properly realising it. It’s Queens of the Stone Age’s signature track. The one with the riff that goes “duh-duh-nerner-duh-duh-nerner-vrrrm”. Close to that, anyway. The one with the video where a deer plays dead, beats up the band members and then hangs up their heads on the wall at the end. And, look, it’s everybody’s favourite person Dave Grohl on the drums. ‘No One Knows’ is the second song on the band’s Songs for the Deaf album from 2002, was the first single too, and I think it’s okay to say that in the 20 years that have passed it’s now come to be seen as one of the best 2000s-era songs of its genres.

I don’t think even I could tell you precisely when I first heard this one. ‘No One Knows’ is one of those tracks that always just seemed to be there, floating around in the ether, available on my computer or phone available to listen to. Though I’ll take a guess and say that its video would have been the main gateway toward knowing it. However old I was at the time, I’m sure I was amused by the video’s concept. Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri and Mark Lanegan run over a deer who unbeknownst to them is playing dead, once they get up close to it to see how it’s doing, the deer wakes up, knocks them out and ties them up, goes on a driving rampage and props their heads up on the wall of a house after he falls in love with one of those fake prop deers you’ll find in a a garden somewhere. It’s funny stuff, co-directed by Michel Gondry who’s been the man behind many an iconic music video.

Then there’s the other half of the video that shows the band “performing” the track. And I think as I’ve grown older, it’s that part of it that I appreciate more. Although they’re merely miming the track, it puts into perspective who’s playing what and the work they put into their instruments. Dave Grohl’s thrashing away at those tom-toms like an animal, Nick Oliveri pulls off those runs on the bass like it’s nothing, and Josh Homme’s doing his thing of being all ‘badass’ and playing these riffs and solos while staring deadly into the camera. But forgetting about the video for a moment, solely listening to this track does something to you. It’s a complete powerhouse that fires on all cylinders. Just an all-round solid rock-band performance. Once that riff gets going and the rhythm sets in, you can’t help but get caught in it. Guitars are good, drums – good, bass – gooood. It doesn’t disappoint.