Tomorrow Never Knows

Lennon wrote it and the credit went to Lennon-McCartney. He adapted the words from The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, which draws on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The title was a Ringo Starr malapropism, and early working titles were "Mark I" and "The Void". It was cut on 6, 7 and 22 April 1966 in Studio 3 at EMI, with Martin producing and Emerick engineering. Lennon said he wanted it to sound like a thousand Tibetan monks chanting, with the vocal like the Dalai Lama from a mountaintop.

The track used 16 tape loops chosen from about 30, eight of them playing at once. McCartney's laugh was sped up until it sounded like a seagull. Lennon's voice went through a Leslie speaker and automatic double tracking, and McCartney's guitar solo was played backwards. Harrison played sitar and tambura, and Martin played tack piano. Peter Lavezzoli called it the first pop song to abandon formal chord changes, as it is built on a C drone.

Afterlife

The Chemical Brothers' "Setting Sun" is a direct tribute. It was mashed with "Within You Without You" on the 2006 album Love and was heard in the 2012 finale of Mad Men. Pitchfork ranked it 19th among the songs of the 1960s.