BSPH: The Beatles / Phil Collins - Tomorrow Never Knows

"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a song written by John Lennon of The Beatles. It was first released in 1966 on the band's seminal album "Revolver". The song is an early example of psychedelic rock with an influences coming from such diverse sources as Indian classical music, French Musique Concrete and also John Cage's and Karlheinz Stockhausen's tape experiments. Mashed together these influences serve as a sonic backdrop for John Lennon's double-tracked stream of conscioussness ramblings on life and existence and being and not being and other high-spirited stuff built out of cool sounding words.

It is also a fine example of the right use of "throwing things at the wall and looking what sticks" methodology. The song is basically thrown together out of disaparate parts. The drum part stands on its own and it is just a short maddening jumbled loop. Bass line is bumbling along trying to keep up.

Around them are gathered all sorts of sounds because reasons. There are birds, random radio noises and other goodies from Abbey Road sound banks. All these sounds are just there to make a chaotic effect. The best way to describe this mess is to call a "debris of sound". It is obvious they had no idea what they were doing but they were dedicated to going beyond. That dedication makes the song. It works because of the groove and sheer quantity of incoming sounds - it is more and more and more.

Because of that, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a weird song to think about because of its inherent hollowness. It is like a really forceful gust of wind that sucked into a whirl all sorts of stuff and then just dissipated and left a bit of a mess afterwards. But it leaves an impression. That makes it interesting. It takes whatever the shape you want it to take.

In 1981 Phil Collins of Genesis was working on his debut solo album "Face Value". Among other things, he recorded his own interpretation of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and it is really interesting cover version because of its duplitiouis nature. It is case of making it same but different.

On one hand, it is quite faithful recreation of the original. The aesthetics are approximated to almost a pitch perfect degree and updated with a help of then-cutting edge Fairlight synthesizer. It is still a whirl of sounds moving forward and still feels like too much to take, but this time it is far more organized. And unlike the original it actually manages to take a definite shape of a vortex. This version doesn't feel disjointed and chaotic as was the original. There is some kind of weird smoothness to it.

Part of the reason is that Collins' had slightly rearranged the song. The structure is the same but the delivery is straightened out and far more fluid. This makes the song feel much more focused.

For example, in the original the drums are stacked on top of the pile of sounds but here they are naturally entwined into a composition. The very drum patterns have more space in-between the beats which makes the song feel bigger.

Bass lines are also modified - in this version bass is shaping the space between the beats which creates a very different groove. There is warped swinging feel to it. Bass line drops the busy part and gets tighter with the drums sliding on their relief slightly relaxed.

Another fine addition to the arrangement is heavily chorused drone that reverberates throughout the song while the other sounds pass by. In the original it was just a sitar drone. Here it is a space within the song occurs. It changes the texture of the composition and bring more structured feel to it. Every line is capped with some barely intelligible warbling. Every section of the song is marked by its own buffer soundblock. There are neat smoothened brass zigzagging fills and chiseled nondescript rumblings in-between the verses.

Phil Collins is a bit controversial musician. He's one of the proverbial examples of an artist going with the times and keeping himself relevant all while being considered an obnoxious sellout. Despite his pedigree - he's often dismissed as a bad taste. David Bowie even used to describe his mid 80s slump as "Phil Collins Albums". However, Collins is one of those who is more than meets the eye. Case in point - this composition.