The Beatles Behind the Scenes: Making of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’

Few songs in The Beatles’s catalogue, or for that matter, in the history of rock music, are as hauntingly hypnotic as Tomorrow Never Knows. This gem of psychedelia, first appearing on Magical Mystery Tour, marked an important milestone in The Beatles’s musical evolution and rock music as a whole. Although The Beatles had previously experimented with different musical traditions before, most memorably in Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) in the album Rubber – Soul- which featured Indian classical instruments – Tomorrow Never Knows stands out in a league of its own.

In this archive footage, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison talk about the philosophy that inspired the whimsical song and how it ultimately came to be.

Bonus: The Beatles’s psychedelic masterpiece played by none other than Jimi Hendrix, covered in his electrifying style.