017 Tomorrow Never Knows

About this episode

We kick off Season 2 with one of the Beatles’ most revolutionary recordings, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the closing track on Revolver but the first song recorded for the album. It would be both a creative and technical breakthrough, but getting the final master on tape was quite an involved process. To help explore the mysteries of a song that still sounds unstuck in time, I’m joined by composer and music professor Joel Friedman and author Elizabeth Alker, who spoke to Paul McCartney about this recording for her new book, Everything We Do Is Music: How 20th Century Classical Music Shaped Pop.