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TL;DR:

  • John Lennon said The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Rain” reflect his early sonic experiments.
  • Paul McCartney said “Tomorrow Never Knows” contains some loops that sound like seagulls.
  • The birdlike sounds are actually sped-up clips of Paul’s laughter.
Paul McCartney said The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" sounds like a seagull (pictured)
A seagull | Spencer Weiner / Contributor

The Beatles‘ “Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the Fab Four’s most mystical songs. Paul McCartney said it sounds like seagulls. Despite this, the birdlike sound on the track is not actually the sound of seagulls.

John Lennon said some of The Beatles’ songs reflected the experiments he did at home

The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon includes an interview from 1980. In it, John discussed how “Tomorrow Never Knows” came together. He said used to “make kinda freaky music at home” when he was still living with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon.

At his old home, John had a space upstairs where he would experiment musically. He said fans could hear elements of this experimentation in “Rain” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” John said he delved into this experimental style for his first album with Yoko Ono: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins.

The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ has some of Paul McCartney’s many ‘seagull’ loops

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul recalled the recording of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” “We ran the loops and then we ran the track of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and we played the faders, and just before you could tell it was a loop, before it began to repeat a lot, I’d pull in one of the other faders, and so, using the other people, ‘You pull that in there,’ ‘You pull that in,’ we did a half random, half orchestrated playing of the things and recorded that to a track on the actual master tape, so that if we got a good one, that would be the solo,” he said.

Paul discussed some of the unusual noises on the track. “I always think of seagulls when I hear it,” he said. “I used to get a lot of seagulls in my loops; a sped-up shout, hah ha, goes squawk squawk. And I always get pictures of seasides, of Torquay, the Torbay Inn, fishing boats and puffins and deep purple mountains. Those were the slowed-down ones.”

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What the ‘seagull’ sounds in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ actually are

While Paul discussed getting “seagulls in his loops,” there aren’t any seagull sounds on the track. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the birdlike sounds on the track are actually the sped-up sound of Paul laughing.

Regardless of what the sounds are, they give “Tomorrow Never Knows” an aura of nature. That works in the song’s favor. After all, “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a song about a spiritual journey and being in nature can be a spiritual experience. It’s also such a strange effect for a pop song that it helps “Tomorrow Never Knows” sound like it’s from another plane of existence.

“Tomorrow Never Knows” might sound like seagulls but it also sounds like a masterpiece.

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