The Greatest Songs of All-Time (cont'd)



The Beatles - "Tomorrow Never Knows"

For Halloween, a song I have always thought of as being the sound of pure evil. It's not my favorite Beatles song-it's not even my favorite track on "Revolver" (that would be this-I'm a card-carrying Paul man), but I find it hard to hear it as many do-an experimental, psychedelic pop song by everybody's favorite band. Of course it's that. But it's also song I have always found deeply disturbing (the menacing, warlike stop-start drumbeat, the prehistoric drone of bees and cicadas, the screaming seagulls circling a shipwreck, the machinery with syphilis) and one that has held a fascination for me ever since I was in fourth grade and devoured the complete Beatles catalogue like a piece of Pillsbury Funfetti cake© (I still can sing and play you just about every note on every record). Other bands would play with tape-loops and sitars and dabble in "Eastern philosophy," but none would even approach this band's ability to take all of it, and so much more, and then precede to then explode everything in feats of complete, immediate mastery . All pop musicians are still collecting the sparks and embers off of the ground like so much funfetti.