As if further evidence was needed that John, Paul, George and Ringo were sent here by a higher civilization to move modern culture forward, Revolver was released sixty years ago this week (August 5, actually). Their seventh studio album, covering a range of musical styles, was a trailblazer, earning praise ever since.
For a 2012 episode of Mad Men, its producers paid
$250,000 for the rights to Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track on Revolver.
Throughout its run, Mad Men always made smart choices
about its use of music, always period accurate and with a lyric that underscored
plot or character development. Satisfaction, You Only Live Twice
and I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing come to mind.
Here, Tomorrow Never Knows with its prescient
title, serves as metaphor for Don Draper’s puzzled efforts to understand youth
culture and for the episode’s chaotic final scenes of work colleagues smoking
pot in the office afterhours, and others trying to grapple with the usual
suburban sex shenanigans.
Draper’s younger wife Megan has bought the new Beatles album
and tells Don, “Start here,” indicating Tomorrow Never Knows.
No.
You don’t read Moby Dick backwards or watch Citizen
Kane starting with the last scene.
Don tries, but he seemingly has no patience for Tomorrow
Never Knows. He turns it off before it ends. It’s noisy, distracting, like
something turned inside out and upside down.
But what if he plays Revolver the right way starting
with the opening track?
Well, for one thing it would have made for a boring episode.
Opening track Taxman reminds Don that he’s now
making major money as agency partner and he’s overdue to check in with his
accountant.
Here, There and Everywhere is
nice, close enough in his mind to Patti Page’s Old Cape Cod, the
standard he’s always had a soft
spot
for. He notes to himself that it could work as background music for a TWA
commercial.
He knows Yellow Submarine from his kids singing the
chorus endlessly when he had them over last weekend. Doesn’t like it.
Don refills his tumbler of scotch and flips the record over.
He likes Good Day Sunshine, it’s bouncy, happy, a
throwback to the musical movies he watched as a kid when the audience followed
the bouncing ball and sang along.
For No One is an emotional
black hole, dredging up memories of first wife Betty, the “you stay home, she
goes out” break-up song about “a love that should have lasted years.” Time to
top off that tumbler.
Got To Get You into My Life is
ad territory again. Punchy, with a memorable chorus that could work for any
brand.
As Tomorrow Never Knows comes on, the booze is making
a statement. He gets up and turns the record player off before the song is
finished. He finds the bedroom and switches on the portable television. It’s
August, nothing but reruns and a Mets game.
Turning off his mind, he relaxes and floats downstream.
