Songfacts®:

• During the 1995 Glastonbury Festival, Noel Gallagher, a long term acquaintance of The Chemical Brothers, offered to record with them. Around 12 months later they decided a track they had been working on, which they had done in the style of The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows," needed some vocals so they sent a tape of it to Noel. He worked on it overnight and the next day they recorded it with Noel providing the vocals. It gave The Chemical Brothers their first UK #1 and was their first hit in the US.
• The original working title was "Tomorrow Never Noels." "Tomorrow Never Knows" is the favorite song of both the Chemical Brothers.
• This was featured in the 1997 film The Saint.
• Chemical Brother Ed Simons remembers in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "He (Noel Gallagher) got wind that we wanted to do a track with him. He phoned us up and said, 'I'll come down now and do it.' I told him I would send him a tape of the track that we thought might appeal to him as it had a Beatlesque feel to it. The whole track took us a day in the studio with him, then us mixing for a while and it was in the can." Sony didn't want to release it as a single but Noel persuaded them to. Despite little radio play on its week of release it sold nearly 100,000 copies in its first week and reached #1. Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands recalls in the book, "I think it had the lowest number of radio plays ever for a #1 hit. It was cool, circumventing all the conservatism, and till getting to #1 with a banging record. It was our aim to make a record that stuck out. We wanted to make records that people just couldn't help but remember." >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above
• Noel Gallagher knew The Chemical Brothers from the notorious London Sunday Social club nights. He remembered being at the bar with them and saying, "I'll do a tune with you." One Friday night, after watching Manchester City play away at Wycombe, he went to the studio. "I did it in about 20 minutes," Gallagher recalled to Mojo magazine. "I even left the taxi waiting outside. And then the next thing I knew it had knocked 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' off #1. That felt like a proper triumph."