- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Tomorrow’s hit single “My White Bicycle” was released in May 1967, the same month that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles came out.
Tomorrow – Tomorrow (1968): Tomorrow is an important British psychedelic rock album that was recorded in the Spring of 1967 but not released until February 1968. The album’s underground hit single “My White Bicycle” was released in May 1967, the same month that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles came out. In fact, Tomorrow was at Abbey Road Studios recording their album Tomorrow in Studio 1, while the Beatles were in Studio 2 recording Sgt. Pepper. As noted in Wikipedia, John Lennon walked into Studio 1 to watch the recording session; Lennon later wrote in the British international music magazine Melody Maker that he considered “My White Bicycle” to be the “psychedelic anthem”, helping to put the song before the general public. The band’s drummer Twink (real name: John Alder) was originally in a tough rhythm and blues band called the Fairies; he is perhaps best known as the drummer for the Pretty Things on their ground-breaking 1968 concept album called S.F. Sorrow.
Twink is also known as a founding member of the hard psychedelic rock band the Pink Fairies, along with the Deviants’ Mick Farren and Steve Peregrin Took, who was Marc Bolan’s partner in the original Tyrannosaurus Rex band. Besides Twink, the other bandmembers in Tomorrow – originally called the Four Plus One – include guitarist Steve Howe, which was later in Yes; Junior Wood; and Keith West, who was evidently the best-known member of the band when their album came out. Of note is the fact that Tomorrow is featured on the very first of the Peel Sessions by DJ John Peel on BBC Radio 1, on September 21, 1967. Tomorrow – back when they were called the In Crowd – also had a part in an early rock opera that was actually called A Teenage Opera; the project was spearheaded by Mark Wirtz, who had had the idea as early as January 1966. After writing the lyrics for the song, Keith West released a single from the rock opera called “Excerpt from A Teenage Opera (Grocer Jack)” in late July 1967 – he also performed on a second song called “Sam” – and “Grocer Jack” became an instant hit in the U.K. during what is known as “the Summer of Love”. Keith West then mounted a modest solo career based on this hit. Tomorrow is not too hard to find in used record stores; there are both black-and-white and color versions of the front cover. “My White Bicycle” also appears in the second Nuggets box set, Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969 (2001). Remarkably, all four discs from Nuggets II came through Hurricane Katrina more or less unscathed, and I have them all cleaned up and playable. As I recall, I found most of them still in their original box.