I occasionally post on the Best of
the 60’s Music Facebook page. As a result of having too much time on my
hands, I sometimes riffle through YouTube to check out both familiar and unfamiliar
sounds from that decade. I recently ran across My White Bicycle, a
really excellent song by Tomorrow, now known mainly as the band from which
Steve Howe left to join Yes. I was so taken with t that I ordered Tomorrow’s
one and only album. The band started out as the In Crowd, playing soul covers (“we
played Otis Redding and Otis Redding”). In 1966, the drummer Twink joined up,
after which the band changed its sound and name. As Tomorrow, they cut My
White Bicycle, based on the Dutch Provos’ distribution of free white
bicycles for public use. After the all-too-common ego clashes, the band declined
and broke up by 1969.
Tomorrow the
album is in many ways an artifact of its era. Strongly influenced by the Beatles
and the Kinks, some of the songs are interesting albeit derivative, especially
a couple of Eleanor Rigby-style “personality songs, but they lack Paul McCartney’s
genius or Ray Davies’s irony. On the other hand, songs like Three Jolly
Little Dwarfs, Now Your Time Has Come, and Hallucinations have
a quirky charm all their own. There’s also a nice version of Strawberry
Fields Forever. Like many bands, they had great potential that was never quite
realized before they broke up. Their one album is well worth a listen.
Here's My White Bicycle (later covered by Nazareth!).
