Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore psychedelic tunes from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!

Tomorrow, My White Bicycle. Album: Tomorrow (1968)

Tomorrow were a 1960s psychedelic rock, pop and freakbeat band. Despite critical acclaim and support from DJ John Peel who featured them on his “Perfumed Garden” radio show, the band didn’t have much commercial success.

My White Bicycle’, written by Keith Hopkins (the real name of Tomorrow lead singer Keith West) and Ken Burgess, was inspired by the White Bicycle Plan: a community bike–sharing programme that industrial designer–inventor Luud Schimmelpennink of the radical Dutch Provo counterculture movement instigated in Amsterdam during the mid–1960s. After gathering 50 bikes and painting them white, the anarchic Provos parked them unchained all over the city so that they could be used and then left on the streets by anyone who needed them to get around.

The aim was to eliminate all motorised traffic in the city centre and improve public transportation, but the police impounded the bikes because municipal law forbade them to be left unlocked. So, the Provos then retrieved the vehicles, equipped them with combination locks and painted the combinations on the bikes, and even though the White Bicycle Plan still received no support from the local authorites, it served as the model for similar programmes that are today in force in various European cities.