Tomorrow Tomorrow
Shame. Shame on me for this being my first Bee Gees Song of the Week. What the hell has been wrong with me all these years? I am an unabashed superfan. PK and I have a ridiculous collection of LPs (mono & stereo releases, foreign oddities, 7″ singles, etc.) and even now, as I try to write this I’m finding it difficult not to be distracted by the wealth of live video from the early 70s that’s floating around the YouTubes.
Ok, I just wrote a lengthy paragraph and then deleted it, so now I think I know why I haven’t ever featured them before. There may not be enough terabytes in the cloud to support the amount of carrying on that I could do inspired by such greatness. I’ll try to keep it simple.
In 1969, in a huff, Robin Gibb left the band to try his hand at a solo career (remember my version of his wonderfully absurd Farmer Ferdinand Hudson?) Prolific is an understatement when applied to the Bee Gees, who had written in excess of 1,500 songs by the time Maurice’s untimely passing. Just two months after the release their ambitious and obscure double-album Odessa, Barry and Maurice released the single Tomorrow Tomorrow. The song maintains some of Odessa‘s sparse acoustic sound, but the hooks are less psychedelic and more bluesy. Unusual, too, for a hit song (not a huge hit, but a hit nonetheless), the chorus is in half-time. And it is the chorus that starts to hint at what was to come in their early-70s ballad incarnation. The song did not appear on an album, and the single did nothing in the U.S. so I first heard it when I picked up a nice stack of ATCO 45s and noticed the unfamiliar title. The single’s b-side is great as well. PK and I have been known to cover Sun In My Morning in our duo sets. Happily both of the cuts were released on the excellent Tales From the Brothers Gibb box set, and a grainy video shows up on their recent Ultimate Bee Gees set. Strangely, the song is also found on their Best Of CD:
And a bonus:
Listening to this song again made me wonder what other hit songs featured a chorus that was fully half-time (in comparison to the verse). I queried the Twitterverse and very few results were technically 100% correct. The most correct was My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” (submitted by @mattnathanson) The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” would be perfect save for the fact that it was never a single (still, bronze star for Michael Almond). The Beatles (and @brenhow) do get a point for “Magical Mystery Tour.” And James Flynn is nearly correct for suggesting the sublime “The Good Son” from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.
Not surprisingly, the number of hit songs that use this unusual formula is slim indeed. I’m a keep my eye out for more. And maybe I’ll write one.