Listen: Tomorrow Morning Brings / Pacific Drift
Tomorrow

When we were introduced, Barry Reynolds seemed genuinely surprised by my interest in him being a member of Pacific Drift, or even knowledge of it. As with a handful of UK centric 60′s labels that I collected, Deram was one. Given his band were on the roster meant I had investigated all associated history. In an era of tuneless progressive rock, which was incidentally as equally addictive as Northern Soul with book values to prove it, Pacific Drift additionally had hooks. Turns out these were Barry’s formative writing days.

So upon meeting in the late 80′s, when I inherited Marianne Faithfull’s A&R duties after joining Island, he being her life long writer, band member, mentor and heart strong companion, we finally met. Humble and shy about Pacific Drift would be an understatement. Having gone on to write so many more songs of greater strength, clearly this stuff was too early, too underdeveloped for him to care about years later. Doesn’t mean I didn’t.

Besides, some records maintain their biggest strength in the ability to turn back time. So is the case with Pacific Drift. Being the young record fanatic that I was, I’d befriended an evening jock at the local Top 40 during summer ’70, intentionally hoping all roads could lead back to getting his promo cast offs. Initially this worked fine, until realizing his intentions leaned in other directions. The arrangement ended abruptly but not before a few trunk sized vinyl scores, one of which included Pacific Drift’s FEELIN’ FREE album and the accompanying ‘Yes You Do’ / ‘Tomorrow Morning Brings’ 7″.

Pacific Drift’s pressings went top of the pile, primarily due to Deram but also producer Wayne Bickerton’s involvment. I loved his recordings with The World Of Oz and given his Decca/Deram house producer status, this stuff I needed to hear. Lyrically, I’ve never worked out if ‘Tomorrow morning brings the afternoon’ is genius or embarrassing. But it was prog, all things made profound sense via the hash pipe.