Keith West’s follow-up to Excerpt From “A Teenage Opera” was also inspired by that song’s creator Mark Wirtz but perhaps explains why the full project didn’t appear for nearly thirty years as it barely scratched the lower reaches of the charts. The similarities to the earlier hit are there but the song doesn’t cohere in quite the same way. The children’s chorus isn’t as catchy and the sequencing has more than a touch of the galloping hiccups (a complaint I have seen levelled against Bohemian Rhapsody.)

Keith West: Sam

I mentioned this song once before. Its singer Keith West also had an incarnation with the band Tomorrow.

The Teenage Opera from which this was an excerpt did not make its full appearance until thirty years or so later.

As you can imagine being named Jack and at school at a time when a song with the refrain “Grocer Jack” became a hit wasn’t an unalloyed joy.

Keith West: Excerpt From “A Teenage Opera”

More psychedelia. Why not?

Tomorrow‘s singer was Keith West, perhaps better known for the hit Excerpt From A Teenage Opera in turn better known as Grocer Jack as those two words repeated formed the beginning of the chorus. Guitarist Steve Howe later achieved greater fame with Yes.

Dunfermline band Nazareth – one of whose members lived round the corner from Son Of The Rock Towers for a while – had a hit with a rocked up version of My White Bicycle in 1975.

Tomorrow: My White Bicycle