TOMORROW'S KIND

TOMORROW'S KIND

Tomorrow's Kind was one of two bands Pete Waterman played with during the mid to late sixties. The other band was The Pilgrims.

Tomorrow's kind, according to Broadgate Gnome, were an R & B based band operating c 1967 - 68 

'Music for body and soul' said the gig ad in the Coventry Evening Telegraph.

Paul Hatt has sent some details about the Line Up and these two photos - 

" I played in TOMORROW'S KIND, with Pete Waterman on guitar and vocals, Keith Jackson on bass, Duncan Hall on drums, Richard Hollis on lead guitar , and myself Paul Hatt on vocals. 

(Thanks to Paul Hatt for the photos of Tomorrow's Kind)

Tomorrow's Kind playing at the Navigation Inn

Photos from Maryjane Hatt.

From Rex Brough
Another band featuring Pete Waterman, formerly of the Pilgrims. He commented that they looked like they could have made it, but they didn't. Apparently they did motown covers. Recently their photo was in a picture of Q magazine. Anyway, one gig, one of the bands didn't turn up, so to fill time, Pete got his records out and started to DJ...and the rest is history.


From I Wish I Was Me - Pete Waterman's Autobiography

" By 1965 the whole Beatlemania phenomenon had gone barmy........for a while at least I

was in a band called Tomorrow's Kind who actually looked like they might have gone on to be famous. They didn't, of course, but we did pick up a bit of a following and we started gigging three or four nights a week while I was still holding down the day job at the GEC. That continued for a couple of years but I eventually realised that I didn't have any genuine talent. I could fake it like buggery, but I was never going to be top of the charts.

One night in 1966 we were playing a gig and one of the other bands didn't turn up, so I dashed home, got my records and played them before the band came on. Now no one really did this at that time and the Landlord of the pub where we were playing said he really liked it. He offered me 10 bob to come back again and play records the following week. This wasn't some kind of complicated system, it was a record player with a microphone next to it going through the PA,but for 10 bob. I wasn't about to complain. So by a quirk of fate, I went from being the lead singer in a not very good band to being the only DJ in Coventry. ....I began to play records more than I played instruments, and because I got to know the right people, I started to get people asking me to play records."

Memories of Pete's musical abilities from Trev Teasdel

"I didn't know Pete Waterman when he was playing in Tomorrow's kind or The Pilgrims - he was a few years older than
me and I was still at school in 1965 but I met him at the GEC in 1970. He was my shop steward and someone told him I was writing lyrics! I didn't realise he was a Coventry musician and DJ outside of the GEC
until then. Without knowing his name, I'd probably been to a few of his discos at St. Osburgs and the Locarno. Anyway he came over and asked to see what I was writing and took my lyric - A Lotta Rain is Fallin' to put music to. It was a Dylanesque type of lyric and I'd only completed the first verse and bridge. The next week he played it to me on a small mono cassette player. He performed it on acoustic guitar and his voice sounded a cross between Dylan and Paul McCartney. He particularly liked the line "There's a lotta rivers flowing but the sea's learned how to fly" and repeated that line in the verse. I finished the lyric and gave it too him but nothing further happened with it. Pete teamed me up with a few bands to write lyrics for and sometimes made suggestions for themes.

However, as I was putting on bands at the time at The Coventry Arts Umbrella Club, he invited to his Tuesday night gigs at the Walsgrave pub. It was a 'Heavy /Progressive' club with Pete playing both chart hits and progressive
music and putting on local bands, some of which I booked for the Umbrella. I did the door for Pete and helped the bands set up.


One Tuesday he organised a blues concert with Rod Felton, a blues band called Gypsy Lee and the acoustic blues outfit - Last Fair Deal. Gypsy Lee played covers like the Lemon Song (Killin' Floor) and Pete joined them on stage and they launched into Rock Me Baby with Pete on vocals. It was a raunchy hard hitting vocal and Pete played flute in a style similar to Jethro Tull - very breathy and staccato. I was pretty impressed - it definitely had balls. I didn't know then that he'd played in bands but if that was a sample of his vocals, it was pretty damn good. He must have lent his flute to Rod Felton
because on another Tuesday in 1970 we went over to the Earlsdon Cottage Folk club before the Walsgrave gig opened as Pete wanted to retrieve his flute. Rod was sitting on the grass at the back of the Cottage jamming with other folkies. Pete picked up the flute and accompanied Rod on one of his songs. This time Pete's flute playing was superbly melodic.

So Pete was definitely a good vocalist and musician and it's a shame in some ways that his musical talent got over shadowed by the DJ ing but then he certainly did well by the DJ ing and record producing, !"

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