Does anybody know where Brock could be?

There was a lot more to it than working up loud and frenzied versions of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix influenced rock.

The stage show went with the territory and Tomorrow’s Children didn’t hold back.

“We’d often have props like a grandfather clock or an old television set onstage,” recalls lead guitarist Dennis Smith.

This enabled singer Pete Cousins to ruthlessly trash the said object with a sledgehammer as the set reached its climax.

“The Who smashed up their equipment on stage. Obviously, we couldn’t afford to wreck our stuff,” says Dennis.

So every now and then the band would spend the day at a scrapyard rummaging for suitable items to despatch with rip-roaring panache for the benefit of patrons at Swindon venues such as McIlroy’s, the Plessey Club or the Locarno, along with regional gigs like Tetbury’s Dolphin Hall or the Corn Exchange, Cirencester.

Crystallised chunks of industrial dry ice were acquired from ICI. Unleashing the stuff in suitably dramatic fashion involved applying it to water, which had to be not-quite-at-boiling-point, hence a tricky operation with kettles which often involved burnt fingers.

“It cascaded over the stage like a waterfall,” says drummer Dave Saunders, who sometimes vanished for minutes on end in the mist. Or as bass player Graham Kew remembers: “It was like something out of an old Hammer Horror film.”

Footage was screened behind the band as they performed, a la the Velvet Underground under the tutelage of Andy Warhol.

Three screens at Tomorrow’s Children gigs displayed a collage of visuals ranging from nuclear explosions, pornography and a lion attacking the camera to footage of the band larking around in Swindon’s derelict Old Town railway station.

Much to their surprise and more than 40 years after the final tattered timepiece had been gleefully dismembered, there is a sudden surge of interest in Tomorrow’s Children.

It follows the release of a compilation CD called Rare Mod Volume 4 on the Acid Jazz label featuring one of the group’s long lost songs. As a result the band has reconnected via the internet and Facebook. Pete Cousins, 64, Graham Kew, 62, Dave Saunders, 63, and Dennis Smith, 64, can hardly stop grinning as they cheerfully reminisce at Pete’s house in Old Town.

It is the first time they have all been in the same place at the same time for more than four decades.

There is one empty chair though; it belongs to rhythm guitarist Brock Smart. No-one knows where he is and attempts to trace him have sadly drawn a blank.

“We wanted a bit of a get-together but no-one’s seen or heard of Brock for years,” says Dennis.

They are not even sure whether Brock is his name; it was almost certainly a stage or nickname, they conclude.

Dennis says: “He was a really solid rhythm guitar player.”

Graham remembers: “He really looked the part – the haircut, the clothes, everything.”

Pete offers: “I’m sure he owes us money.”

Operating with various line-ups from the mid Sixties to the early Seventies Tomorrow’s Children started off playing Tamla/Stax style soul-pop and r’n’b before progressing to heavier blues-rock with fashionable splashes of psychedelia.

Dennis, a retired marketing manager says: “We were primarily a blues band, playing the music of Howling Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson with a strong influence from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.”

Being “the only band in the Swindon playing music of that genre,” they developed a dedicated following of local fans, he says.

They often supported hit groups in Swindon such as Amen Corner and Steam Packet which featured Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry and Julie Driscoll.

“I remember seeing Rod Stewart backstage, or maybe in the loo at McIlroys: he was the first man I ever saw wearing eye make-up,” says Pete, who today remains a regular fixture on Swindon’s live music circuit. On one occasion in Swindon Dennis remembers the crowd bellowing for an encore with rabid shouts of “Hendrix, Hendrix.”

Dennis, who was in a local band called The Black Souls before joining Tomorrow’s Children, says: “Hendrix, Clapton and Jeff Beck, with the Yardbirds…basically, I copied their style.”

During one phase the group, much to their bewilderment, were billed as “From the stable of the Small Faces” which, of course, was nonsense. But hey, it seemed to work… The band’s image was an essential ingredient and they travelled to gigs in and around Swindon in a beaten-up Bedford van, fashionably painted in Grateful Dead-like psychedelic colours. They still remember getting together one day and painting it up.

To paraphrase a Who song, it was their very own Magic Bus which they seem to recall buying for a fiver.

“We were asking for trouble driving around Swindon in that, though” says Pete.

A grainy picture of the band alongside the faithful Bedford accompanies the CD. They were photographed in all of their psychedelic splendour – except Pete who sports a suit and tie, an image he nicked from Captain Beefheart.

“He looks like a ticket tout – a spiv,” says Dennis.

“At one stage I was wearing rosary beads,” remembers Pete. “I had no idea what they were.”

The onstage palaver, involving the thrashing of grandfather clocks and the like, was Swindon’s response to Hendrix and the Who theatrically destroying their instruments. Pete however, reckons: “The Move were better than anyone at that.”

Dave occasionally got into the “if Keith Moon can do it so can I” auto-destruction spirit by sneeringly kicking over his drums. “But it he did very carefully,” laughs Graham, who works at BMW in Swindon. “He didn’t want to damage his kit.”

At Hungerford town hall Pete got so carried away with the sledgehammer routine he accidentally hacked off a corner of the stage, prompting Tomorrow’s Children to beat a hasty retreat back to Swindon. “We never got paid that night,” complains Dennis.

Pete insists the wilful vandalism of grandfather clocks, TV sets et al was – and still is – an art form, as well as a lot of fun.

An integral part of the set-up was manager Bob Townsend “the visuals guy” who worked tirelessly behind the scenes, screening assorted footage and dropping lumps of dry ice into simmering kettles.

Tomorrow’s Children’s classic ’67 five-piece line-up were invited to record a couple of tracks at a studio in Chiswick: LSD and Way Over Yonder.

Never happy with the recording – which sounds very Yardbirdsy – the band felt it was too hurried and raw and that they were pushed into doing a couple of covers rather than laying down Tomorrow’s Children originals. They were each presented with a copy but hopes of fame and fortune were dashed when it was never released, and the band eventually – inevitably – fizzled out after working their way through various line-ups. “At one time, like a lot of other groups, we really thought we were going to make it – we really did,” says Dennis.

Fast forward to 2012 and Dave, who works with handicapped children after retiring from the live music circuit in 2006, is selling his collection of vinyl records.

The dealer picks up a white label single and asks: “What’s this?” Dave explains: “It’s our old Sixties band Tomorrow’s Children.”

The buyer makes a quick call, takes the 45 away and a few months later LSD appears on a compilation CD, accompanied by the aforementioned time-capsule photo.

Cue a flurry of emails and a reunion of veteran rockers remembering the old days. “The CD prompted a lot of interest – not least from us,” says Dennis, who paid 79p to download the Tomorrow’s Children track.

A copy of the unreleased single later sold on eBay for over £50. “We’ve made it at last,” they chuckle in Pete’s kitchen.

• It would be nice, though, to contact Brock. Anyone who knows his whereabouts can call Dennis on 07912286123.