1963 – The Detours play the Oldfield Hotel in Greenford
1964 – The Who play the Glenlyn Ballroom in Forest Hill
1965 – Radio Luxembourg’s Ready, Steady Radio! was recorded at The Marquee Club and broadcast on May 16.
1966 – The Who play the Corn Exchange in Bristol
1966 – “Substitute” enters the Swedish Kvällstoppen sales chart, peaking at #16
1967 – The Who play in Belfast
1968 – Record Mirror carries an article titled “America: TheyJust Don’t Know Who We Are”, an interview with Keith Moon
Transcription (not fully reviewed for accuracy):
AMERICA: THEY JUST DON’T KNOW WHO WE ARE says WHO’S KEITH MOON
“America is like the Marquee Club in London, only ten million times larger.”
Said Keith Moon.
“When the Who started down at the Marquee, we got our publicity and built up our name by word of mouth. The people who came to see us would go home and tell their friends, and our audience grew gradually larger and larger. And it’s exactly the same in America—we don’t get publicity in the teenage magazines or anything. People come to see us because they’ve been told to do so by their friends. Someone would come along to one of our concerts, go and say to a friend: ‘Hey, man, go and see the Who. They smash up guitars and things on stage.’ So people would come to see us in the hope that they could slash a few seats while we smashed our guitars up.”
UNDERGROUND GROUP
“Over there we’re just counted as an underground group. Just one of a hundred. We’re put in the same bag as the Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, and so on. And I don’t like it. I’d much rather we built up a name for ourselves as a pop group rather than an ‘underground’ group.
“When we play at ‘in’ places—like in New York or San Francisco—everyone knows who we are. But in the great majority of towns, small places with weird sounding names, none of the kids have heard our records or anything—they just don’t know who we are.
INTERIM POSITION
“What I’d like to do is stay in Britain for a while without going over to the States at all, and just try to build up a name for ourselves by sending over records and films. And, of course, if we were to do that, we wouldn’t be neglecting our fans in this country. We’re in an interim sort of position at the moment, both over here and in America, because although we’ve established a name for ourselves in both countries, we’re not really an established group.
“I admire the way the Bee Gees have broken the American market. They’ve established themselves in such a way that the public is sitting over there waiting for them—all they have to do is go over and fill in the empty space on the stage. They don’t have the problem of building a name for themselves.
A MILLION-SELLER
“What the Who really need is a million-seller—and I think we ought to stay in England and just flood the U.S. market with records until we achieve that. We’ve done a few tours in that country, and each time our reception has been a little better. But I’m not really looking forward to going back again—we’ve got a nine-week tour there shortly. Our last tour wasn’t as good as we expected, so I don’t see why the next one should be any better. I think that at the moment we’re losing out both in America and England, because we’re not spending enough concentrated time in each country.
‘GO AND WRITE’
“And with all this travelling around, we’re not really getting any time to write new songs. We ought to be able to say to Pete Townshend: ‘Go away and write some songs,’ and we could all work on our own ideas, and at the end of a few weeks perhaps we’d come up with something new. Pete and I want to work on some films together as well.
“We did a film for Top Of The Pops once—it was a sort of bank robbery thing. It only lasted a couple of minutes, and it was just to illustrate our record. I think that sort of thing is far more interesting—and far more enjoyable for us—than for the group just to go on stage and play the number straight. We’re going to make a series of films like that, one all about three minutes long, and they’ll be shown on BBC later this year. We’ll just have one film a week in a series called ‘Sound And Picture City’. We’ll be using our own ideas for the inserts, and each film will illustrate a different song. I think when the series ends we’ll issue an album of all the songs from the programme.
“After our next American tour we’ll stay in England and sort things out a bit. We’ll keep releasing our records in the States, and we’ll send films out there, until we get a million-selling disc. Then we’ll be able to go back and fill a ready-made space, instead of continuing to do what we’re doing now, which is a very slow and tiring process.”
Slow and tiring it may be—but on the other hand they are managing to establish themselves in a country that’s ten million—nay, a hundred million—times larger than the Marquee. And their reputation in America is growing, not because of giant publicity campaigns . . . but because their reputation is growing because they’re good.
But then, we realised that in Britain years ago . . .
Image Caption: KEITH MOON is worried about the Who’s status in America
DEREK BOLTWOOD
1968 – The Who play the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
1969 – The Who play the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan
1970 – The Who spend five days rehearsing afternoons at the Granada Theatre in Wandsworth in order to inject some of the new songs they have been recording, such as “I Don’t Even Know Myself” and “Water”, into the act
1971 – The Who complete recording “Song Is Over” at Olympic Studios in London. Also recorded this month and early the next are “Baba O’Riley,” “Love Ain’t For Keeping,” “My Wife,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Let’s See Action,” “When I Was a Boy,” and “Pure And Easy.”
Listen to “Song is Over” on YouTube here
1973 – The Harrow Observer and Gazette carries an article titled “Keith Mooon knows Harrow well”.
Transcript (not verified for accuracy):
That’ll Be The Day
As the title song “That’ll Be The Day” faded away after the film’s Press showing last week, the audience headed towards the bar to discuss this reconstruction of the rock ‘n’ roll era of the fifties with the people behind it.
In the bar cinema managers and Pressmen jostled for drinks and introductions. David Essex, the star, was the centre of attention and David Puttnam, the film’s producer, was lost in the mob.
But there, at the end of the bar, looking rather lost, was a denim clad figure of Ray Connolly, Evening Standard journalist and writer of the film.
“The idea came when I went to see David Puttnam and talked about a film” he said hesitantly, “I wrote and rewrote it about six times and we changed it as we went along.” Filming took three months, and from the original plan to the time the film went into the cinema had been just over a year, he said.
ooo
One of the film’s successes is the acting of Ringo Starr. Originally, said Ray Connolly, he had been cast as the rock ‘n’ roll singer at the holiday camp (the role now given a great lift by Billy Fury) but then he was asked to take the acting role of Mike, the fairground worker who spends his holidays as a waiter in the camp. Everyone was so impressed with his acting that the role was extended for him.
“That poolroom scene” said Ray Connolly, “was written one evening and filmed the next day.” The punchline in the scene is one of the best in the film. “In fact” said its author, “the whole scene was written after we’d got the punchline.”
There seemed to be no sign in the bar of Keith Moon, drummer with The Who and the man who supervised the film’s music. “I’m told you’ll know him from his clothes” a cinema manager told me. Whatever he was expecting, it probably wasn’t the young man in the brown three-piece suit who flashed his gap-toothed smile as he arrived.
ooo
Keith Moon remembers Harrow and Wembley well — he went to Harrow Art School (when it was in Station Road). “I was there for about a year, until I decided I preferred music. I lived in Wembley you know.” The Who was first “discovered” playing at the Railway Hotel, Wealdstone, “and we used to play Kodak Hall too”. At that time they were under a different name (“We were called a lot of names”).
The Who wasn’t working at the time so they asked me to look after the music for the film. We got together people like Ron Wood, Nilsson, Jack Bruce, Stevie Winwood, Eric Clapton, and a couple of boys from Badfinger and went into a studio. We even had Marc Bolan and Alice Cooper — but you won’t hear them on the soundtrack,” said Keith Moon.
He even got a cameo role written into the film for him as a drummer backing Billy Fury. He gets to say two lines and works up a quick frenzy on the skins.
Former Harrow Art School student Keith Moon as he appears in the film “That’ll Be The Day”.
1973 – John’s third solo album John Entwistle’s Rigor Mortis Sets In is released in Britain. The album had been delayed because of planned bridges between tracks that would have featured an imitation of BBC children’s show character Andy Pandy spitting and vomiting. Melody Maker finds the Pandy-less LP “ideal party music.” Nevertheless, the album fails to chart in the U.K.The U.S. doesn’t get John’s album this month but does get an advance single, “Made in Japan” backed with “Roller Skate Kate”. They don’t put it into their music charts.
1977 – Who manager Bill Curbishley presents a contract to producer Sydney Rose and director Tony Klinger to make a documentary about The Who. Unbeknownst to the two signers, the contract is part of an unsuccessful backdoor attempt to remove Jeff Stein as director of the already planned film. Tony eventually joins Sydney as co-producer.
1981 – Pete and Chris Stamp attend a memorial service for The Who’s late manager Kit Lambert at St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden. It would have been his 46th birthday and was almost exactly 20 years after the memorial service was held for his father Constant at the same church. Pete arranges for the London Symphony Orchestra to perform selections from Tommy and Kit’s favorite piece, Purcell’s “The Gordian Knot Untied.” Pete also delivers one of the eulogies. None of the other members of The Who attend.
1997 – The Who play the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam, Netherlands
2001 – eelpie.com puts The Who’s Aug. 24, 2000 Denver concert up for sale as an unedited mp3 download
2005 – Roger tells the press he will play a surgeon’s assistant in a Battle of Waterloo drama for Britain’s Channel 4. It is released in August as Trafalgar Battle Surgeon. You can watch the show on YouTube here
2007 – Roger attends the launching of Scotland’s first hospital unit for teenage cancer sufferers in Glasgow.
2015 – The Who play the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee
2019 – The Who play Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia