1963 – The Detours play the Carnival ballroom at the Park Hotel in Hanwell
“…All my college chums turned out. Some pretty girls from the fashion school stood at the front of the stage, pretending to scream at me like Beatles fans; they were teasing, but everyone was impressed, especially when we played the slightly funkier R&B tunes I’d managed to sneak into our otherwise catholic repertoire.” – Pete Townshend
1964 – The Who play the second of two nights at the Florida Rooms in Brighton
1965 – The Who play The Pavilion in Bath, Somerset
1966 – The Lincolnshire Echo’s “In the Groove by Bob Farmer” includes an article titled “The Who Look At A New Means of Self Defense”
Transcript:
THE Who, Britain’s most talked-about, written-about pop group, may soon find themselves at the centre of another stormy controversy.
The Who, four London mods who between them smashed £1,500 worth of musical instruments and amplifying equipment on stage last year, are wondering how to make sure the fan frenzy does not lash back at them personally.
Two members of the group, when in Paris, were shown gas guns. The weapons are carried, Chicago-style, in shoulder holsters.
Drummer Keith Moon told me this exclusively. He was quite straightforward about it.
“They would be for use if the situation was desperate,” said Keith. “They would never be used on the normal fans, no matter how hysterical they were.”
The gas guns are converted .45 and .38 revolvers. The muzzles are jammed with thin, hollow metal rods. A cartridge explodes, and the heat turns the powder substances into gas.
NOT HARMFUL
“It only has a temporary effect and is not harmful,” said Keith. “It would make a person dizzy and the eyes water.
Said Keith: “You get some yobs in these out-of-the-way places that carry knives and that sort of thing.”
Keith should know. A long-haired Morecambe tough menaced him with a broken bottle. And although he was a flyweight boxer at school, Keith ran.
“The yobs try to impress their girl friends by threatening us,” he said.
Since the group crashed into the pop world 12 months ago, they managed to stir up almost as much noisy controversy as the storm they create on stage — and among their audiences.
NOISY CHAOS
The Who were the ones that brought a noisy chaos of feedback and distorted electronic sounds into the best-selling charts, leaving behind a wake of broken guitars, battered drums and mangled amplifiers.
The Who’s impact is still as immediate. At a record poll-winners’ concert The Who were undoubtedly the most remarkable group in a show that included the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
Said Keith: “If we are playing somewhere for the first time, or at a big date, we make sure we give a spectacular performance to win over the audience. Once they have got over the initial shock, we concentrate more on what we are playing.
“It means we have to play harder at first. I’ve got to play louder than the guitars. Naturally, it means I have to hit the drums harder than the normal pop drummer, and the equipment breaks sooner.”
Last month was particularly hard on Keith’s pocket. Playing at the poll-winners’ concert and a three-day tour of Ireland cost Keith £100. He broke one tom-tom drum, two snare drumheads and two bass drumheads.
HIGHEST BILL
The Who pay individually for breakages. Guitarist Pete Townshend has the highest bill. He’s smashed at least 15 guitars. He slams them against the amplifier if he can’t get the right sound.
Keith Moon has a boyish, open face. Fans identify themselves with him more than any other member of The Who.
When I talked to him, he was wearing a black surfers’ cross, often mistaken for a Nazi medal, which was a present from a Californian surfing addict.
Clothes are as important to The Who’s image as its sound. Pop art, with all its flamboyance, became synonymous with their name. Keith spent £50 a week on clothes in the first flush of pop success.
Today he is more conservative. The bill has been reduced to £15 of his £75-a-week pocket money.
LIKE WINDMILL
Keith Moon claims he has a quiet temperament offstage. But once he gets behind a drum kit his arms and legs explode into ferocious movement, like a windmill gone berserk.
“What happens onstage is all spontaneous. We are extroverts and it’s a form of expression. When the audiences go mad I can’t really believe it’s directed at us,” said Keith.
It doesn’t frighten Keith that their jagged music stirs up audiences’ latent aggression. At 19 his only fears, he said, were getting old and poor.
Life for The Who is much simpler: “We get on better now as people. It was dreadful at one time. We have learned to accept each other. It’s better to be amiable, otherwise life’s just miserable.”
Simpler life, did I say? Suddenly I remembered those gas guns.
The Home Office were aghast at the idea of toting this kind of weapon around. “Only under very special circumstances,” they pointed out, “would authorisation be given by the Ministry of Defence, and it’s highly unlikely that it would be given in a case like this.”
As I queried before: The simple life? Somehow it never works out that way for The Who.
1967 – The Who fly to Manchester to tape an appearance on Top Of The Pops which is broadcast the next night. After the show they flew to Luton Airport and quickly drove to Stevenage
1967 – Pete records an interview for the BBC overseas radio programme Dateline London
1967 – After a week off from gigs following their mini tour of Scandinavia, The Who are back on the circuit again playing a gig at Mod stronghold, the Locarno Ballroom in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. By 1967 the cult of Mod had pretty much run its course and with the burgeoning Summer of Love about to unfold, The Who were glad to have shed their Mod image. The manager of the Locarno, Maurice de Jonge, was not particularly impressed with the ‘Orrible ‘Oo. Speaking to a reporter from the Stevenage News he said, “Ridiculous! If they have to smash everything to get a reaction, then you certainly won’t see them here again . . . We would certainly think twice about booking them again.” All of which seems a bit odd considering this was the group’s sixth appearance here. Perhaps Mr de Jonge kept his word as The Who were never to play here again. Meanwhile backstage, John broke a finger on his right hand after punching a poster of a ‘well-known band’ pinned to the dressing room wall.
1969 – The Who play the Fillmore East in New York, New York
1969 – Pete and Roger surrender themselves to the authorities at the Ninth Precinct station for the previous nights on-stage incident. They are released on bail
1969 – The first copies of the Tommy LP are appearing on store shelves in America.
Disc jockeys receive a 4-single box set of selected tracks.
Ellen Sander in Saturday Review calls it a masterpiece and says it features some of the best rock music ever recorded.
John Gabree in High Fidelity calls it “superlative rock-and-roll”.
David Walley in Jazz &Pop hails it as a “superlative achievement”
Charles E. Fager in Christian Century loves it and calls it a “thoroughly religious work.”
Despite the acclaim and promotion, sales are slow for the rock opera at first.
1969 – Disc and Music Echo runs a profile on John, Pete and Keith’s wives
If anyone has this issue of Disc magazine, please share!!
1979 – Rolling Stone magazine publishes an article titled “The Who unveil plans for New York shows” by Dave Marsh
Transcript:
The Who unveil plans for New York shows
First live dates here since 1976
By Dave Marsh
NEW YORK
THE WHO WILL play their first live shows in the U.S. since 1976 late this summer in the New York City area, singer Roger Daltrey revealed recently. Long the least-prolific band in rock, the Who apparently have decided, after surviving the trauma of drummer Keith Moon’s death, to become one of the hardest working. In addition to the New York dates—possibly a week’s worth—the band will play a 7000-seat outdoor arena at Cannes, France, on May 12th, during the city’s film festival. The show will coincide with the European premieres of the Who’s two movies, The Kids Are Alrightand Quadrophenia, which are tentatively scheduled for release in the U.S. in June and October, respectively.
Daltrey didn’t explain just how or why Pete Townshend was convinced to return to the stage after balking for more than a year. But he did say that “Pete’s committed to this, and he better not let me down.” Daltrey and bassist John Entwistle have been eager to hit the road for some time. “After Keith’s death we became more honest, owned up to each other about what we did and didn’t like about touring,” Daltrey added.
It won’t be the same without Moon, of course, and new drummer Kenny Jones was chosen with the knowledge of that. “He’s just the opposite sort of drummer to Keith,” Daltrey said in his suite at the Plaza Hotel, where he had come after a brief holiday in Florida with his family. “Kenny came from the same stable we did; he’s from London, and he started playing at the same time as the Who.” In order to give Jones some material that won’t force comparisons between his style and Moon’s, Daltrey said, the Who hope to record a single or two for release before the Cannes show.
Jones may not be the only addition to the Who. They have talked about adding a keyboard player and perhaps a second guitarist, but Daltrey wasn’t certain that either would actually be found. Reports from England that a new keyboardist had already joined the band were premature, Daltrey said.
With The Kids Are Alright, a marvelous two-hour documentary of Whohistory, and Quadrophenia, based on the story line of the band’s second rock opera, out of the way, Daltrey will begin shooting a third film, McVicar, in June. That picture, which will star Daltry and former pop singer Adam Faith, is the story of John McVicar, a contemporary bank robber notorious for his many escapes from Britain’s squalid prisons. McVicar’s soundtrack will feature music by Pete Townshend and Billy Nicholls, who appeared on Townshend’s first solo LP and his Meher Baba albums. Townshend, meanwhile, will begin work on his third solo record during the summer.
Following that splurge of activity and a few warmup dates in England and Europe come the New York concerts, recording for a new Who studio album and perhaps a tour of the rest of America in early 1980. Any long tour would involve the rather unusual scheduling policy of two weeks on, two weeks off, a concession to Townshend, who has often stated his reluctance to spend much time away from his family. Also possible in 1980 is a revival of Lifehouse, a third Townshend rock opera for which many of the songs on Who’s Next were originally intended.
Of course, it’s questionable whether these grandiose plans will actually be realized. This is the band, after all, that has taken fifteen years to release ten studio albums. But Moon’s death seems to have had a galvanizing effect on the remaining trio. The legendary intergroup warfare has at least been muffled, and not necessarily because Daltrey has “won” control of the band. “I didn’t win,” he says heatedly. “The Who won. We all won.”
Photo caption: Daltrey: We all won.
1979 – The Who play the Pavillon de Paris in Paris, France
Since this is a Who show in France, we recommend you visit our friends at “Les Who en France” here
1989 – Roger is at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Mack The Knife, which features Roger singing the title song. In an interview, Roger says he wanted to become a doctor of Chinese medicine and study herbal medicine and acupuncture. He adds that he never felt that singing and acting were proper careers
2001 – Pete wins an award from BMI for “Who Are You” as one of the most performed television themes of the year. Earlier in the day he records individual guitar “riffs” on the Gibson SG’s he auctioned for charity.
2007 – Willie Nile releases his CD Live at the Turning Point featuring a cover of “Substitute”. You can listen to it on YouTube here
2007 – The Who play the Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid in Madrid, Spain
2011 – Harper Collins is declared the publisher of Pete’s autobiography.
2013 – Roger appears on the U.S. television show “The View”
2015 – The Who play the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2016 – The Who play the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon
2020 – The Daily Express reports that Roger shared his thoughts on the coronavirus lockdown this week and didn’t hold back. ‘Go f*** yourselves!’ The Who star hits out over being told to ‘stay in’
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