1963 – The Detours play in Greenford at the Oldfield Hotel
1964 – The Who play the Glenlyn Ballroom in Forest Hill
1965 – The Who play Town Hall in High Wycomb
1966 – “Substitute” peaks at #13 on the German charts
1966 – The Who appear on the final edition of BBC-1’s “A Whole Scene Going” miming to “Disguises” with Pete wearing a false mustache and John playing a Tuba he called “Gladys”.
1967 – The Who played in Arlington Heights, Illinois at The Celler, a “Special Benefit Show” for the Mount Prospect Junior Women’s Club. H.P. Lovecraft, the band not the writer, opens.
1968 – The Who play the London College of Printing
1968 – Disc and Music Echo features a photo of The Who with “Yellow Printer” taken on the 11th
1968 – Melody Maker’s Bob Dawbarn reviews “Dogs” and interviews Roger
Transcript:
At 18s 3d in the £, the Who find it’s hardly worth working
IT looks as though we may be seeing a full Pete Townshend opera as a Who LP. Pete has written most of it and it may run up to two hours. Roger Daltrey told the NME this week. “We will probably do it on a complete album and it is more than likely we might do a live performance as well.”
Actually, Pete has been writing these operas for some time and a lot of our hits have come from them. “I’m A Boy” was from an opera he wrote about living in the year 2,000 when there is a machine that helps you select the sex of your baby. That song was about a woman who couldn’t believe that the machine had made a mistake and she’d got a boy instead of a girl. “Happy Jack” was from another opera he did.
“I don’t think it will be our next LP. We will probably have to get one out fairly quickly and that means it will be just a set of different songs. When we come back from our next American tour we will really get down to the opera thing.
“But one main thing on the Who’s collective mind at the moment is their new single, another Townshend original about a greyhound called ‘Dogs.’”
“Why have we been so long between singles?” Roger echoed my question. “Mainly because we didn’t have anything worth recording. We’ve been touring so much there hasn’t been time to get it together and we feel it isn’t worth doing a single unless you have something worth releasing.”
The group is off to the States for a new tour on June 26 and seem to be looking forward to it.
“Last time there were tensions,” agreed Roger. “You have to tour for at least six weeks over there. The first three weeks pays your fares and all the expenses. The fourth week pays for your road managers. The fifth pays for your manager. The sixth is profit for us. In our sixth week Martin Luther King got shot. There was no business, and we came back with nothing.”
“And please don’t think we’ve forgotten about Britain. We all love working here, but what is the point with the tax we pay? It’s stupid. We pay 18s 3d in the pound so it’s hardly worth working. At the moment we are doing two gigs a week, mainly at universities. Roger doesn’t agree that, musically, it’s all happening in the States now.
“The Mothers Of Invention and Moby Grape are marvellous,” he said, “But the rest are a lot of rubbish. It’s time somebody told the truth about the American scene. Really, most of their groups really don’t know where it’s at.
“Their material is good. They have this environment which seems great for writing songs. But the groups themselves are nothing on stage. Part of the trouble may be that people don’t take groups seriously over there.
“We naturally want to keep moving. Like our stage act — we’ve been doing roughly the same act for a year now. It’s so tight. It’s fantastic for people to watch. But we want to change it because we want to do something different.”
Who go to the dogs and back a winner!
THE WHO: “Dogs” (Track). This should sell a million at the White City and Shawfield — it’s all about a real greyhound called “Yellow Printer,” the fastest thing on legs since Wendy Potts.
Seriously, though, folks (as they say on Radio One) it’s another Pete Townshend original with tremendous instant appeal.
There’s a lot of hilarity, notably chunks of Cockney, dog-lover’s chat from Pete and John Entwhistle.
Not exactly the Who at their most progressive but this deserves to make the top five — and no doubt it will.
1970 – The Who play the first of two nights in Berkeley at the Community Theater.
You can listen to the show on YouTube here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o81Mp_wTm6s
1979 – John and Kenney Jones are interviewed on WPIX and WPLJ radio
1986 – Pete was scheduled to perform at the “A Conspiracy Of Hope” concert at Giants Stadium in New Jersey but has to fly back to England when he receives news that his father has become seriously ill.
1993 – Pete’s last solo album of new material, PsychoDerelict, is released in the U.S.
1995 – Ringo’s All-Star Band featuring John and Zak play in Sendai at Sendai Sun-Plaza
2001 – John plays in Kelseyville, California at the Konocti Harbor Resort in “A Walk Down Abbey Road: A Tribute To The Beatles.” featuring Todd Rundgren, Ann Wilson and Alan Parsons. In addition to Beatles’ songs (that John admits he never rehearsed), John solos on “The Real Me” and “My Generation”.
2001 – Pete is interviewed in The Hollywood Reporter. He says that his commercial website eelpie.com has already taken in a seven-digit dollar figure in the first year.
Transcript:
Online revenue g-g-generation: A Q&A with Pete Townshend
June 15, 2001
Pete Townshend is one of the best-known voices of his generation. As
the guitarist and main songwriter for The Who, his songs have enriched
the lives of countless rock music fans. His songs can also be heard in
films such as “Jerry Maguire,” “Apollo 13,” “Fever Pitch,” “Rushmore”
and “Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me” as well as on Broadway
and elsewhere. Townshend helps support his creative ventures with his
official commercial outlet www.eelpie.com and a sanctioned site at
www.petetownshend.com. He spoke to The Hollywood Reporter’s new
media/technology reporter Chris Marlowe about how the Internet has
affected his nearly 40 years in the music industry.
THR: Many people have hypothesized that freely available music
devalues it and makes fans less likely to pay for music in the future.
Do you agree?
Townshend: No. It is packaging that makes me buy CDs. Owning a
beautiful thing. I don’t buy a Tom Waits CD to support him as a
struggling artist, I buy it because the artwork is usually as
brilliant as the music. If all I wanted was a few lead tracks I’d
download them today from Napster and next time I saw him I’d tell him
I love him and – you know what, he’d be so pleased he wouldn’t even
think to ask why.
THR: As a recording artist, do you think organizations like the RIAA
and BMI are acting in your best interests when they sue file sharing
companies such as Scour and Napster?
Townshend: No. BMI in particular should pay artists the money they
have collected on their behalves. It is that simple. If they do manage
to sue Napster who will get the cash? How will they distribute it?
They can’t even properly account for performance fees taken from bands
who perform their own works on the road. They still rely on a general
distribution based on some random formula and sales that no one quite
understands.
THR: What do you think of Napster?
Townshend: I don’t use it. My son and I checked it out. It’s
interesting. It will never make a cent. Mark my words. I already have
a better idea.
THR: Have you discussed your Internet activities with your record
label?
Townshend: I don’t have a record label.
THR: You have said that the future is broadband entertainment. Why?
Townshend: Let’s say The Who are in the recording studio. We decide to
perform a show from there. To reach 100 people at one time with decent
sound alone would cost my company about #45,000 every year for open
bandwidth. Most people on the receiving end wouldn’t bother to log on
unless they had fast connections, but they would soon give up if they
couldn’t log on within minutes. Moving images of decent quality
require even more bandwidth at even more cost. But once the cost comes
down, there will be no stopping the artists of this world. Freed from
promoters, managers, agents, fixers , middlemen, press, and even
accountants, they will perform like buskers whenever they have the
need. It’s true piracy. Maybe what is happening cost-wise is
reflection of the fact that the large corporations have an interest in
keeping the cost of bandwidth high? That way at least they keep the
artists tied to the old methods a little longer.
THR: As broadband becomes more common, do you think your opinions
about downloading music will change?
Townshend: What you mean I’ll want to charge people? I already do. I
give some stuff away (like I’ve always done on loss-making tours, the
radio and in home taping) and I sell some stuff. The one feeds the
other.
THR: You have a retail component to your online presence. Does the
income make it worthwhile, or are there other reasons you do it?
Townshend: It’s hugely lucrative for me. Our dollar gross ran into
seven digits in the first year of trading.
THR: You post many of your own songs on your Web site for your fans to
freely download. How do you select which tracks to give away?
Townshend: On a whim.
THR: Has the Internet changed anything the way you create, what you
create, or in how you perceive yourself as an artist?
Townshend: It has sharpened my sense of myself as an artist. I do more
of what I really want to do musically knowing that however arch or
narrow I become, there will be people I can find to touch. Ironically,
that self-indulgence frees me too. Pampered as I am by my Web site
works, I am far more willing to attend to my old established and
readily recognized methods. This has allowed me to do Who touring in
the old manner without feeling I am letting my artistic vision fester.
THR: Does the Internet make you more or less in control of your
career?
Townshend: I control only what I put up on my site. Sadly, it is open
to misuse and misinterpretation (like normal press statements) because
what I say can be taken out of context, sequence or suffer because
intended irony is lost in translation to other mediums. I suppose
there is no control really. That’s good I think. If there were too
many Madonnas in this world we’d all want Johnny Rotten back. I want
him back anyway.
THR: You have been actively posting quite personal video diaries and
messages on your Web site. Why do you do this? You spend a lot of time
on it, and you’re surprisingly intimate; do you get something out of
it yourself?
Townshend: I spend no time on it at all really. I’m an artist. You’ve
seen my guts already you just don’t know it. The diaries are nothing
more than what I’ve always done in interviews. I’m not interested in
secrets or facts, just truth.
THR: Do you think your answers to these questions would be any
different if you weren’t already successful?
Townshend: Yes. I’ve spoken to a lot of young artists who are trying
to use the Internet to build their names. It doesn’t seem to work. If
and when they break they break in fairly normal ways. They get found
by a publisher or record company, or build up a large fan base from
doing home-based live shows. I already have a good name so the
Internet works well for me.
2002 – The Who conclude rehearsals for their 2002 tour playing “Who Are You,” “Love Reign O’er Me” and “Bargain.” It will be the last time Pete, Roger and John will perform together.
2010 – Roger attends the going-away party for Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucien Grainge at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London’s Knightsbridge.
2011 – Roger is interviewed in a CNBC Europe profile on publisher Richard Desmond
2012 – An hour-long documentary about the writing and recording of the original album, Quadrophenia: Can You See The Real Me? premieres at the Sheffield Doc/Fest
2013 – The Who play the first of two nights at the O2 Arena in London
2018 – Roger performs with the Boston Pops Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Shed in Lenox, Massachusetts