1965 – The Who play the Town Hall in Greenwich, London
1967 – “Pictures Of Lily” backed with “Doctor Doctor” is released in the U.S. The lyrics cause most radio stations to balk at playing it, so it peaks at #51 in Billboard and #60 in Cash Box. In the more liberal Netherlands, “Pictures of Lily” reaches #2 on this date.
Billboard carries a full page ad for the new single
1967 – NEMS employees are sent out to scour the local celebrity hangouts for extras to participate in the next day’s live broadcast of The Beatles performing “All You Need Is Love” on a worldwide television show called Our World. Tony Bramwell finds Keith in The Speakeasy amusing himself by tossing peanuts at the other patrons. He tells Keith to be at Abbey Road’s Studio One at 2pm the next day.
1970 – The Who play the Spectrum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The James Gang opened. The night’s performance is the first to feature closed-circuit video of their performance playing on a giant video screen behind them. The image, however, is black-and-white and blurry.
1970 – Variety reports that The Who are expected to make $1 million on this North American tour. They also report that Tommy will soon be made into a film.
1972 – Track Records releases the stand-alone second disc Tommy (Part 2) in Britain as part of Track’s effort to provide cheaper alternatives to cash-strapped British youth. It does not chart.
1972 – Pete tells Sounds magazine that widespread bootlegging of the Meher Baba devotional albums that have featured his work will lead to him releasing a collection of them through his legitimate record label. It will be called Who Came First. Pete will later discover that MCA mistook the actual releases of the Baba albums for bootlegs.
1972 – Record Mirror features a full page ad for Join Together as well as a review of the new single
1979 – The Kids Are Alright premieres at the Rialto Theatre in Leicester Square. Pete, John and Kenney attend
1980 – The Who play the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California
1980 – The Daily Mirror publishes an interview with Pete by Noreen Taylor
Transcript:
NOREEN TAYLOR talks to the great wild man of rock
‘My life’s one bloody great picnic. But it’s not much fun being Mrs Pete Townshend’
THE drink and drugs diet of the past fifteen years have taken their toll and his 35-year-old face wears the pallor of an eternal hangover.
Pete Townshend, leader of yesterday’s generation and of one of the world’s longest-lasting supergroups, The Who, said “I don’t get hangovers if I stick to brandy. I’d like to stop altogether, but it’s not easy.”
He had a full glass in his hand and an Empty Glass on his mind.
He drained the first and complained about the second—his new solo album.
“Nobody is buying it,” he said gloomily. “They like it in America, but they’re not buying it here.”
Empty Glass is written and performed by Townshend minus the boys in his band.
“We’re working on a new Who album and we’ll be touring soon. This is something I wanted to do on my own.” he said.
Wife
Then Townshend, lunching in his favorite Soho restaurant, ordered a second glass.
Life, it appears, is far from easy for one of the best and most original songsters British rock has produced.
The man who summed up the frustration of youth with his songs Substitute and My Generation and his rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia seemed far from satisfied.
I asked if there was something else he’d like to achieve. “Yes” he said quickly, “I’d like to remain married.”
Pete and his wife, Karen, met at art school and married twelve years ago. They have two daughters Emma, eleven, and Aminta, nine.
“Our marriage has lasted a long time, but it’s under a greater strain now than it’s ever been.
Work
“I can’t pretend that when I go off to America with The Who in a few months that I’m going to work. Rock’s not work it’s fun. A bloody great picnic from start to finish. The champagne starts flowing the minute we get on Concorde, and it doesn’t stop until we get back.
“Meanwhile, Karen is at home. It’s not much fun being Mrs. Pete Townshend. Like the time she read in a magazine that I’d had an affair with a bloke before we got married.
“That really shattered her. She just sat crying in the corner with her head in her hands. I couldn’t get through to her.
“I couldn’t make her understand that I talked about it because it’s my way of reaching out and letting people know about me.”
Unlike Bianca Jagger, and Linda McCartney, Karen Townshend has never shared the flashlights with her husband. She has kept her head down and trained as a teacher. Pete says: “My marriage is my link with security. I love getting home to Karen and the children after a tour.
“But I’m still childishly attracted to the idea that I could snap my fingers and have what I like.
“It stems from the time before rock when women weren’t attracted to me. I used to hate them. They frightened me because they were a threat and a challenge.
Tours
“There seemed to seem to be no problem after I learned to play the guitar. Not that there’s much fulfillment in getting drunk and falling on top of someone who’s there because you’re famous.
“On the other hand, there’s something incredibly exciting about two strangers meeting in a strange bedroom, going through the intimacy of sex and never meeting again.”
His life has never been short of excitement. The guitar-bashing nights, the burnt-out days after sell-out tours, the adulation of his generation, the inevitable exploration with the drug LSD followed by religion.
And then the tragic death of The Who’s original drummer Keith Moon.
“I’m not worried by Keith’s death,” he said. “The same with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones. I knew them all, but I can’t be sad—they did everything they wanted to do and more.
Danger
“When I was told about Keith’s death I laughed. I laughed with relief that I was still alive.
“It must be the way people feel when they’ve survived a war.
“With Keith there was always a sense of danger. Without him it’s quieter and The Who will never be the same again.
“But that’s life, and not much of it is pleasant.
“Still, I’d rather be in the thick of it than sitting in some bleeding yacht in the south of France.”
THE WHO’S ROAD LED TO TRAGEDY
THE WHO were a bunch of Mods who came out of Shepherd’s Bush, West London, in the early Sixties.
They were louder, and wilder, than anyone else on stage and they had an image.
They wore Union Jack jackets, moody hard faces, and the stage would look like a battlefield after one of their concerts.
Singer Roger Daltrey played the flash street boy; John Entwistle, bass guitarist, played the quiet man; Keith Moon wrecked drum kits and hotel rooms—but Pete Townshend was the one who mattered most.
Townshend made The Who his fantasy and his mouthpiece. They became superstars of the Sixties, and sad victims of the Seventies.
Personality clashes within the band meant that years were spent feuding instead of recording.
And it was on an American tour at the end of last year that The Who were struck with their worst disaster. Eleven fans died in a stampede during one of their concerts in Cincinnati.
Townshend and The Who survived even the Punk revolution, when the kids were denouncing super groups as irrelevant left-overs.
[Captions & Side Quotes]
[Top Left Image Caption]: HARMONY TIME: Pete Townshend and Karen on their wedding day.
[Bottom Center Image Caption]: HORROR SHOW: The concert where eleven of the group’s fans died
[Right Column Image Caption]: LONG PLAYER: Rock supergroup survivor Pete Townshend. Picture: BRIAN ARIS
[Bottom Right Box Quote]: ‘When I heard of Keith’s death I laughed with relief that I was still alive’ – KEITH MOON
1980 – Simon Townshend appears in court and is fined £15 for vandalism
1986 – Roger appears on The Noel Edmonds Show on ABC in the United States
1989 – The Who play the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Canada
1995 – Ringo’s All-Star Band featuring John and Zak play in Urayasu at the Bay NK Hall
1997 – Roger Daltrey appears on This Morning on British TV promoting the new video of the movie Quadrophenia.
1997 – The punk compilation album Joe King Presents More Bounce To The Ounce is released with a cover of “The Kids Are Alright” by The Queers.
You can listen to it on YouTube here
1997 – Michael Bruce of Alice Cooper releases an expanded CD of his 1975 solo album In My Own Way. An alternate take of “As Rock Rolls On,” has Keith Moon drumming alongside Ricky Fataar. Keith’s contribution was recorded in late 1974 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
2001 – “A Walk Down Abbey Road: A Tribute To The Beatles.” featuring John play at Casino Apache in Mescalero, New Mexico
2007 – The Who play the Glastonbury Festival