Saturday, March 13th, 1971

Melody Maker runs the eighth "The Pete Townshend Page" called "Learning to walk - the second time around." He discusses the necessity of touring for The Who, a strong rumor about Brian Epstein's plan to have The Beatles tour Sgt. Pepper's with an orchestra and tapes, and how Glyn Johns will be recording the live film soundtrack using The Rolling Stones' mobile recording equipment.

 

Transcript:

THE PETE TOWNSHEND PAGE #8

Melody Maker, 13^th March 1971

 

LEARNING TO WALK - THE SECOND TIME ROUND

WHEN Zappa first talked to Keith and I about his film 200 Motels, he said it was "All about how touring makes you crazy." I said I felt the opposite. Touring keeps me sane, I said.

His lady friend laughed and at that point they figured, I suppose, that we'd already gone over the ridge last tour. I can't help feeling, especially at times like this, with the group rehearsing, never appearing before an audience, how important it is to tour.

The WHO go insane when they aren't touring. Maybe that would make a good film. "200 Rehearsals."

As usual everything is a year late, the songs, the script, the energy. The point is that if you're doing gigs, playing halls, facing people, it somehow keeps you in touch with their stand towards you. You can feel their reactions and moods as a mass, and make decisions about your music

and how to make it say what people want it to say. I was in the toilet after our return to Leeds University last year, and I overheard this conversation.

"Bloody great weren't they?" "They were all right I suppose, not as good as Deep Purple."

That was when I first got the urge to take another listen to a band I'd always admired as individual musicians, but not really taken much notice of lately. On another occasion. I talked to a load of kids at a gig at Hammersmith at the end of our last tour. They reminded us of songs we used to play years back that we'd forgotten about ourselves. One, "Baby Don't You Do It," a Marvin Gaye number, we play again today. It beats Summertime Blues in the Who nostalgia stakes. Brings tears to my eyes.

Could the Beatles have been saved by touring? I don't know enough background to comment really but I can hazard a guess. I think they would still be together today if they had broken that ice that built up around them, ice that collects around the nose and toes very very quickly in recording studios. Clearly they deserved the long break they took after their heavy American tours, they also needed to allow the heat to die down a bit with regard to audience hysteria.

Maybe they weren't able to foresee that kids wouldn't scream at them forever. I'm not suggesting that was big-headed of them, but at the time it was difficult to hear what any lead singer ever sang at a big show. It wasn't just screaming kids, it was also the fact that a microphone system to get the sound above the new powerful guitar amps was not available.

I do remember though, about the time of Sergeant Pepper I think, talk of a new Beatles' performance. Road show-come Circus. I heard rumours of orchestras travelling with them, tapes being used to recreate the recorded atmospheres, we were on the list as a band to go along, that's where I heard a few stories. Brian Epstein was alive then, and despite the fact that I only met him about six times, I know how much of a link man he was for the individual Beatles.

I think we have reached a point in our stage career where, despite the fact that our recordings haven't reached Beatles' standard, we are facing the same sort of decisions about performing that the Beatles faced when they were thinking of touring again after their long rest. Two guitars, a few voices and a drummer can do a lot more, but there is a point where you reach the end of your limitations. You produce only variations on a certain sound.

Loud Live At Leeds, or soft Live At Leeds. The Stones broke their jinx. Mick Jagger rang me up just before they went on the road again, and wanted to know all the worst gigs.

Brian Jones had announced that he was to leave the group, and Mick wanted a guitarist too. He invited us to take our weary bodies out on the tightrope when the Stones' Rock and Roll Circus hit the rails.

In other words, he had the same motivations as did the Beatles a while earlier. He wanted to get back on the road. Back on the stage, playing to people. Making records takes a long time, you don't get reactions for months after you have performed. Making films takes even longer. You don't get reactions for years sometimes. I think the Stones found that unbearable.

At least Mick did. Instantaneous reaction. That's what everyone needs. I weighed up all the wasted time in my life the other day. I had ordered a machine for my studio, and was given a delivery date six months on. Six months is half a year. A year might be as much as a fiftieth of my life. So do I wait for the machine. How can I? This is one of the most important things to hit the Who during out rehearsals.

If you are going to develop new sound systems, they have to be designed and built. Then they have to be tested and proven. Only then can you decide whether they are worth using or not. Imagine the problems facing the Beatles and their six-group, two-orchestra, tape machines and sound effects road show. Dreams mate, Dreams.

Some of our new equipment has taken a full 18 months to reach stage maturity. Our new P.A. mixer has been growing steadily in size and reliability for a whole year. Special tape decks have been flown over from the States and mixing facilities designed to incorporate them into the system. I have been churning out demos and scripts like a coffee machine in the tea break.

 

Fiddling with three makes of Synthesiser and twenty brands of tranquilisers. Luckily the Stones have already built a superb mobile sound studio in a furniture van. We hope to record all the sound in our new film using it if it's available. It was designed by Glynn Johns, Glynn will be working with us on the film when it begins this year.

Glynn engineered our first three records, in a sense he invented our sound, or at least that sound that emerged from Shel Talmy sessions. He was one of the few people to contain the recording of the Small Faces too. That partnership culminated in one of the best rock albums with a theme ever. If not period. Ogdens of course. We are looking forward to hearing the playbacks.

If nothing else, the past year's preoccupation with electronics has bestowed on me an inate love of wire. The sight of a Moog Synthesiser smothered in patch cables brings me to a state approaching orgasm. A 13 amp plug starts my heart beating faster, and the inside of a television set is enough to reduce me to tears. My latest addiction is chewing solder. What a high man. Really burns me up. Keeps my mind in flux. Never get stoned on a dry joint, chew solder. Yuk.

 

We've done it though, Nearly. I think we've come closer to breaking up and nervous breakdowns than ever before in our careers, but we're getting results. The point seems to be hammered home to us all the time. That no-one can afford to wait long periods of time to get their creative work finished. Film makers and classical composers amaze me. Their stamina and patience, is appalling, their courage incredible.

We can't even wait for ourselves to catch up. I am in a peculiarly schizo position. One part of me says it takes time to write, I need time, touring burns time. The other part of me says I can't write unless I'm alive, I'm not alive unless I'm touring. That isn't to infer that we'd starve if we didn't work. Our roadies would. Ha, Ha. But we wouldn't, Tommy sees to that. It just illustrates that the only people what are able to come up with anything really new, are new people. With clear heads and no addictions to smoke filled ballrooms, or maybe they are free of the burden of continuous introverted recording sessions.

Year in year out, following one record with another. Trying to improve all the time, and needing endless studio time to do so. It's no good making incredible records though, if you can't enjoy people's enjoyment of them. Sales mean nothing in that respect. They mean more money to make more recordings, but they don't give a musician the feedback he so desperately needs.

Drunken crowds of jeering kids. They give you the feedback you need. Good on 'em. You can't go wrong. You can't fool yourself, you can't pretend they like it for its deep, hidden spiritual implications when they're jumping up and down to the heat of the music and shouting so loud they can't hear the words anyway.

Touring does make you crazy, but recording makes you lazy.

P.S. Thank you, Andy Roberts for your tumultuous response to my campaign to bring back freedom to the musicians' elbow. Got mime if you want it! Looks like the Musicians' Union can go back to sleep, yours was the only letter of support I got. See you at the next Branch meeting, we can play darts, eh? - P.T.