Saturday, May 11th, 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