1967 – The Who play the International Amphitheater in Chicago
1971 – The Who play the second of four nights at the Music Hall in Boston. Massachusetts.
1971 – Rolling Stone magazine carries an article titled “It’s About Time For Townshend” by Chris Hodenfield
Transcription:
It’s About Time For Townshend
BY CHRIS HODENFIELD
LONDON-Did you know that the Who made Who’s Who? Not quite the whole band, but Pete Townshend, the one that elevated a minor Shepherds Bush band called the High Numbers into a full-scale Mod crew, the one that smashed guitars, wrote Tommy and was just about to destroy the en- tire rock world with a new character named Bobby.
Bobby? Directors are still vying for the movie rights to Tommy (Fellini even said he might be interested), performances are being staged in various cities, and now Townshend comes along with Bobby. He’s a man of no small plans, that Townshend.
Talking with him is like being thrown into a science fiction film of rackets and conceptions. He’s really a one-man band as ho sits in his three-story Twickenham house, equipped with a recording studio, a thousand guitars and as many portraits of Meher Baba. Townshend’s demo records are legen- dary. He not only writes a song, he makes a tape of it with voice, bass, drums and guitar, then plays it for the studio. And those demos are hot. Blessed
with a luminous and lucid mind, he is subject to brain-storms, and science fiction bleeds into reality, strategies into superwigs.
Last March, the Who booked London’s Young Vic theater (a contemporary version of the Shakespearian Old Vic) for a massive concept assault on rock. As suddenly as it came, it disappeared.
“A lot of things are overdue now, right?” Townshend asked, speaking from beneath a wall-sized painting of Meher Baba.
“The Who really had to be involved with something that was acceler-ating. After Live at Leeds we had just planed off, we had cliched ourselves in-credibly. I said, ‘Fucked if I’m going to write another pop opera.’ God knows what would have happened if I did. I mean, I look at things like Jesus Christ-Superstar now and, well… we got in enough trouble over Tommy as far as rock history is concerned. I figured we needed acceleration, and the only possible area left is film.
“I was hoping that the Who could be involved in the next big exciting rock boogaloo that could change the whole rock movement. You know, things have been very sad lately and groups are doing the same old thing. In order to change the face of rock as much as the Beatles did, this new group, or entity, has to completely alter the rock theater.
In other words, this group couldn’t go to the Fillmore and do their debut. And it’s not going to happen in two hours: it’s going to be a six month thing.
“So it had to be a film, right? I started to build this thing, in fiction, about a guy who is It.
The next big superstar, the Supersuperstar. The one who does it all. And around this Id build up a new technology.
“If I could get a couple million dollars from some movie company, then I could get a thousand people and literally live and work with them in this theater environment for six months. The whole thing was taken on a sweeping scale of having them mirror the next big fucking incredible rock event in a film. It would be saying, ‘This is it, this is the way we’re going to live from now on, this is going to be society.’
“We got approval for the money from Universal Pictures and I went ahead, rapping to the group, writing the script. We got the quadrophonic PA. We developed some tape systems, I went into synthesizer things on how to get music out of personalities and this sort of thing.
We changed the acoustics of the Young Vic so that we could have a level of entertainment day and night.
“I didn’t want to invent a hero, obviously, but for the purpose of the script, I wrote him in and called him Bobby, as a gag.
“We developed an amazing set of hardware. I spent £ 12,000 [$30,000) on synthesizers alone. You know in FM radio they have cartridges where, as soon as you hit the button, out comes music?
We’ve got this system where I’ve got a row of foot pedals, and when I hit one, something just comes out. It might be a brass band, a full orchestra, a plane going by, an explosion, whatever.
“The other thing I was working out on a synthesizer was to mechanically reflect the basic information about an in-dividual, like height, weight or logical detail, in music. My friend would make up a chart, then I would set the synthesizer up to certain parameters, then feed the eight-track into that and the synthesizer would mix the tapes on its own.
“Well, the next thing you know the bottom starts falling out all around me. I find that I can’t have the Young Vic every day of the week, only Mondays.
“It bombed out incredibly because it was too far out.”
All this mind you, from tough rock’s most stalwart proponent. All mixed up in what sounds like Jesus Christ starring in Satyricon. The Who’s next album, entitled The Who Next, will be released soon, after they find a “suitable pornographic cover.” (A dry run had Keith Moon done up in a girdle.) It’s a straight LP, possibly their first ever with nothing hanging off the end. The only track that has anything to do with the new boogaloo is “Barbra Ann,” which uses as rhythm somebody’s heartbeat—via a synthesizer-via an eight-track.
Another project in the works is Townshend’s soundtrack for load, a film based on the novel Guitar Farm, which is based or the antics of Adolph Hitler and Glenn Miller wheeling around in a Lincoln.
“The reason we got involved in this concept thing is because we were on a hump. When this happens to most other groups, they just break up.
We knew we weren’t going to break up, SO faced it with less panic. The idea … I think, was to hurry everything up and make this boogaloo happen, hecance so desperately want to see it happen.
But you can’t do that. That’s a power trip as much as anything else, and very easily corrupted,
“I figure it’s best for the Who to keep on doing the Who until this boogaloo happens.
But I shouldn’t be surprised that when someone does make it happen, it should fit pretty well into my script. I should demand royalties.”
Do you know you’re bootlegged next week?
“Yeah, I know about that, and it’s about fucking time”
1972 – John is interviewed in Record Mirror: “Why the WHO play better in the U.S.”
If anyone has this issue – I’d love to get a complete copy of the article!! I found a partial photo of the interview and have transcribed what I could – would love to get the rest!
Partial Transcript:
Who’s Sick
Who’s Man in black, John Entwistle talks to Rob Mackie
SOMEONE IN a group that also contains Pete Townshend and Keith Moon has problems when it comes to being noticed among the group — it’s a bit like appearing on a TV talk show with Jonathan Miller and Harpo Mark sitting on either side.
Roger Daltrey at least has his stage act that people know him by, while a rare day has occurred if John Entwistle tas a toe on stage.
“If I jumped about as well, we’d look like a bunch of lunatics”, says John very reasonably, and perhaps the importance of his contributions to the group would only be fully appreciated in absence. Try and imagine someone else playing bass on ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, or picture the ‘Tommy’ saga minus Cousin Kevin or Uncle Ernie. Or that you’d never seen the Who do ‘Heaven and Hell’.
There was an old Hollywood film where a guy’s just about to commit suicide and an angel comes down to prove his worth in life, he gets magically show what life would have been like for the people he knew if he hadn’t been there. That would work well for John. Not that he needs to have anything proved, but suicides in his line, as a songwriter anyway. “I’ve got through writing all those horror numbers now, I’ve just written a nice ordinary one…about suicide”, he mentions as deadpan as ever.
There’s a deadpan quality about the way he writes some of the horrific themes too, which only makes them more chilling. Remember this: “Maybe a cigarette burn on your arm Would change your expression to one of alarm/I’ll drag you around by a lock of you hair/Or give you a push at the top of the stairs”. That was that nice Kevin, taking care of his little cousin.
“Him and Uncle Ernie”, says John in fond reminiscence. “There’s a horrible couple of characters. I was suggest that I ought to do the ones about them because I have the darkest sense of humor.
<MISSING>
kid at school who used to bully me around before I discovered I was as big as him.”
Its all too evident that ‘Boris the Spider’ has a reallife equivalent too, as John is talking in the studio he has built into his lovely home in Ealing and behind him with its legs neatly splayed out in a glass-ridden box is a very nasty looking species of spider. “I used to have a stuffed cobra”, he says drily, “It fell apart and ended up in the dustbin”
To complete the aura of suburban evil, John is dressed to match his jet-black hair and it somes as a surprise that his new solo album is about ‘A set of fairy-tale characters. They aren’t named characters, but they are depicted in a sort of Beatrix Potter style in water colours in the sleeve. Little Miss Muffet may have got scared out of her wits by a spider, but worse fates may well be in store for any characters created for ‘Whistle Rhymes’, the second Entwistle slo album, out here in October.
But really it’s entirely in keeping for John to be writing in the style of a kids book. Without the addition of the Entwistles’ first, Christopher, the material might never have got written. “By the time I’ve got up for the baby at 6 am., I’m up and there’s nothing special to do, so its easy get down to songwriting. I’ve done 17 in the last two months which is about the same output as the previous six years. I even wrote one of those ‘Now I’m A Farmer’ things, but I don’t think I’ll use it”
Chirstopher is one of the reasons for the aura of quiet satisfaction that surrounds Joh. There are a lot of others. He’s not the sort of person to say “Hey! lok at this”, but everywhere you look in his house, there’s something amazing. <Missing>
Pride of place goes to a synthesizer worth 11,000 dollars and capable of 30 billion combinations. It’s a toy that would take a long time to get tired of. In a twinkle, you can play the same phrase 20 or 30 different instruments with any kind of variations you want. You can do impossible things on it — ever heard a piccolo with a wah-wah pedal?
There are 21 bass guitars.
One has its own built-in light show with the colours changing according to what being played. Nine are Gibson Thunderbirds: “They’re ideal on stage for me, but they break pretty easily and they stopped making them, so i bought up everything I could find.” The least musical instrument in the studio is a long stick decorated with tops from beer bottles and with tin cans attached — A Christmas present from Roger.
John’s built-in bear downstairs houses a fine collection of antique pisolry, a TV set wiwth video attachments for recording, and — intermittently — two enormous but friendly deer hounds. The main room is bing entirely re-done “I don’t like living in other people’s taste, and open on to a garden with a pond swimming with carp and goldfish. Christopher’s on the last in a carry-cot type of thing having his face washed by the tongue of one of the large and lopin deer-hounds — its a cosy domestic scene far from the union jack jackets and guitar smashing of the early Who.
While The Hollies seemed to split up over the issue of Allan Clarke’s solo album, John’s “Smash You Head Against The Wall” was taken as amateur of course by the group. “We all have our own projects as well. Pete’s got his own solo album, Roger records <missing>
“I’m not aware of that, all that I feel we have to live up to is the last live gig. Albums matter to us as new material for a live show, that’s all. The Who is a stage act. Singles don’t interest me at all. I think I’ve seen “Top of the Pops’ once in the last two years. I’m not really aware of singles”
“It’s a thing for the family to say ‘ooh, it’s gone up to number 8, thats all. There’s an obvious single on my solo album, but I don’t think I’ll put it out, I think singles ought to be representative of an album, not just the most commercial track, which is what they always seem to be.
“The live shows stay exciting because we’re always doing something different. Actually, we’ve always worked best in the States. Work’s more concentrated there. There’s no home life to distract you. When you’re here, you have to take care of bills and go to the office between gigs. There you’re just the group and that’s all that matters. My bass playing has gotten better each year, but I’m never really satisfied.”
<Missing>
1972 – Billboard reports that “Join Together” has peaked at #9 on the Swiss charts while it has climbed 11 spots to #36 in the Hot 100.
1978 – Billboard magazine carries “ads” for The Who’s “Who Are You”
1987 – Roger appears on Good Morning America for the first of two days to promote his solo LP Can’t Wait To See The Movie. He says he did an album of love songs because it is the only thing that now gets played on European radio.
1989 – The Who play Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri
1994 – Roger’s “A Celebration of the Music of Pete Townshend” tour continues with a performance at the Fox Theater in Detroit
1996 – Scott Smith inaugurates the Odds & Sods internet Who chat group. Originally hosted on “yami.com” – it would go on to be the mailing list for thewho.net for over 10 years
1997 – The Who play The Darien Lake Performing Arts Center in Darien, New York
1998 – John plays at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon
2005 – The Who Live at the Royal Albert Hall DVD is awarded Platinum status by the RIAA
2005 – Pete Townshend’s girlfriend Rachel Fuller tells The Mirror about their early relationship: “He pursued me. I ran away for a while, then I got to know him for a bit and discovered how fantastic he is.”
2006 – Billboard magazine carries an article titled “So Far, So Good For Touring Biz” featuring a photo of The Who with the caption “The Who’s fall outing is one of many that should drive a healthy increase in concert grosses”