The Newcastle Evening Chronicle’s POP SPOT by Maureen Cleave carries an article titled “Paris invites the Who to play”
Transcription:
Paris invites the Who to play
THE man charged with putting the Who’s latest song on to sheet music has been sent abroad for a complete rest. It was too much for him. “Ad lib morse code effect for 16 bars,” he wrote, pathetically aware that it did not sum up the situation. Later, finally, desperately, he wrote: “Hit cymbals with microphone,” and departed.
The Who are a newish group, one of the many to become prominent since the time scheduled for the decline of groups. London might call them its own local group: which is how it once thought the Rolling Stones in the days when the Liverpool Movement threatened its survival
The Who are the darlings of “Ready Steady Go,” they are very, very smart indeed though they would shudder to read this. The faintest hint of trend-setting makes them feel tired.
The Who are Mods and beloved of Mods and as the Who know that Mods ended just before Christmas (they were buying Christmas presents for their mothers at the time) this lends a sadness and poignancy to their very existence/ “The whole thing still has a chance,” they say.
But in their heart of hearts they feel proudly, cynically, wearily fin de race.
THEIR OWN…
If you haven’t come across their music it is well worth listening to. Their second record is “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” their own composition. It is so interestingly electronic that they have been invited to play as a mystique concrete concert in Paris.
There’s a kind of desolate demolition noice in the middle where the versifying appears to fall to pieces. “I can go anywhere. I can live anyhow. I can do anything for something new,” bawls the singer desperately, and its quite frightening,
“It’s music for people who’ve been messed around,” someone said “just right for the Mods.” The who prefer to call it “the first true Pop Art single”
“Unlike other groups when they become successful.” their managers said, “the Who haven’t gone nice at the edges.” They sat around the room wearing peacock colours, in turn filing their nails on an emeryboard.
They dislike each other intensely a lot of the time. “Ours,” they say, “is a group with built-in hate. If we liked each other, we probably wouldn’t exist. Once we took a few days off to go away and hate each other, and when we cam back, we played 20 times better.”
There are four Who: Roger Daltrey the singer, who has bright yellow hair: John Entwistle who rarely utters: Peter Townsend, who has a long striking intelligent yellow face: and Keith Moon who has bright button eyes which make him look less weary of the world than the others. Indeed one might go so far as to think he had something to live for.
A SMASHER
Some people go to watch the Who in the hope that Peter Townsend (sic) will smash a costly guitar. He has so far smashed four-hundred pounds worth. Do not think this is pure histrionics. Any apparent dottiness about the Who’s musical work is carefully contrived.
The Who have many boys among their fans whom they regard with patronizing affection. “They’re in a crummy predicament., having to work to live: in respectable places. They envy our music.
“They would love to get hold of a £200 guitar and wallop it. They would like to jump up on the stage and yell about why can’t the kids have pills and how the youngsters are bing put down by people of 40 who want to be 20.”
Two passions rule their lives: one is music, the other is their personal appearance. They are most particular about their hair, having it tinted and occasionally done after hours. Their managers say it’s a war of nerves about their clothes.
Peter Townsend (sic) explains the Mod and his ways thus: “People of a certain age have to identify with something, don’t they? Two wars gave youngsters before something to identify with. Our generation had to find something else.”
And when does a Mod cease the frantic search for the newest and the first and most novel?
“When he finds his own identity, of course,” said Peter Townsend (sic)