Saturday, May 20th, 1967

Melody Maker talks to Keith in an article titled "The economy size, family pack Who --for U.S. consumption". Pictures of Lily was #5 in their "Pop 30" chart

 

Transcript:

The economy size, family pack Who—for U.S. consumption

“WE want to make it in the States very much,” said Keith Moon during a break in a Who rehearsal in the, fortunately, solidly-built bar of London’s Saville Theatre.

And after one or two false starts it looks as though the Who are about to make it in the States. They already have 15 thriving American fan clubs. They are representing Britain at the mammoth Monterey Pop Festival in June as part of a major tour. “Happy Jack” — the British single before their current hit, “Pictures Of Lily” — is doing well in the US charts.

“It’s a funny thing about ‘Happy Jack,’” said Keith, steadfastly ignoring Pete Townshend hammering on his drums. “It’s the one record we didn’t think would go in the States at all.

“It’s basically an LP track, not a single. We had an idea of what songs would sell in America—or we thought we had. Obviously we were wrong.”

WORRYING

Are the Who planning anything special for Monterey and the American tour?

“No, nothing special,” said Keith. “We’ll do the things we usually do, only bigger. A sort of economy size, family pack stage act. We shall draw our repertoire from our American hits—all one of them.”

Keith admitted he found the current chart scene “a little worrying” and wondered who bought all the ballad singles. He didn’t, however, feel that the groups were getting too complicated for the average fan.

“There are always groups like the Troggs and Dave Dee who keep it simple,” he said. “There are plenty of new groups coming up all the time and it’s only when they have been on the scene a long time that they progress to the stage where they play more for themselves. In the long run you have to play what you want to play and what satisfies you rather than worrying too much about reaching the top of the chart.

“Then there are the light shows. We used to carry lights about until it all got too heavy and dirty. Now we just take a lighting engineer with us.”

A year ago journalists tended to concentrate on the Who’s ability to smash guitars, amplifiers and drum sticks rather than their music. This seems to have faded and I wondered if Keith was relieved that it had.

“I’ve not really thought about it,” he told me. “I suppose it’s partly because we’ve been out of the country for quite long periods and people have sort of switched to Jimi Hendrix. Then journalists have probably got a bit bored with it, it’s become too much of a straight story now. Anyway we are thinking up some new things now—like smoke.”

When I first saw the Who on TV, I thought that Keith was undoubtedly the worst miming in the business. Constant viewing decided me that he must be doing it on purpose—nobody could get that far out of phase by accident.

“I just hate miming,” explained Keith. “It’s impossible to mime. Really, it’s very easy to go on and do a straight mime to a tape but I hate it. So I go my own way.”

EVOLVE

The Who have long had the reputation of pace-setters in the avant garde of pop. Do they find this a burden? Do they worry about having to come up with something new all the time?

“We don’t think about it,” said Keith. “We just do what we want to do, and we always have. We work together within the group and the ideas just come out. It’s very easy. It was hard at first when we were all arguing—we didn’t find it easy to communicate at first. Things are a lot easier now. We don’t fight any more and ideas can evolve naturally.

“At the moment we are working on a new LP. All the material will be original, including some stuff I’ve been writing. It will be released later in the year.”

From what I heard of the rehearsal, the secret of the Who is simple. Inspiration laced with a great deal of hard work.

—BOB DAWBARN.

Photo caption: KEITH: hard work