Saturday, May 4th, 1968

Pete talks about touring in Disc and Music Echo. Keith is also featured admitting he's been married for 2 years.

 

Transcription:

Who: U.S. tours are a drag!

by HUGH NOLAN

AFTER spending most of this year in the States, where the Who are now generally acclaimed as one of the top groups, Pete Townshend announced this week: “The next American tour might very well be my last — and I think that goes for the rest of the group as well.”

Because, says Pete, not only is the work so gruelling and the travelling so tiring that there is just no time for writing songs or getting together musically with the rest of the group — financially, it’s very difficult to just break even, let alone come back with pockets and bank accounts stuffed with glittering dollars.

“On our first tour there with Herman’s Hermits we were amazed to see how scrimping the Hermits were in everyday living. We thought ‘Why the hell are they being so penny-wise?’

“We found out why — we lost 5,000 dollars on that tour.

“The Who’s most recent tour of America, which lasted six weeks and made them one of the four biggest groups in the country, grossed 630,000—700,000 for the group. But by the time Pete, Keith Moon, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey arrived back in Britain they found they had earned barely £1,000 each, after paying managers, agents and all expenses.

“But of course with all the whole kybosh is about to go on, i.e. all the record [ ] which are sold to them, copies would keep us for life out of our lives.

“That’s where the bread is, in recording and songwriting.

Flamboyant

“But then the Who are big spenders. We’re flamboyant and extravagant—smashing two £250 guitars onstage a night is only an indication of how we feel about money.

“And of course, as testified by the shoals of complaining letters which swamp Disc’s Pop Post whenever yet another group leaves for the fleshpots of the U.S. of A., the Who’s British fans find their constant trips to conquer America one enormous drag.

“For not only are the fans robbed of any sight of their idols for months on end — they also miss out on new records.

“A lot of fans have asked us to release ‘Call Me Lightning’, our last American single, here too—not because it’s particularly exciting, but because it’s better that than nothing.

“But really it’s not advanced enough to release here. I want to spend more time on recording new material.

“In the next few weeks we hope to record an opera as a complete LP, and we’ll probably take a single off that. I’ve been talking about doing opera for so long.

“Of course it won’t be an opera in the classical sense of the word, with librettos and big boring songs, but it will in that it has a story and set of characters. It’s called ‘The Amazing Journey’, and the single might very well be ‘I Am A Farmer’, but we’re not quite sure about that yet.”

The group stays in Britain until June 27, when they leave for another, even more gruelling American tour. Ten whole weeks of it, in fact. But, says Pete, it could well be the last ever.

“It’s all right onstage, and the audiences are quite incredible. But you just keep slogging away, travelling the highways and the freeways and the byways and the airways.

“You can’t work, you can’t think—your mind’s blanked out.”

This constant grind has left Pete firmly aware of his grandest ambitions—producer and recording other groups.

“It’s amazing—you join a group and become a star, and then you just want to become a recording engineer, twiddling knobs.”

“I was planning to produce the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, but got to the States just a stop to that. I saw Kit (Kit Lambert, manager of both the Who and Arthur) and told him he’d have to do it instead.

“The current American music scene is somewhat empty, Pete thinks. “Most of the groups there seem to have worked through their ideas very fast.

“Quite honestly, the biggest groups at the moment are the Cream, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, who are huge—and they’re going to be even bigger. They do this incredibly melodic sort of stuff which only they could come up with.

“It’s because Jim Morrison is a real superstar—everything he does is accepted hands down.

“The Americans love superstars. There’s a lot of interest now in Arthur Brown, because he has got superstar potential.

“And that’s why we’re so successful too—Keith Moon and I have super potential. It’s the same with Hendrix—he’s so assertive onstage, though he’s not at all otherwise, and the kids see him up there saying this is where it’s at, this is the way. And that’s what they want.”

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Caption:

Pete Townshend: “We lost 5,000 dollars”