Saturday, June 1st, 1968

The June 1968 edition of Beat Instrumental has The Who on the cover as well as an article entitled "Who live! by Pete Goodman

 

Transcript:

 

WHO LIVE!

The Marquee, in London’s Wardour Street, holds special memories for the Who. Though there are claims that the attendance records have been broken by various other groups, fact is that the “unofficial” record still stands to the boys. For, on one memorable evening, fire regulations and everything else was forgotten as a mass audience crashed in.

This information comes from drummer Keith Moon, who added: “Really we owe everything to the Marquee. This club, early on, was the place to play . . . and it was responsible for us really getting in touch with the pop world. It’s there that we started mixing with pop people, chatting to pop journalists. As soon as we got a booking there, having already made an ill-devised debut as the High Numbers, we used the place for rehearsals. It was then that the Who, as such, was born.

“Right, it’s a difficult place to play, in some ways. It’s very low-built, for instance. But this helps the group, if not the audience. On stage, the acoustics are such that you can hear what everyone else in the group is doing and that’s fine. Also you can only see the first four or five rows of the audience—everything else is a blur. But that helps in getting a good sound going.

“My most memorable moment at the Marquee was when Pete Townshend started smashing up his guitar. Really—you should have seen the audience. Mouths open, great rows of teeth showing. You could almost count the cavities. But when we started there, the audiences weren’t very big. Word-of-mouth recommendations helped and we ended up breaking all previous records . . . unofficially as I’ve said.”

Keith pondered momentarily. He said: “I’m not kidding about the influence the Marquee has had on us. Before that, we used to rehearse in bingo halls. You’d get into a groovy scene and then suddenly someone would appear and shout ‘Legs Eleven’ or something—and that was that. We had to pack it in”.

TRANSITION SCENE

“As a group, we were going through a transition scene. It had ended at the Scene club. When we went to the Marquee, the whole business changed for us. Our audiences there seemed to come mostly from the East End of London, from Shoreditch and Leyton and so on, but really the club gave us the chance to build a reputation.”

An example of how Keith feels about the Marquee. He told a journalist following me into the interview seat:

“America is fine. It’s like the Marquee Club, only ten million times larger”.

—PETE GOODMAN.