1963 – The Detours play the White Hart Hotel in Acton
1965 – The Who play in Stockport at the Manor Lounge Club
1965 – The Who appear on Radio Luxembourg’s “Ready, Steady, Radio!” between 9:30-10pm. Their performance was recorded at the Marquee Club on the 8th
1967 – The Who fly to the U.S. Pete, violating one of the main rules of rock ‘n roll touring, brings his girlfriend Karen Astley along for the trip. They and the rest of The Who go to The Rooster Tail in Detroit to catch Frank Sinatra, Jr.’s show and again hang out with Mitch Ryder.
1969 – The Who stage the Hollywood premiere of Tommy, performing the rock opera at the Hollywood Palladium as part of the “Magic Circus” with fellow acts Poco and the Bonzo Dog Band. Attending the show are Janis Joplin, Spirit, Mama Cass Elliot, David Crosby, Peter Tork and The Turtles.
This show is the first known time that Pete performs onstage wearing a boiler suit, clothing then only associated with workmen. Pete adopts it both as a rejection of the outlandish fashions of the psychedelic era and to claim he isn’t a “rock star” but rather a worker like any other doing his job. Within two months he will trade his white trainers for black Doc Marten boots. The look will have a strong influence on the costumes in Stanley Kubrick’s upcoming movie A Clockwork Orange (1971) and will make the utilitarian Doc Marten boots fashionable.
1970 – The Assembled Multitude enters the U.S. charts with “Overture From Tommy (A Rock Opera)”. It reaches #16 in the Billboard and Cash Box charts.
You can listen to it on YouTube here
1970 – The Who play in San Diego at the Convention Hall, Community Concourse
1974 – The Who play the 3rd of 4 nights at Madison Square Gardens in New York. Roger’s mic malfunctions and he storms off. Pete tries to carry on singing all the parts but eventually gives up and leaves along with John and Keith. The audience gets rowdy and showers the stage with cherry bombs and bottles. Maggie Bell opens
You can listen to it on YouTube here
1974 – Oliver Reed is photographed during filming of Tommy
1974 – Pete is interviewed in The New York Times. He expresses his dissatisfaction in writing solely for The Who
Transcript:
Pete Townshend is the chief composer and lead guitarist for the Who, the British rock group that is at Madison Square Garden this week. Most of the songs that he has written for the band ware autobiographical, in one way or another. And so it comes as no great surprise when one meets him that his personality seems to approximate the image suggested both in the Who’s music and by his own stage presence: nervous, intense, full of repressed violence and quick small smiles, and above all capable of a level of analytical speculation rare in the world of rock’n’roll.
One of Mr. Townshend’s creative contradictions is his belief in the quiescent teachings of Meher Baba, the late India mystic, and his simultaneous propensity for violence. That violence has been stylized in the Who’s stage act, but it also manifests itself in his and the band’s private life: Roger Daltrey, the lead singer, knocked Mr. Townshend cold recently in one of the band’s frequent discussions on artistic matlers.
And Mr. Townshend is presently staying in one fashionable midtown hotel while the rest of the band stays in another. “I do enjoy smashing up hotel rooms,” he admitted with one of his smiles the did just that in Montreal on the band’s North American tour last fall). “I thought the only way I could Make sure that wouldn’t happen was to keep out of the social whirl.”
Creative Needs
Mr. Townshend’s principal concern these days—and for the more than 10 years of the Who’s existence—is how he can resolve his creative needs with those of the band. For all the flash and fire of their occasional squabbles, the members of the Who have formed the most stable of all the supergroups in rock.
Now, however, the Who’s stage act has reached something of a small crisis. “It’s ironic—a rather bitter irony, actually,” Mr, Townshend said. “I wrote ‘Quadrophenia’ [the band’s latest rock opera] to replace the old stage act. But it didn’t work, and we’re back to playing our old hits.
“Do I enjoy performing any more? Not very much. I’ve enjoyed the physical aspect of it, but I don’t get off musically on the stage. The physical side is very sexual and very male ego, and I suppose I’m getting a little tired of that aspect of it, too.
“For the first 80 times did ‘Listening to You,’ from ‘Tommy,’ I got a terrific spiritual high. But now it’s a ritual, and the last thing in the world I want to get into is a ritual. I hale religions. We still get a high about going onstage and beirig the center of attention, but that’s not rock’n’roll. Rock is when people are standing up and forget where they are.
“The Who is a bloody wild animal, and it has to be fed chunks of raw meat — raw meat and Southern Comfort. It can’t feed on anything less, But I can feed on a lot less than that. Everything that I’ve written so far has been given to the Who for first refusal. What I’m saving is that that’s going to stop, and that I’m going to get first refusal.”
Who members are currently working on Ken Russell’s film version of their rock opera “Tommy,” from which the New York concert dates constitute a week’s vacation. In August or September, Mr. Townshend said, the group will go into the studio to work on an album of commissioned songs by other composers (Ray Davies, Frank Zappa and Chinn and Chapman are among those being considered).
The “Tommy” movie has given Mr. Townshend a renewed opportunity to work in the film medium. Who history contains a number of abortive film projects. Now Mr. Townshend is talking about trying to make a television version of “Quadrophenia,” to make a television special out of the album of songs by non‐Who composers (“scenes with the Who and 100 topless lady accordionists, and other Zappaesque things”), and a solo project about which he remains deliberately vague.
“The basic idea is that I have to get my teeth into something that liberates me from the band,” he said. “The Who is a difficult band to write for. It is very tied to tradition and to its audiences, and very slow to change. It’s like swimming in your own wake. I’d like to do something crazy, explossive. I want to confront the spiritual issue head on. I don’t even know if it will be rock ‘n’ roll.”
Through everything he says, Mr. Townshend makes it clear that the Who remains central to his life, if only as a focus for his diverse creative energies.
“People talk about classical music having limitations. But rock has the greatest limitations of all. The great unwritten rule of rock is that you can achieve amazing things by transcending its limitations. But if you allow yourself an open check, you’re in big trouble.”
1983 – Pete and his wife Karen are reportedly photographed going to a theatre.
This image is from gettyimages.com, which I love – but there is little information about the photo, but it does have this date. If anyone recognizes the buildings in the background – perhaps we can determine which theatre?
2005 – Pete, Roger and keyboardist Jon Carin perform a one-off charity gig at Gotham Hall in New York to benefit Samsung’s Four Seasons of Hope, an umbrella charity that donates money to children’s organizations. Pete later praises Roger’s performance of “Real Good Looking Boy” at this show saying he was moved watching Roger make the song his own.
You can read more about the event here
2006 – 6200 people watch the webcast of In The Attic showing The Who rehearsing at Bray Studios. In addition Pete and his girlfriend Rachel Fuller perform “Sunrise”.
Watch a clip from the rehearsal here
2007 – The Who play the Olympiahalle in Munich
2009 – Roger Daltrey attends a charity cricket match at Carlton, near Newmarket, cheering on a Teenage Cancer Trust team of celebrities.