Who I Am: A Memoir

by Peter Townshend

  I had written very little on tour, having come to depend so much on writing in my home studio. I told Chris I didn’t feel we were ready to release; we needed more songs, and I needed more time away from Keith and Holiday Inns to write them. Chris was unusually adamant: this was what we would be releasing. Suddenly I saw that he was now running a record label with a schedule to fill, as well as managing a band. He had, in some sense, gone over to the other side.

  I took a little time to consider our dilemma. I’d written a couple of songs that weren’t on Chris’s track-list. I’d demoed ‘Tattoo’ in my hotel room in Las Vegas during our three-day vacation, and a song called ‘Odorono’, named after a deodorant stick. ‘Odorono’ led us to the most perfect pop idea of all time: we would make our next record a vehicle for advertising. When we called Kit to explain, he was as excited as we were. I suggested we link the gaps between songs with jingles like those on commercial pirate radio.

  John and Keith leapt on the idea, and, inspired by ‘Odorono’, began making up advertising jingles for all kinds of things, like Medac spot cream, Premier Drums and Heinz Baked Beans. But when the album was ready to be put together we were still short of tracks. John’s track didn’t feel right either, so he quickly produced a demo for another song called ‘Silas Stingy’, which, to be honest, was equally eccentric. But this was obviously going to be a very eccentric record.

  Roger produced a demo for a good song called ‘Early Morning Cold Taxi’. He said he’d written it with our roadie Cy Langston. We recorded it and it was a real contender until Cy could restrain himself no longer and revealed that he had written it. When I heard this I took Roger aside, asking him to let it go. Looking back on it, I’m not sure why. There was no territory at stake. I was desperate for songs from anywhere at all. It was still not unusual, nor regarded as in any way unethical, to take writing or publishing credit because you were part of the process of helping a writer get a song placed and recorded. But I was concerned Roger would look bad if it came out that he had contributed little or nothing to the track, and Cy was famously loose-tongued.

  I found it hard to see why Roger couldn’t write more songs. When I’d worked with him at my home studio on ‘See My Way’ for A Quick One he’d generated ideas quite freely. It may have been that he found studio technology too fussy. If Roger and I had managed to become closer, and had worked together in the demo studio, The Who’s run might have extended a little longer. But I also believe Roger has mostly enjoyed being an interpreter, a voice, an instrument. The skills required to be a Sinatra or Jack Nicholson are very different to those of a Cole Porter or Orson Welles. When Roger chooses the right script, he is a giant. That has to be enough for any man who wants to be acknowledged as a force in show business.

  At the time, though, Roger was concerned about the direction the band was taking. This album worried us all.

  When recording restarted we added ‘Armenia’, a song by my aide-de-camp Speedy Keen. This was the first time an outsider had contributed an original song to a Who album, and it never happened again. Kit persuaded me to rejig ‘Sunrise’, a jazzy ballad I’d written for Mum years before; when I first played it to her she said nothing at all – complimentary or dismissive. That’s Mum.

  I ended up singing more than usual on this record. Keith and John were generating delightful studio chaos attempting to re-create The Goon Show with their jingles. At one point they came up with one for a car dealer they used in the hope they’d get a free Bentley out of him. He gave them some dirty photos instead; fearing they were dealing with the wrong kind of dealer, they dropped the jingle and stopped taking his phone calls.

  Chris had taken the album concept to some advertising hotshots, David King and Roger Law (who later co-created Spitting Image). They came up with the inspired title The Who Sell Out, with an idea for the sleeve that we didn’t hear much about until we showed up at David Montgomery’s studio in Fulham for the photoshoot, but King, Law and Montgomery loved it, and were operating in that confident, serene way art directors do when they’re on to a surefire hit.

  The sleeve was to be divided into four panels, each band member advertising a product. I had to take my shirt off for ‘Odorono’, and was worried I’d look skinny. Roger had to sit in a tin bathtub of almost frozen baked beans generously donated by Heinz. Keith dabbed on Medac; for once the spot he treated was a phoney (he was prone to massive break-outs on his face). John got the best gig, posing with a half-naked blonde model for a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. Having flown in genuine station identifications and jingles for Radio London, Kit cobbled together a sense of integrity for the record. After the final assembly and mix, we threw ourselves into radio and TV publicity in anticipation of a release.

  Concert reviews of this period depict me in perpetually foul mood, often breaking guitars, of course, but also throwing spats of anger. Roger too seemed unhappy on stage. This may have happened because we’d become used to playing so quietly on the Hermits’ tour and were now back to our much louder British rigs, or because John had bought himself louder amplifiers. In any event I was happy to be back with Karen.

  Years later I would discover that I really was struggling with some psychological anger that had always needed management, perhaps treatment. But the anger also seemed connected to something important: I often felt that as a performing artist I was undervalued, that my performances, angry though they appeared, were being misread. I wanted to be serious about what I did, and wanted my work – including smashing guitars in concert – to be regarded as part of a passionate commitment to an evolving stagecraft.

  Perhaps I was taking myself and The Who far too seriously, but what was I to do? Turn everything into a joke, simply because the rest of the world regarded pop music and auto-destructive art as tosh? It’s possible that our audiences didn’t understand the significance of auto-destruction, but they certainly seemed to experience emotional release when we broke up our gear at the end of the show. Of course this did nothing to silence our detractors, critics with loud voices who looked no further than the end of their noses before decrying us as yobbos and hooligans.

  ‘I Can See for Miles’ wasn’t shooting up the charts as a single, which was a shock to me; I really had expected my masterwork to sweep us to eternal glory. A few weeks after its release Kit’s godfather, the English composer Sir William Walton, wrote me a note congratulating me on the ambitious harmonies. Kit had done a wonderful job of recording this time; the test we brought back from Gold Star studios in California sounded spectacular on the mono single release.

  Yet it was being received in the UK with a lukewarm response, and climbing the charts slowly. I worried that Track weren’t pushing it properly; if that was the case, to whom could we complain? We all saw Track as our own record label at the time. The single did better in the US, but was still rather slow. The financial picture was bleak. As I’d guessed, the Hermits tour had actually cost us money, a common occurrence since the late Seventies for a developing artist but unheard of back then. And now we were spending money on recording.

  At this stage in our development as a band, The Who were being described as the ‘loudest band on earth’, so much so that it had become part of our identity. Then we started hearing that Vanilla Fudge had eclipsed us: they had found a way of amplifying a Hammond organ up to rock guitar sound decibels; when they played, plaster fell from the ceilings of older buildings they performed in.

  We were actually upset by this. I went into a silly little tizzy. We had a show lined up at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre with Vanilla Fudge in October, so I started making statements in the press that we had some special stunt up our sleeve. I can see now that I was afraid of another head-to-head-with-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience experience. In the event, The Who did behave like schoolchildren and Vanilla Fudge did indeed bring the ceiling down; the building was condemned soon after. Although they were great live, and I don’t think their organ volume on stage has since been surpassed, Vanilla Fudge were not J
imi Hendrix.

  Poor Jimi. Someone must have told his managers that The Who had reached a huge audience by touring with Herman’s Hermits (wrong!), so they sent him out to support The Monkees. It’s easy to forget how huge they were by this time. Their album had been number one all summer, and their TV series – which even music business’s most serious intellectuals seemed to enjoy – was a massive success. Still, it’s not an easy combination to imagine.

  The Who were also realising that we too needed something very special if we were ever to succeed in a major way. Personally, I was at a loss as to what that something could be, and no one else in our creative group seemed to have an answer either.

  ‘After wasting a lot of precious time,’ I wrote on 4 October 1967, soon after The Who Sell Out photo session, ‘I think it’s time for a real shake-up.’

  We returned to the States for a brief tour to celebrate ‘I Can See for Miles’ reaching No. 9 in the charts, and in hopes of sending it higher. It had probably been our appearance on the Smothers Brothers’ show that had done the most good, but Monterey hadn’t hurt either. Maybe the Hermits’ tour had helped a little too – who knows. For a few shows we supported Eric Burdon and The Animals, and The Association. They had more pull at the gate, but once again I felt we were supporting artists who were inferior to us.

  In New York I hung out one night with my friend Danny Fields at his flat. I was deeply tired but couldn’t sleep, so Danny gave me a pill, probably a Mandrax, a sedative-hypnotic drug. I woke in the night, still in a trance, with Danny’s hands all over my body, but I didn’t fight him off. I enjoyed what he did, though I didn’t let him actually fuck me.

  When I left in the morning, walking down the streets full of workers – one of whom tipped his hat at me as I passed – I realised I’d made a mistake. I wanted to be someone who felt at ease with an unconventional sexual life, and I realised I was probably bisexual; there was nothing to be ashamed of in this – John Lennon had reputedly spoken to mutual friends of his own experiments – but I still felt uncomfortable and hypocritical: I wasn’t gay enough to feel at ease with my homoerotic feelings.

  The record company had to wait until December to get clearances for the commercial brands mentioned on The Who Sell Out. Despite its ambition, some poor material – songs that lacked teeth – was included in the half-cooked package. Like The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour our album seemed potentially brilliant but ultimately inconclusive. When it was finally released it was The Who’s slowest-selling record in the UK so far. We fretted that we had neglected our British fans.

  Interestingly, we played a few university shows around this time – a new kind of gig that was going to change things for The Who in the near future. But as Christmas approached I felt distinctly gloomy. Chris got briefly excited when it seemed for a moment as though he might have arranged a black-comedy American movie featuring the band, but it fizzled. There was even talk of a Who comic book. Our ad-agency-style brainstorming was obviously still at work up at Track Records, but it was difficult for me to take much comfort in that.

  Karen and I were settling in at Ebury Street, but there too I’d had a hiccup. We’d been struggling to find a cleaning lady – they all insisted on seeing a marriage certificate before committing to work for trendy young couples – so when I first met our very friendly neighbours and enlisted their help I’d told them we were married. I took Karen to one of our favourite local restaurants, where I confessed what I’d said. Did we need to get married to survive as members of polite society?

  We sat across the table from each other, ate good food, drank a bottle of good wine and decided to be content – for the time being – to pretend.

  11

  AMAZING JOURNEY

  A subtle shift in the way Karen and I were relating to one another made me take stock quite seriously. If I was ever going to be a husband and father, not just play at it, I needed to ensure that The Who survived the changes buffeting the pop industry. I might have to be less serious about art, and more pragmatic about how to sell records in millions. I also felt an acute sense of responsibility and duty to my band members and our crew, who unlike me didn’t have a songwriting income to fall back on. My job was to come up with the hits, and recently I had failed to produce them.

  Still, I believed that everything I had done to this point – every smashed guitar, every silly outfit, every ambitious arty notion set aside or hijacked, every beautiful girl I had refused to respond to for muddled reasons of pride, low self-worth, morality or loyalty to Karen, every crazy experiment undertaken for sexual pleasure or amusement – had conspired to position me for a major offensive on the pop industry. I also believed The Who’s audience would enjoy longer works, although I knew this meant I’d have to battle with record companies, PR people, press, promoters and our managers, all of whom would try to persuade me to continue to keep things simple and cost-effective.

  The Who had worked ceaselessly for almost four years. We had enjoyed a number of hit singles. I had delved deeply into my personal history and produced a new kind of song that seemed like shallow pop on the surface, but below could be full of dark psychosis or ironic menace. I had become adept at connecting pop songs together in strings. Still, The Who needed a large collection of such songs if we were to rise in the music business at a time when the audience was expanding its collective consciousness, and the album was taking over from the pop single.

  I have tended to reinforce the view that I started to write what eventually became Tommy out of pure desperation. That’s only partly true. I did know that aiming to serve the young men in our audience wasn’t going to work any more, which worried me. But having been in California recently, I also knew that pop audiences would begin spiritual searching, as I had. I could write stories and clearly see theatrical dramas in my imagination. Whether I could realise them was still to be tested. But I began thinking about a project that I wouldn’t allow anyone to divert.

  Karen and I had become good friends with bass player Ronnie Lane and his girlfriend Susie. Ronnie’s chief sidekick was his colleague in The Small Faces, Steve Marriott. Ronnie liked the same music as I did; he liked to drink, and smoke a little grass; he was funny, sincere, artistic, creative, gifted and down-to-earth. In some respects he was a typical London East Ender, just as I was a typical West Londoner. We got on well, argued a lot, laughed a lot, could even cry together sometimes; it was a modern male relationship. He was also the first friend who listened to my interest in Meher Baba without sniggering.

  I was reticent about diving into the Meher Baba community too deeply at first, and Karen seemed to stand back too. She was still part of the London hippy scene, in light of which the Meher Baba network seemed rather small and odd. Even our little gatherings for Meher Baba were eccentric, with our host Mike McInnerney still at his desk painting under a single light bulb while his wife Katie played Van Morrison records and cooked slushy nettle stew. There were cats everywhere and I sneezed my way through our long friendship with the McInnerneys. Still, I was powerfully struck by the feeling that everyone I met in connection with Meher Baba seemed to have been someone I knew from some other lifetime, from some mysterious other place directly connected with my own inner life.

  Meher Baba was born in 1894 and was still alive, living in Ahmednagar in India, where one of my teenage heroes, Spike Milligan, had grown up. That coincidence seemed a good sign. Meher Baba was born of Persian parents. At 19 he met an old woman called Hazrat Babajan, reputed to be one of the five ‘Perfect Masters’. Her kiss on his forehead unlocked the young man’s destiny and he became God-realised. When I first heard this story I remember thinking that the much-imitated but inimitable English comedian Tommy Cooper would have said: ‘God realised! Just like that!’ I found the story hard to fathom.

  In 1925 Meher Baba decided to stop speaking, although he continued to communicate using an alphabet board and sign language, as well as through essays, books and poetry. From 1931 onwards he made dozens of trips to
the West, founding groups, projects and missions, especially in America, a country he claimed would be the spiritual melting pot of the future.

  In the Thirties, on one of his first visits to England, Meher Baba had visited the mother of Delia DeLeon, a young actress and one of his first British disciples, at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond where she was resident. The hotel has an uninterrupted view of the entire flood plain between Ham and Isleworth, with Windsor Castle visible in the far distance. Meher Baba stood on a balcony looking at the view for a long time. When he came inside, Delia asked him what he had been looking at. He said he had been planning his spiritual work for the next 200 years.

  Until 1967 Delia had been holding together a group of followers who called themselves lovers of the Master, with occasional gatherings at the Poetry Society, many of whose members were despairing of politics in the 1930s, and had begun to look to the East for alternatives to imperialism and its wars. When Michael McInnerney brought a delegation of enquiring young people to a meeting, Delia, at 66, suddenly knew why her master of thirty-five years had insisted she stay put in Britain and await his directions.

  People who follow Meher Baba speak of recognising his face, or feeling some deep connection to him. For me the chemistry was with those who already followed him. They seemed to be unusually good people, politically and socially. Delia told me that Tom Hopkinson, editor of Picture Post, Britain’s equivalent of Life magazine, followed the Master. This was important to me. I had grown up with Picture Post, and I knew Tom’s integrity was solid. Finding rational, intelligent people open to spiritual ideas gave me the confidence to tackle head-on what The Who’s audience might best respond to. And I could do so without feeling like a hippy. I put a copy of Charles Purdom’s The God Man in my bag as I packed for the short Australia and New Zealand tour The Who and Small Faces had planned for January 1968.