At the police station I was put in a cage. The TPF were a special unit with a lot of pride; the Commander, a tall man in his fifties with a scar on his face, dropped in to make his presence felt. I was bailed and arraigned for court on 27 May, in ten days’ time. I regretted the incident, and was upset by the police and press reaction; it seemed I might be deported and refused a visa in the future.
When interviewed by the police officer I had hurt I apologised sincerely, but the affair had become a matter of pride by then, and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. In the street, under normal circumstances, if I had kicked a man with his training he would have dropped me in a heartbeat – or may even have shot me, and been quite within his rights to do so. What I couldn’t find a way to explain was that my adrenaline had been running so high on stage that I hardly remembered the incident, nor did I have any sense of the power of my kick.
I called Karen back in London and explained what had happened.
‘Pete, please be careful,’ she said. ‘I miss you.’
Hearing her voice, and the fear in it, I just wanted to give up the rock ’n’ roll life and go home.
We did two more shows at the Fillmore, and somehow I managed to do good work. Then it was my birthday, and I decided again, as I often did at stressful times, to throw fate to the wind and revert to my aggressive stage persona. I was 24. I was a man. I would survive.
Tommy was released in the USA on 17 May and in the UK six days later. On 25 May The Who performed alongside Led Zeppelin for the first time. Three weeks later Roger and I went to a preliminary court appearance in New York, where our lawyer informed us that the issue was less politically charged now, and the charges would probably be dropped; still, we would have to return to New York for the court date itself. Relieved for the time being, we went on to play a series of shows that I still think of as the defining moments of our career. Our performances, always energetic and tiring, were now additionally taxed by the extra focus and concentration required to give Tommy its due on stage.
After our outdoor show with Led Zeppelin in Columbia we went on to the Kinetic Playground in Chicago. The Buddy Rich Orchestra supported us and Keith got to speak to his idol after the first show. Rich’s drum solo at these two shows made every drummer in rock look like a chimpanzee. Joe Cocker was also on the bill, and I had one of the best times of my life listening and playing with him.
In San Francisco The Who argued with Bill Graham about having to perform twice for our first show – with Tommy it wouldn’t work – but he was intractable. We made our first set very short as a challenge to his so-called ‘authority’, so he had a disgruntled audience on his side too.
Bill Graham was used to telling musicians what to do, what to play and for how long, and what to wear. In return he provided clean dressing rooms and great PA systems, and paid good money. Bill didn’t know what to make of The Who. He was a really tough guy, but for some reason he adored me, and let it slide when I challenged him. In the end he agreed to let us combine the proposed two-show evenings into single-show evenings. We performed Tommy on both nights and from that day forward hardly ever performed two shows a night again, under any circumstances.
Back in New York, our court appearance was harrowing. Charges were dropped against Roger, but I was charged with a misdemeanour, the most minor legal infraction in the USA, similar to a ‘caution’ in the UK, and paid a $75 penalty. Relieved in spite of secretly hoping I’d never get another US visa again so I could be with my growing family, I told friends that I never wanted to go back to the States.
Before flying home on 23 June, I sat down with Frank Barsalona, our agent in New York, in his apartment, along with John Morris, a promoter, who pitched me on what came to be known as Woodstock. It sounded monumental, courageous and exciting, but it was only a few months away – too soon for me. I refused. I was a new father, and Karen had just spent two months on her own with a new baby in a new house. I had terrified her with my arrest, and I needed to give her and the baby some support.
Frank got quite animated, telling me I’d be a fool to turn this down – it was going to be the rock event of the decade, if not the century. I said I wouldn’t consider performing under any circumstances; my mind was made up. I had faced down Bill Graham, so Frank didn’t intimidate me. Frank went to his front door and locked a security lock, then went to the window and threw his keys to the apartment down into the street. He told me that I couldn’t leave until I agreed to perform. I sat out this absurd situation for two or three hours while John Morris tried to mediate. After missing my flight to London, I finally pretended to agree just to escape.
But Frank had a contract for me to sign before I did so. I scribbled my signature, knowing I could only sign for myself, without binding The Who. But a few days later, unbeknownst to me, Chris Stamp signed the final contract for the rest of the band.
Once I got home Karen was extremely tired, unsurprisingly. I did my best to help out with Emma, but I didn’t feel like I made much of a difference, frankly. Delia DeLeon wanted me to meet her sister Aminta, a Stradivarius-owning cellist who had been in the first contingent of young Western women gathered around Meher Baba in the early Thirties. At Delia’s insistence Aminta hosted a small garden party for Baba lovers, and Karen and I went with Emma in a carry-cot. Walking into Aminta’s drawing room, I saw the magnificent Stradivarius. It seemed to be glowing. Then I did a double-take, like a cartoon character. There was another glow in the room. Next to the cello sat the girl from Australia for whom I’d written ‘Sensation’ (now incorporated into Tommy).
I introduced my wife and baby to her; she said nothing, but continued to glow. I felt that life was conspiring to teach me a lesson. Karen intercepting the letter from the girl from Australia had made me really face what I wanted from my life, and who I wanted to spend it with. I had no doubt the girl was uneasy in this moment, and I sympathised, but the heartless artist in me rejoiced that from our liaison I had produced a good song.
For me, getting a hit single after Tommy was something I thought might never happen again. But with ‘Something in the Air’, written by my friend and drummer/singer Speedy Keen, I had drawn on all my skills to hone a song that was as radio-friendly as possible. I produced it for Thunderclap Newman, a band formed behind Speedy, recorded the song at IBC studios after the Tommy sessions, and it went almost directly to No. 1 in the UK charts.
I went with Thunderclap Newman to the set of Top of the Pops to celebrate their first appearance on the show. I was backstage, feeling strange that I didn’t need to appear on TV to earn my pay but kind of liking the idea, when an old friend took me aside and told me of the rumour that Brian Jones had been found dead. The details surrounding his death would take time to emerge, and the truth would always be hard to establish. I just sat there in stunned silence. I couldn’t believe Brian was dead. I hadn’t seen him since the Rock and Roll Circus filming, when he had been so unwell and upset. I knew he’d recently left the Stones, which must have been terribly painful for the man who had been the band’s original leader.
Two days later, on 5 July 1969, The Who performed at the Royal Albert Hall at the first Pop Proms. We were on the bill with Chuck Berry. There had been some friction from Chuck about who should top the bill, so we agreed that he would close the 5.30 show, and we would do so at 8.30 p.m. I took my eight-year-old brother Simon, and left him in David Bowie’s care. Across the road, in Hyde Park, the Stones had played their first show without Brian Jones, with Mick Taylor on guitar. They played in the afternoon, so afterwards quite a few of their audience walked over to attend our late show as well, all slightly worse for wear.
As the rockers started to get unruly, throwing things on the stage, Roger picked up a coin and came over to me.
‘It’s been sharpened, Pete,’ he said. ‘It’s like a razor.’ We managed to complete our show, dodging flying pennies without any harm, but were banned by the Royal Albert Hall for a long time. They must have thought we’d somehow incited th
e rockers, even though the mayhem took place before we’d started wrecking our equipment.
After the show I retrieved Simon from Bowie’s care. They both said the same thing: ‘I am going to do this.’ David meant he would create conceptual albums based on imaginary characters. Simon meant he was going to be a rock musician. As I took Simon down a flight of stairs I came across the ‘Sensation’ girl from Australia, who had been looking for me. We had a short, embarrassing conversation on a landing as road crew bustled past. I asked her if she was OK.
‘I was looking forward to seeing you again,’ she said. ‘Then, at Aminta’s Stradivarius party, it was wife, baby.’
The wife and baby had stayed home today. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to see them. The glowing girl from Australia was to be the last girl I slept with before my marriage, and I intended, sincerely, never to cheat on Karen again.
I had to break the news to Karen about The Who’s imminent return to the States. We agreed that we’d been spending too much time apart and would go together, taking Emma with us. We flew to New York and drove up to Woodstock.
The Who were to play on day two of the festival, the last show on Saturday night, following Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin. Someone suggested that, because of problems on the local roads, we should leave early for our set. Karen and I made a quick decision that the baby needed peace and quiet, so I would go to the festival site alone. I slipped into my Doc Martens and my white boiler-suit, and we climbed into a limo. Our driver said the helicopters had stopped flying when the charter company realised they weren’t going to get paid. Wiggy’s ears pricked up. He was responsible for collecting our fee.
It took ninety minutes to drive two miles along a road so muddy that occasionally we needed to be pushed by passersby. The road was littered with abandoned motorcycles and cars, some still containing tents and other belongings. It looked like a wartime flight. John and Keith were behaving strangely in the car. We’d only been in the hotel for fifteen minutes and they’d managed to score dope.
The scene greeting us at the backstage area of the festival was horrific. The entire parking area was a slurry of thick, gelatinous mud. The backstage crew were covered in it, and their travels back and forth to the stage were traipsing mud everywhere. As I got out of the car I slipped and sank up to my knees.
There were no dressing rooms available so we went to a tent with a hot-water machine, tea-bags, instant coffee and a coffee dispenser. I helped myself, and within minutes realised the water had been spiked with acid. It was fairly dilute, but as the low-level trip kicked in about twenty minutes later I noticed a photo of Meher Baba posted high on a telegraph pole. It was a wonderful moment. The image was ubiquitous at the time: Meher Baba as a young man, handsome, long-haired, Christ-like. It felt like a sign to me that everything would be OK.
Then tragedy struck. As I gazed at the photo a young man, barefoot and shirtless, clearly out of his head, leaped up on the roof of an ambulance parked under a telegraph pole and gracefully shinned up some thirty feet. As he touched the photo he screamed and fell backwards, landing on top of the ambulance. The telegraph pole was in fact a power line. The paramedics ran out to attend to the unconscious man. When I went into the first-aid tent to investigate I thought I had walked onto the set of M*A*S*H. There were cots of patients everywhere, mainly young people on bad trips, some injured, but mostly kids suffering from bouts of terror.
Back outside the tent I saw the faces of John and Keith peeping out from the back window of a station wagon. They waved and grinned; later I learned that each of them had a girl’s mouth around his cock.
I walked alone on the edge of the main field where most of the audience gathered. Rumour had it that over a million people had come to Woodstock, and it looked like half that number were scattered on the hill. The light was fading fast as I entered an eerie woodland scene: naked fairies dancing between the trees, dealers carrying trays of readymade joints, tabs of acid, hash, grass and rolling papers.
As I broke through the woods I came across the open area where most of the campers were strewn about. Thousands sat listening to the music pulsating up the hill from the stage, as though in a natural amphitheatre. The sound system wasn’t bad, but neither was it designed to cover such a massive area. Occasionally someone would try to engage me, sometimes a loved-up soul on a trip, smiling and kind, sometimes another over-stoked boy like the one on the pole, demanding money or drugs, threatening violence, then laughing and running away at lightning speed like a woodland sprite.
The highlight that night had been Sly and the Family Stone, who had whipped the crowd into a muddy lather with ‘I Want to Take You Higher’. Instead of acid they must have been doing cocaine: the music was urgent, dark and powerful. By now, in the early morning hours, Janis Joplin was finishing her encore, ‘Ball and Chain’, which would cap the last set before ours. She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn’t at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she’d consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible.
As our turn on stage approached, I worried about losing the effect of the stage lights. I asked someone what time the sun was going to rise. As we set up our gear and began to play, some of the people in sleeping bags started rubbing their eyes and sitting up. As usual, I was pounding around like a frothing pony, fighting to keep my Gibson SG in tune, constantly fiddling with my amplifiers.
Whoever was doing the lights had chosen white lamps for Roger, so his long, curly hair looked like golden fire. He was mostly singing with his eyes firmly closed. Suddenly someone appeared at Roger’s feet holding a big film camera. Roger nearly tripped over him, so I pushed the invader back down into the press-pit in front of the stage. It turned out to be Michael Wadleigh, filming the documentary that would make Woodstock legendary.
Vulnerable now, Roger moved in ways that seemed to mean something deeper. His whirling microphone and mythical poses suggested frustration and pain, his sweat an angelic sheen that evoked an Old Master painting. By contrast, John and Keith were laid back. They had dropped acid and consorted with a couple of friendly fans, and it showed. Skilled musicians that they were, however, they were still able to follow my lead.
As we started to play ‘Acid Queen’ I put myself in character, imagining myself as the black-hearted gypsy who had promised to bring Tommy out of his autistic condition but was actually a sexual monster, using drugs to break him. As I walked to the mike stand, someone stepped in front of me, trying to stop the music. It was Abbie Hoffman. ‘This is a crock of shit,’ he shouted into the mike, waving his arms at the audience. ‘My friend [the Detroit poet] John Sinclair is in jail for one lousy joint and …’ He got no further.
Still playing the ‘Acid Queen’ intro, and still feeling malevolent, I knocked Abbie aside using the headstock of my guitar. A sharp end of one of my strings must have pierced his skin because he reacted as though stung, retreating to sit cross-legged at the side of the stage. He glowered at me, his neck bleeding.
I finished the song and looked over at him. ‘Sorry about that,’ I mouthed.
‘Fuck you,’ he mouthed back, and left the stage.
I was always absurdly territorial about our performance space. This may have been instilled in me as a little boy with my father’s band, the Squadronaires, but, for whatever reason, the stage was sacrosanct.
By the time we hit ‘I’m Free’ most of the audience was on its feet. Before I knew it, Roger was singing ‘See me, feel me, touch me, heal me’ to waves of young people who suddenly realised that Tommy was music unwittingly designed for precisely this kind of festival, for this particular moment, for them. At one point Keith shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, Pete. No more!’ I went into a long, feedback-rich guitar solo as the sky behind the hillside began to pale with the first signs of dawn. Ebullient but weary, I struck my guitar on the floor a few times, tossed it into the audience and The Who went home to London.
/> It would be some time before we realised that our Woodstock performance, which might easily have never happened, would elevate us into American rock aristocracy, where we would remain year after year, even into the twenty-first century. It wasn’t just The Who; everyone who performed at Woodstock enjoyed mythic status once the film was released. Anyone who had been there on the field enjoyed their own special celebrity. Many who hadn’t been there genuinely felt they had. Woodstock – a crock of shit in the estimation of at least two grouchy folk who had taken the stage: Abbie Hoffman and me – came to represent a revolution for musicians and music lovers. Today there are over 450 music festivals every year in Britain alone. Woodstock became a model for what music gatherings could be. And it was Mike Wadleigh’s beautifully edited film that locked its legacy firmly into place. He even made the mud look good.
As the Sixties came to a close, the band members of The Who had worked out their respective modes of survival, on stage and backstage. We were happy, and rightly so. The usually acerbic Albert Goldman, music critic for the New York Times, wrote on 30 November 1969 of our shows at the Fillmore in New York that The Who were ‘standing now on the rock world’s stage, haloed in fame, glory and gold’.
After Woodstock, especially after the release of the movie, much was expected of our live performances. The film had turned Roger into a star. On stage a smashed guitar was always expected, although out of sheer recalcitrance I would sometimes put my guitar down quietly at the end of a show, enjoying the groans of disappointment. There was still a sense that The Who were rather a gimmicky band – Union Jack jackets and Pop Art T-shirts replaced by long hair and guitar smashing – and many musicians didn’t consider The Who anything close to a serious blues-inspired band like Cream.
Who I Am: A Memoir Page 17
