Who I Am: A Memoir

by Peter Townshend

  Earlier that year I had given a lecture at Winchester Art College about the use of tape machines by non-musicians. In the audience was Brian Eno, the experimental musician, who cites the lecture as the moment he realised he could make music even though he wasn’t a musician. I wanted to go further. Encouraging our audience to become part of what I did as a composer and songwriter, and to contribute to the sound we produced on stage, was an important part of the second phase of my idea. I believed synthesisers would make it possible for non-musicians to express their creativity, but first I needed to be completely hands-on about them myself, as a layman.

  I commissioned one of the first small synthesisers from a British company called EMS. Before the machine (the ‘Putney’) was delivered, I was given its manual, which became a vitally important resource. It opened with a simple description of how sound is made, how it travels through the air and how it is reproduced electronically. Clear diagrams made the basic physics behind musical sound easier for me to grasp. In my notes I envisaged the practical integration of synthesisers into the regular rock-band format.

  I imagined The Who playing along with rhythmic synthesiser sounds, or pre-prepared backing tracks on tape. By now musicians knew how to overdub in a recording studio, that is, play along with pre-recorded music, but in the live arena drummers were used to defining the tempo and pace of any particular song. In my home studio I played Keith a few synthesiser-chopped rhythmic demo backing tracks. It was a revelation how well and comfortably Keith was able to play along, and I realised this was how he had always played drums with The Who, following, rather than leading, the tempo set by John and myself.

  As The Who dragged around Europe, trying to amuse ourselves with absurd displays of rock-star mischief, I was becoming increasingly determined to create something truly spectacular for the band’s next project. It took me three days to write Lifehouse, from 28 to 30 September 1970. I scratched out a summary that would guide me and sent a copy to Chris;§ I needed to explain the general idea behind Lifehouse, especially to Chris, so I also produced a comprehensive breakdown of what I felt we needed to bring the story to life. I described the sound systems we’d need, how we would record work in progress, the musical instruments required, how to collect the data needed to reflect each audience member musically and how filming might be handled.

  As it happened, we were about to go into technical rehearsal that week to try a new lighting rig and stage design. I used these rehearsals to pitch Lifehouse to the band, but it quickly became clear that I’d blundered at first base. In referring to the sound of the entire universe as a single note and suggesting that when we gathered at a rock show we were taking the first steps towards re-creating that note, I muddled them.

  Even today, pundits wishing to detract from the possibility that the Lifehouse project could ever have worked speak disparagingly about ‘the one note’ idea on which I rested my thesis in the early Melody Maker piece, relating it to the hippy notion of a universal chord, something I hadn’t mentioned at all. The Moody Blues had dabbled in this kind of mystical writing, and I very much liked their sweeping melodic music at the time, but I was trying to evoke the style of Inayat Khan in my first verses and brainstorms about Lifehouse.

  The song ‘Pure and Easy’ was the fulcrum song for Lifehouse, just as ‘Amazing Journey’ had been for Tommy. But behind the poesy lay a much more challenging ideal, and the possibility of a darker reality. The song refers to the one note, but also to the death of civilisation through the decay of our planet.

  There once was a note

  Pure and easy

  Playing so free

  Like a breath, rippling by

  The note is eternal

  I hear it, it sees me

  Forever we blend

  As forever we die

  Confused by my presentation, the guys in the band didn’t get it. ‘It’s like trying to explain atomic energy to a group of cavemen,’ I told Karen when I got home. She tried to reassure me. ‘I’m not sure I understand either, but I’ve got faith in you, Pete – and I think they do too. What you can’t do is take on such a huge experiment and expect no difficulties.’

  Karen always took my side when I ranted about my problems with the band. But she also offered her own opinions, and helped me see that although my role was often difficult, it was a valuable one. She often seemed to me to play the same supportive role as that of a miner’s wife, her husband home from a day in the pits, who just needs empathy. She also tried to bring me back into the present, to the everyday pleasures of bathing children, walking the dog, cooking a simple meal, having a glass of wine and making love at bedtime, but my urge would be to go to my studio, to try to find some new way to get my ideas across – and all too often that’s what I did instead.

  I am clearer today about how my songwriting process had evolved by this time, but I had been writing songs professionally for just six years, and was still getting used to the enormous technical jump I’d made during the summer by incorporating a multi-track tape machine into my home studio. Access to my first music synthesiser was important too. What I knew was that once I had a good musical idea I could work much more quickly and efficiently than ever before, and my songwriting could be more ambitious.

  That said, I needed more time, and I wasn’t getting it. This was partly because of the pressure of constant touring; as proud as I was of having created Tommy we were collectively getting tired of having to perform it again and again, but audiences internationally still seemed to have an insatiable demand for it. Over and above this, Karen became pregnant again in autumn 1970; she was 23, already a mother of a one-year-old girl, putting up with a compulsive rock musician living and working in her home. I was 25 – a young man still beset by anxieties and insecurities, who had no idea how to reconcile a growing family with the new pressures presented by The Who. As a result I found myself living in a bubble of denial: I would tell the band they came first, and I’d tell my family the same thing. I didn’t accept that if I served one well I would probably fail the other.

  In that bubble, incredibly, I continued to take on more and more work.

  14

  THE LAND BETWEEN

  In the autumn and winter of 1970 I began experiencing regular manic-depressive episodes. To calm myself down I drank. One such episode took place after a concert up north when, instead of returning to the dressing room after a powerful experimental show, I wandered into the audience. I intended to mingle, to find some connection with the audience in keeping with the high-flown congregational notions I had espoused in my second Melody Maker article. Instead I got into a fight and drove home at dangerously high speed. I got lost, lost consciousness and didn’t get home to my family until the early hours. At the time we were doing one show every three days on average, and whenever we had some down time I quickly found something else to do. I was probably just suffering from exhaustion.

  Pete Kameron, a strange little gnome of a man whom Chris and Kit had hired as their own manager, came from New York to have me explain my Lifehouse idea. Chris and Pete Kameron both suggested that my complex ideas for Lifehouse really needed a theatrical structure, and that workshopping these ideas at the Young Vic Theatre might be helpful.

  The next day I had my first meeting at the newly inaugurated Young Vic. Frank Dunlop, a friend of Kit’s, was its artistic director, and we got on very well. My mental state was still unbalanced, though, and with a head literally bursting with new ideas – mostly unformed – I attempted to enjoy a Christmas and New Year celebration with my family. I don’t think I was able to contribute much.

  I was nearly ready with Lifehouse by the end of 1970. I had overworked, was paranoid, short of ready money and despite my family’s support I felt lonely. Even so, I was excited about Lifehouse, and driven to finish it. My excitement was greatest when I was exploring the terrain between the spiritual magic of music and the march of physics. Unfortunately I wasn’t having much success communicating in the language I was usi
ng – one part science fiction, one part mystical waffle, one part visionary glimpses of the role computers could play in the future of electronic music.

  The Lifehouse demos were mostly recorded in January and early February 1971. I played all the parts on every song, working particularly hard to get a good drum sound. A few days before workshops were due to begin at the Young Vic I published my seventh Melody Maker article.

  The music we play has to be tomorrow’s, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday. The idea is to make the first real superstar. The first real star who can really stand and say that he deserves the name. The star would be us all.

  The Young Vic becomes the ‘Lifehouse’, the Who become musicians and the audience become part of a fantasy. We have invented the fantasy in our minds, the ideal, and now we want to make it happen for real. We want to hear the music we have dreamed about, see the harmony we have experienced temporarily in Rock become permanent, and feel the things we are doing CHANGE the face of Rock and then maybe even people.

  On the first day at the Young Vic, Kit walked through and admired four huge paintings I had commissioned from my eccentric artist friend John Davis. Each represented a member of the band, their families and the way they lived their lives. While Bob and I struggled to get the quadrophonic PA system working, Kit disappeared, and I didn’t see him again for the duration of the Young Vic workshops. By contrast, Hoppy (John Hopkins), from my UFO Club days, was smiling mischievously as he ran around with his team and their video cameras. ‘This is radical, Pete!’

  Hoppy was a lone voice. Roger, John and Keith looked completely nonplussed. Frank Dunlop, the Young Vic’s artistic director, stood with Chris and looked as though he’d bought a dud ticket for a lottery. He’d set aside a full week for workshops, and within a few hours it was clear that nothing was going to take place that would prove anything to anyone.

  The second day was as fruitless as the first. We did manage to perform some songs to a pre-recorded backing track, but no new music was produced; the assembled audience wasn’t given access to electronic instruments, or even tambourines to bang. Any idea of trying to make music that mirrored the audience – who numbered less than thirty* – had to be set aside.

  We needed more money and time to make this work the way I had envisaged. We ended up in the local pub, where Chris explained that Kit had needed to get back to New York, where he was halfway through making an album. I enquired about some promised Lifehouse funding from Universal, and Chris was evasive. As Judy Collins’s ‘Amazing Grace’ started to play on the pub juke box, Keith pushed the skip switch. ‘We’re not listening to that rubbish!’ he announced. A hard nut at the bar turned his head and quietly told Keith to put it back on or take the consequences. Keith complied. It seemed as if we weren’t going to be making any significant musical changes to the audience around us after all.

  The crash I experienced after the second day at the Young Vic was immense, my fantastical imaginings having collided with reality. The high-flown writing, my grandiose theories in the Melody Maker, the scripts, technology, meetings pitching for money from Universal, the songs, the torturous struggle to do decent creative work while doing far too many live shows: it was all for nought. The Who made one more weekend appearance at the Young Vic, playing a load of old hits. I could see I had to give up on the Lifehouse project, or start all over again.

  I worried about my family’s privacy in our tiny house, especially now that Karen was seven months pregnant. Fans had started knocking on the door. Sometimes I managed to be courteous, but if interrupted when writing I was short-tempered, which could turn into fierce, dangerous arguments on the doorstep. Fans often felt entitled to my time simply because they’d managed to track me down and come long distances to visit. Karen and I had also experienced challenges to our privacy from hippies on the nearby Eel Pie Island commune, who sometimes looked on me as a resource. I wasn’t around enough to provide my family with security, and I didn’t like the idea of hiring out the job.

  Karen struggled to give me support, but I had been working in a veritable bubble since the end of the previous summer. I couldn’t explain to anyone what I felt. I was still experiencing manic-depressive anxiety attacks, hearing voices and music, seeing visions. The only medication that helped was alcohol. Most discouraging of all was the fact that when I listened to my demos I couldn’t imagine how I could ever write better music, however hard I tried. During the day I walked the dog relentlessly, up and down the Thames footpath. I tried to do a few interviews, but instead of inspiring me they only made things worse. It was an unusual stand-off between music writers and myself: I wanted their support, and they were only willing to give it if I would explain what I was doing in simple language.

  The failure of Lifehouse to inspire the band in the way it inspired me was especially surprising because I’d used the same techniques I’d employed to make Tommy. But they didn’t work a second time. One important difference was that Kit was no longer in my orbit. In some ways he had come to serve the role that Jimpy had for me in my childhood – as fellow adventurer and creative catalyst. But Kit had passed me off to Pete Kameron, and without Kit’s support and enthusiasm I lost conviction in the sustainability of Lifehouse, just as my world had turned grey when Jimpy moved away.

  Chris tried to hold the fort in London, but unbeknownst to me narcotics had breached The Who from top to bottom. Everyone in our management team was anaesthetised or high; it was the stereotypical story of rock decadence and ego-driven grandiosity, and every stratum of our operation was tainted.

  Kit told the people at Universal that I was going mad. On that score he wasn’t far wrong. But he also told them something way off the mark: that Lifehouse was the working title for music workshops that were really aimed towards the production of a forthcoming film of Tommy. One more nail in the Lifehouse coffin.

  Now I had almost no contact with the other three members of the band. I wasn’t even cheered by the arrival of my large new ARP studio synthesiser from Boston. It was delivered by the musician and programmer Roger Powell, who completely understood Lifehouse and offered many wonderful ideas for it, but I was too far gone. I fiddled with the big synthesiser for a little, but I’d lost my appetite for it.

  In the same week, out of the blue, I had a friendly phone call from Kit. Still in New York, his enthusiasm sparked all the way down the line. He had discovered an exciting new recording studio called the Record Plant, designed by the brilliant acoustician Tom Hidley. He knew I’d love it, and suggested I arrange a quick band rehearsal of the songs I had ready to go, and then fly over to record with him.

  A prayer I’d never made had been answered. I was so manic with delight that while taking the dog for a walk I wept and laughed my way around the local park in relief. Kit, dear Kit, had come to my rescue. New York. The spring. What could be better medicine?

  The Record Plant was everything Kit had said it would be. Its large control room had an impressive desk. Tom Hidley had designed his own speakers with wooden tweeters; they were loud but sounded really good. The studio had two isolation booths – unusual at the time – allowing backing tracks with live acoustic guitar and a lead vocal to be recorded at the same time as the rhythm section.

  The songs I had ready for recording had already been played once or twice by The Who during the chaotic Young Vic workshops, so it was a cinch to get them up to speed in a normal rehearsal room. They all sounded great played live: ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, ‘Baba O’Riley’, ‘Love Ain’t for Keeping’, ‘Let’s See Action’ and ‘Getting in Tune’. A couple of test acetates were circulating (later bootlegged) containing songs I hadn’t found time to rehearse back in the UK, but the band had been listening to them, including ‘Bargain’, ‘Pure and Easy’, ‘Going Mobile’, ‘Greyhound Girl’, ‘The Song is Over’, ‘Teenage Wasteland’ (an alternative version of ‘Baba O’Riley’), ‘Mary’, ‘Too Much’ and ‘Time is Passing’.
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  Jack Adams was Kit’s new engineer. He was an old friend – we had worked together at a small studio in New York on some songs with my friend Steve Baron. Jack had always said he hated heavy rock – he preferred R&B – so I was surprised to see him behind the board. I remember him demanding the snare drum be made to sound like a ‘stiff cock’, but he got a great sound.

  After the session I tried to bring myself down with a drink, as always. Roger had hooked up with one of his contacts, and Keith and John had simply melted into the New York nightclub scene. I spent the next morning in my hotel room, looking over lyrics, trying to work out how I might persuade Kit to salvage the movie component of Lifehouse.

  For the first two days at the studio Kit himself didn’t show his face. I knew he was staying in the same hotel we were – one of our favourites, the Navarro, facing Central Park. On the third day Kit arrived at the studio with his personal assistant, Anya Butler. I was surprised to see her, unaware that they were still working together. Kit was smartly dressed but food-spattered, as usual, perennial cigarette in hand, smiling his lopsided grin and ready for action. Jack already had a sound for the band, and we began with ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, which sounded very good indeed.

  In the evening Andre Lewis, a keyboard player who had worked with Patti LaBelle, came to provide the organ for ‘Getting in Tune’. The first sign of Kit’s drug-addled condition came when, as the band was grooving delightfully over the extended coda, he came out carrying a piece of paper on which was scrawled some kind of command. He ran around the studio, crouching as if that made him invisible, and showed his instruction to each musician in turn. When he got to me I struggled to read what he had written. He brought it closer and closer to my face, and when I was finally able to read it I collapsed, partly in laughter, partly with exasperation, as the music shuddered to a halt. The note said: ‘This is GREAT! Keep playing.’