Who I Am: A Memoir

by Peter Townshend

  Once Ken had produced a basic script he felt he could use, I started on scratch lyrics for the additional scenes. As I completed them they were added to the script Ken had laid out in two columns: action to the left, lyrics to the right. No dialogue. Ramport was the obvious venue to record the music, and Ken wanted all the music in place before he shot a single frame. Ron Nevison, who had done such wonderful work on Quadrophenia, engineered. I gathered different groups of musicians for each music cue. Keith was spending time in LA, so I tried other drummers. We usually started work in the afternoon so Ken could attend, since he was doing a huge amount of pre-production work earlier in the day. We started recording in early January 1974.

  Bill Curbishley effectively took over management of The Who early that same year. Roger adored him, and we all liked his straightforward approach, but it took me longer than the others to completely trust Bill. Bill had an unusual, and appealing, demeanour, like that of a cultivated but pugnacious boxing trainer. He quickly became a fan of the band, and came to understand its inner mechanics and mysteries, but was less intimidated or awed by it than Pete Rudge. Where Chris and Kit may have allowed gulfs to widen between Who members, Bill attempted to create bridges, and in his letters often addressed us together as a band, and circulated copies of any important documents.

  If The Who had lived in a tax haven, we’d have been millionaires back in 1969. Bill Curbishley knew this, and his priority was to see us financially secure as individuals. There had been two ways to look at the financial vagaries around the band. One was that we only worked as much and as hard as we did because we needed the money; this pleased our fans, and also kept the band together. The contrary view, my own, was that the pressure of trying year after year to generate a big enough annual gross to live on would eventually break us.

  Bill realised he had to resolve this situation. He wasn’t a creative thinker like Lambert and Stamp, but he was widely read, wrote poetry and regarded his managerial work as a chess game. The overwhelmingly positive difference between Bill and his predecessors was that he always made sure the finances were properly arranged. From the moment Bill took over Who management, my money worries were over.

  Stiggy set about casting the film with Ken Russell, and I began to interfere. I disagreed with them on the inclusion of veteran actor Oliver Reed (playing Tommy’s stepfather), as well as the more Hollywood choices of Ann-Margret and Jack Nicholson. Stiggy’s explanation of the Hollywood star system was succinct and persuasive: ‘We-Have-To-Have-Them.’

  I knew Oliver Reed couldn’t sing, but as I knocked back mugs of Rémy Martin while coaching him line-by-tortuous-line, he did his thing in the studio and it worked extraordinarily well. I had been told that Jack Nicholson wasn’t a trained singer either, but he sang beautifully. (He has never stopped teasing me about how stunned I was when he began to croon like a world-class Fifties club singer.)

  Ann-Margret I knew nothing about, and I thought her voice was too musical-theatre for Tommy. But she convinced me the moment we started to record. She displayed real passion, a sense of the absurd and an ability to make the songs her own; she sang in a drawling theatrical way – more Ethel Merman than Tina Turner – but it worked well. And of course she’d been in a movie with Elvis. The Who were small beer in comparison, yet she was respectful, and an amazingly hard worker in the studio.

  Elton John, Tina Turner and Eric Clapton were of course easier for me to work with, being musicians, and each of them was magnificent. Tina had been having difficulties in her private life, but you would never have known it: as the Acid Queen, she was electrifying. Roger, a natural actor, created a new kind of Tommy character that was also utterly convincing.

  The recording of the Tommy score continued at Ramport in March and April. Keith had a role acting (as a drummer) in Mike Appleton’s Stardust movie, a follow-up to his That’ll Be the Day, so I used a variety of other drummers: Kenney Jones (The Faces), Mike Kelley (from Spooky Tooth) and Tony Newman (Sounds Incorporated). Eric Clapton had spent a good part of the previous year getting himself into shape. Some of his treatment had been at the hands of Meg Patterson, the addiction therapist whose NeuroElectric Therapy (NET) reduced withdrawal symptoms. Eric claimed it did nothing of the sort, but he worked with Meg nevertheless.

  Stiggy, Eric’s manager, pressed him into taking a role in Tommy. Eric wasn’t keen but did it partly for me, since I’d helped him put up the Rainbow concert. The song he would play was ‘Eyesight to the Blind’, and Eric wanted to create a new riff for the song to make it his own; he had the notion that he would like his guitar doubled by clavinet, the electric keyboard used famously by Stevie Wonder. As it happened Stevie was in town, so Eric took me with him to Island Studios to try to persuade Stevie to work on the track.

  As we drove to the studio together I reminded Eric that Stigwood had originally suggested Stevie take the role of Pinball Wizard. Ken and I had been nonplussed: a blind musician playing the role of a sighted pinball champion who is beaten by a deaf, dumb and blind boy? What we didn’t know was that Stevie himself had been interested in the role, and was still considering it when he heard of my concern. He was told by his brother, who managed his affairs, that I had objected to him in the role because he was blind. Perfectly true; it didn’t make sense, given the story line.

  Given this history I wasn’t surprised when we got to the studio that Stevie ignored me. He was sweet to Eric, but even so he refused to contribute in any way; we left feeling almost as rejected as Stevie had no doubt been made to feel by me. In the event, I tried to emulate his inimitable wah-wah clavinet style on the track, which certainly wasn’t easy.

  Elton John took the role of the Pinball Wizard, and asked to use his own band and producer Gus Dudgeon to record his track. Elton arrived at the Battersea studio in a Phantom 5 limousine, similar to that used by the Queen; I hadn’t seen one in the rock world since Andrew Oldham’s in 1967. It was a revelation to observe how quickly and efficiently Elton and his band worked, nailing a driving track with solos, lead and backing vocals in less than four hours.

  Principal photography on Tommy began in late April. I found Ken Russell bombastic, energetic, funny, tireless and inspiring. He had an obsessive eye for detail and planning that I now realise every great film director needs, together with the ability to adapt to fluctuating circumstances.

  I never had a bad moment with Ken. During the Tommy film he only ever slept about four hours a night, and in the first six weeks of shooting I did the same. We’d have a script meeting for the next day’s shooting that lasted until two in the morning, and he’d be up again at six for a breakfast meeting. I survived on cognac. I have no idea how he did it.

  Ken pushed his actors very hard indeed and wore a few people down, but during the filming I could stand aside and recuperate if I wished; and when we filmed our own sequences as The Who I simply behaved like the arrogant half-drunk rock star I was. Although Eric Clapton wasn’t crazy about appearing in the film he pulled his weight. The scene Ken arranged for ‘The Hawker’, the song based on ‘Eyesight to the Blind’, was set in a church, with voodoo as the theme. Arthur Brown, John Entwistle and I joined Eric as his acolytes, all wearing loose-fitting gowns. We looked like complete idiots. I felt a little embarrassed for Eric. My old buddy Arthur Brown, whose song ‘Fire’ was a No. 1 hit in the UK, knew voodoo like a New Orleans shaman, and seemed to be in his element. Ken filled the church with real paraplegics and disabled folk in wheelchairs; it shouldn’t have worked, but they all very much enjoyed their day of filming.

  Eric came back into the studio to complete the recording. After we had finished he told me he was building up the courage to speak with Pattie, George Harrison’s wife and the subject of ‘Layla’, and beg her to leave her husband. Would I go with him and maybe spend some time with George so Eric could be alone with Pattie?

  This turned out not to be difficult. George was happy to talk to me about Indian mysticism and music, even his use of cocaine. I found it hard to
follow his reasoning that in a world of illusion nothing mattered, not wealth or fame, drug abuse or heavy drinking, nothing but love for God. We sat in his wonderful recording studio and talked for two hours. I fell in love with George that night. His sardonic, slow-speed, Liverpudlian humour was charming, and his spiritual commitment was absolute: yellow-robed young Hare Krishna followers living in the house wandered in and out as we chatted.

  George lived a quiet life; his house was vast, rambling, and the reception hall was like a theatre it was so huge, with its ornate galleries. I think Pattie may have been more relieved to escape the house than she was to leave George. A superb gardener, his great love was Friar Park.

  That night Eric tried to talk to Pattie about his feelings, and he said later that it was a crucial moment in their relationship. Pattie did eventually leave George for Eric, who celebrated that success by having as much fun as he could without drugs. Pattie seemed happy, and free. I hadn’t seen her smile in quite the way she did with Eric since I had first met her.

  At a Chelsea restaurant soon after filming Eric’s scene in Tommy, Karen and I were invited to dinner with Bob and Mia Pridden and Eric and Pattie. The four of them arrived half an hour late, raging drunk, wearing gorilla masks. After so many years of being exposed to similar stunts by Keith, my response was studiedly nonchalant; without batting an eye I asked the four gorillas what they would like to drink. Eric thought at first I was angry, and became a little sheepish, but it was delightful to see how happy he was.

  Post-production work on the Tommy movie music score was proving to be highly demanding. Towards the end of the last recording sessions at Ramport, which had been devoted mainly to backing vocal sessions and amplifying the crowd scenes, one of the girl singers told me about a charity event at the Roundhouse for which Tim Hardin, who’d agreed to headline, had cancelled. The goal had been to buy a bus for children in need, so I stepped in to do it solo. I decided to use backing tapes for a few of the songs I wanted to perform, and got to work preparing them. In full harness in my studio, I moved quickly. Even so, it took several days to build enough material to make the concert interesting. I felt under pressure because, on news of my appearance, tickets had sold out completely.

  This was the first-ever solo performance I did, and I stuck to songs I loved. ‘No Face, No Name, No Number’ from Traffic’s Mr Fantasy album, Jimmy Reed’s ‘Big Boss Man’ and Kiki Dee’s ‘Amoureuse’ were included in a list of Who classics. My favourite moment was coming across the great English jazz eccentric George Melly backstage, and his telling me he was looking forward to my show.

  The Roundhouse, then still unrestored, had the mood and smell of an old railway engine shed – which it was. The crowd stayed seated for the entire show, something I hadn’t seen since the early Who performances in California. Unfortunately a drunk sitting fairly close to the front kept demanding that I play the ‘Underture’ from Tommy. He was persistent, and irritating. When he shouted his request once too often I leapt from the stage, got hold of him by the neck and was about to punch him. His friend, equally smashed but slightly more coherent, intervened.

  ‘No need for that, man,’ he slurred. ‘We’re just fans.’

  I relented, returned to the stage and apologised (although the fellow I’d threatened continued to request ‘Underture’ for the entire remainder of the show). Otherwise it was a landmark event for me. I was surprised by how well I was able to hold the attention of the audience without heavy amplification, and pleased I sang well enough to get by. And the charity got its bus.

  While the Tommy film was being made, Bill Curbishley had been dreaming of The Who performing in the UK’s première football stadiums. He may have been encouraged by our success in Anaheim in California, but no single British band had ever played in a UK football stadium before, not even The Beatles.

  He secured a date at The Valley Charlton, where his brother Alan played (and later managed the team). The Charlton show was scheduled between the movie work I was still catching up on and a planned four-day stint in New York. It was also the day before my twenty-ninth birthday. I wasn’t just drunk by the time of the concert – I was smashed. Fortunately, it went off OK.

  We also held a free concert in Portsmouth for the cast of the movie. It was the first time Ann-Margret had seen us perform, and she was astonished by us. I was astonished too, if only by the fact that I managed to perform at all. I was half-drunk, but I knew the audience was in our pocket before we started, and I was happy to be entertaining the crew we had worked with for so long, many of whom had never seen us perform. The whole band played well, but Roger was especially good; during filming he had worked out consistently and was in great physical shape. As usual, he gave the show his all.

  After the show, our lawyer Ted Oldman produced a document for us to sign, which he said would assure that the Grand Right in Tommy would remain with us. I refused to sign. Ted simply waited until I was drunk enough and placed a piece of blank paper over the foot of the contract. I signed, pulled the blank sheet away to reveal the subterfuge, carefully tore off my signature, and handed the contract back to him.*

  From there, after a few rehearsals, we trooped to New York for four days at Madison Square Garden in June. Our usual hotel, the Navarro, was besieged by fans. A few critics reviewing the concert complained that we had introduced no new music since Quadrophenia, now nine months old. Some front-row fans found me insufficiently energetic, and started shouting at me, commanding me to jump. I was upset by this, feeling like a clown, but I kept my cool. Overall, however, the shows went well.

  Filming continued on Tommy while we were away, although I managed to attend all the major shoots: ‘Acid Queen’ with Tina Turner, ‘Go to the Mirror’ with Jack Nicholson, and ‘Champagne’ and ‘Smash the Mirror’ with Ann-Margret. I returned with only a day in which to take in a massive backlog of musical issues and script changes.

  The last period of filming was in August 1974. Already exhausted from the post-production musical arrangements I looked like a corpse and felt worse. During these shoots I began to see just how many long hours every single person on the crew put in. Meanwhile Keith and Oliver Reed were in a Portsmouth hotel, raising hell. I tried to raise a little myself, accepting a challenge to a drinking competition from one of the hard-looking lighting gaffers. The mission was to drink half a bucket of draught Guinness. My challenger managed two-thirds before he gave up. I managed about the same, then vomited what I had drunk thus far back into the bucket.

  When I told Ken I had bought a boat he was scathing. ‘Bloody things,’ he scowled. ‘My father had a yacht and all I can remember is polishing it.’

  Every person who has ever owned a boat knows the phenomenon: you begin with a small boat that’s easy to manage, then get one slightly bigger, then another slightly bigger, then bigger, until you hit unmanageability, sell and buy a boat as small as the one you started with. I was on boat number two. I didn’t sell my speedboat but gave it to Dad so he could get rid of the ageing Liz-O, our first boat together from 1967 that had sunk on its mooring on the Thames. I wanted a boat that would cross the English Channel, with two sleeping cabins. I found a 36-foot Grand Banks trawler boat whose owner was willing to take my Rolls Mulliner coupé in part exchange.

  Oliver and Keith were up for sailing. The problem was they were still shooting the movie, so we settled on an evening cruise. A group of us – Ollie, Keith, Jason (my new driver) and his pretty girlfriend Carla, Barney and myself – ferried out to the Grand Banks at 8 p.m. With several bottles of Navy Rum we considered ourselves equipped for a sea voyage. Once aboard I gave Jason his instructions.

  ‘Let’s pop over to Cowes,’ I said carelessly. There and back it was a distance of less than eight miles.

  ‘I should get a weather forecast first.’ I could see he was nervous.

  ‘Are you sure you’re an experienced sailor?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he assured me. ‘I just want to get in touch with the coastguard.’

 
; It turned out he didn’t really know how to work the radio. While he was frigging around, Keith set the dinghy adrift; it was carried quickly out sea by the falling tide.

  ‘Sorry chaps!’ He was extremely pleased with himself. ‘We seem to be stranded.’

  Ollie rolled a joint, which surprised us all. We had only seen him drink beer and eat curry thus far. It was left to me to consume the rum. I didn’t know I liked it until I found myself stark naked toasting Mafuta, my new boat.

  ‘Well done, Pete,’ said Ollie, gazing at my package.

  ‘At least someone has done something sensible at last,’ I responded. I expected everyone else to follow suit, rather fancying Carla, I suppose.

  Keith had a better idea. ‘I’m going to swim ashore,’ he exclaimed brightly, like some twit-spark from a P.G. Wodehouse story. Before any of us could stop him he left the saloon and dived in. Within seconds he was out of sight in the pitch black of the moorings.

  The tide was ebbing at about 5 knots now, and I was worried for him. Ollie had the answer: he would go and rescue Keith. In a flash he was gone too.

  My answer was the best of all. I went to bed.

  When I woke up next morning only faithful Barney was still with me. I was still comfortably rum-drunk from the night before, and extremely jolly. Barney told me Keith had made it ashore, borrowed a dinghy, and had come and taken the others back. My dinghy had been rescued by someone from the yacht club, who had very kindly tied it back on the boat, so Barney and I rowed ashore.

  We arrived back at the shoot in time to find Roger sitting on a rooftop, doing deaf signing to the assembly of acolytes who believed they had to pretend to be deaf, dumb and blind if they were to follow Tommy. It was a very moving scene, shot almost entirely in silence until the sound of an autoharp glistened in the morning sunshine.