Who I Am: A Memoir (16 page)

When ‘Pinball Wizard’ was first pre-released to radio, I wasn’t prepared for the critical onslaught for daring to write a song about a deaf, dumb and blind child. Several BBC DJs refused to play the track, with one or two making strongly worded statements, calling me ‘sick’. Many softened their position when the album was released and they could hear the track in proper context. But music press approbation has dogged
Tommy
ever since.

I’m often described as ‘pretentious’ for attempting to write a composed song-cycle that tells a story (which itself has been torn to pieces a thousand times because it doesn’t fit established rules of operatic written drama). It was even called my ‘brain fart’ by some critic that I have since relegated to the sludge-pile of memory. ‘Rock opera’ had already happened with The Pretty Things’
SF Sorrow
and Keith West’s
Excerpt from a Teenage Opera
; The Kinks released their own
Arthur
the same year as
Tommy
, and we were certainly both using the term ‘rock opera’, albeit tongue-in-cheek. We knew that what we were doing owed more to British music hall than to grand opera.

My songs for
Tommy
still had the function of pop singles: to reflect and release, prefigure and inspire, entertain and engage. But that vein – of promoting singles apart from a whole album – had been thoroughly mined by the time we released
Tommy
. Change was necessary for us, which of course meant taking a lot of criticism on the chin. If the naïve, workmanlike songs I wrote immediately before
Tommy
had been hits I might never have felt the need to try something else. I might have kept my operatic ambitions private. There’s nothing I admire more than a collection of straightforward songs, linked in mood and theme only by a common, unspecific artistic thesis.

But the ‘pretentiousness’ of
Tommy
was necessary. Without its audacity and cheek to attract both attention and opprobrium, I believe The Who would have eventually disappeared or become irrelevant. In any case, I enjoyed writing songs serving a brief. It’s how I had begun, it seemed to work for me, and the result was songs that might otherwise not have been written. After
Tommy
every collection of songs I submitted for a Who album was inspired by an idea, a story or concept that had some kind of dramatic shape and form, not always evident, but always there.

I experienced something very peculiar when my daughter Emma was born on 28 March. First the doctor arrived at the hospital, and after explaining how the inducement procedure would unfold he broke Karen’s water to begin the contractions. When I went into Karen’s room to comfort her, the room was filled with angels. I didn’t say anything, worried I was going mad and that I might frighten her. But as I sat holding Karen’s hands and we smiled at each other, the room buzzed with magical energy. I wondered if I was having an LSD flashback. A little later, when Emma was born and first placed in my arms, I was awestruck by seeing this beautiful little thing for the first time. She seemed to look straight through my eyes and into my soul.

At that moment I was overwhelmed by a completely unexpected feeling. I felt an urge to pass the new baby back to her mother, rush out into the world and earn money. It was as though I had a caveman’s primitive drive to hunt and kill to provide food for his family. A few days later, driving my newborn daughter home, I pulled my head above the parapet: I would do whatever I had to do in order to succeed.

Kit had left the first mix and assembly of
Tommy
to our IBC studios engineer Damon Lyon Shaw. When I first heard the double album I was a little taken aback. Kit had remixed the entire album so that the band was very low behind the vocals, and some tracks seemed to lack the punch I knew they had delivered in the studio. But the collection hung together better, and after a few listens I decided Kit had taken the correct approach. The story behind
Tommy
was fairly easy to follow, and the sleeve would contain the words as well as sensational pictures; practically every lyric line could be clearly heard in the mix, and this – after all – was the whole point. Mike McInnerney’s sleeve design was a triumph. It added mystery and coherence, a seemingly impossible combination. Printed up and held in hand it was an object of beauty as well as elucidation.

On 31 March we went into rehearsal in a hall in West Ealing. It took just four days for us to realise that
Tommy
was going to be a wonderful piece to play live. After the last rehearsal Keith took me for a drink, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Pete, you’ve done it. This is gonna work.’ Our rehearsals were a revelation: the music of
Tommy
, when played live, even in an empty hall, generated an extraordinary, building energy, and seemed to possess an inexplicable power that none of us had expected or planned.

As critics gathered like a pack of baying, snarling dogs, we prepared to face them. The only way to stem the attacks would be to play the first live show of
Tommy
in London exclusively to the enemy, to the cynical British press and radio media. On May Day we took the stage at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club to première
Tommy
live to a bunch of music journalists half-drunk on booze we’d provided. As we walked on, one or two shouted out: ‘Townshend, you sick cunt, smash yer guitar.’ The audience murmur began to build; the situation didn’t look good, so we drowned out the objectors by turning our amplifiers up far too loud for the small club, and began to play.

By the time we had finished everyone was on their feet. We had triumphed. The music worked.

Historically, The Who’s stage act had revolved around a kind of childish look-at-me competitiveness that had worked well from 1964 to 1968, as the four of us, boys still, tried to get the attention of the audience in our own eccentric way. I jumped around, posed like a Mod fop, squiggled sideways, swung my arm and battled my Marshall stack. Roger swung his long golden hair and twirled the tassels on his shawl or his chamois leather jacket, as he sang and produced white noise or explosions by pushing his microphone against Keith’s cymbals. Keith played too many notes and made too many faces, throwing too many sticks and falling off his stool too often, but never lost the beat. John got attention simply because he stood so still, his fingers flying like a stenographer’s, the notes a machine-gun chatter.

But when we performed
Tommy
in 1969 this competitiveness began to fade; we worked much more as a unit, supporting each other in making the journey of performing and listening to
Tommy
effective. We might begin our shows with a lot of noisy hard rock, and maybe end that way too, with amplifiers toppling over and drumkits falling into a heap, but while we played
Tommy
we became real musicians. This made being on stage with The Who a better place to be, although offstage we often still coalesced into our separate factions.

John seemed to ally himself to Keith without question, and was thus ensnared in many of Keith’s most disastrous escapades. Roger was often preoccupied by a stunning girl, which meant he was no trouble, but neither was he much fun. I survived on my own, supported by my studio work, Karen and Emma, and a few good friends, as well as by spending time with journalists who took me seriously. These were mainly Americans – John Mendelsohn, Danny Fields, Jann Wenner, Dave Marsh and Greil Marcus come to mind. But even back in Britain rock writers were becoming less tabloid in their approach. Music magazine editors were realising that their readers took the bands and singers they liked seriously.

Pop music was evolving, becoming the barometer for a lot of social change. As journalists began to feel less embarrassed about speaking seriously about music I felt as though I was returning to familiar ground, where it was acceptable to speak of Bach, Charlie Parker and Brian Wilson as geniuses without fear of looking nerdy. In radio too there were great innovators who made me feel valued, and I passed a lot of time with them, perpetuating The Who myths and deepening the realities, as well as listening to music and ideas they felt were important.

On tour, however, I couldn’t get past the unshakeable feeling that there was a party going on somewhere to which I wouldn’t be invited because I didn’t take drugs and didn’t feel at ease with groupies. My take on groupies had nothing to do with morality; I just didn’t understand what they really wanted, or what they felt they were doing. If you got to spend a few nights with Daltrey or Clapton, what did you
go on to do
that would make it mean something? Tell your friends? Put notches on your high heels? One woman, who often slept with Eric, was never anything but beautiful, elegant and impressively intelligent. What made her follow bands around and hang around backstage, waiting for crumbs? Or are we all really star-fuckers wanting some buzz by association, or kudos by reputation and secrets?

Keith often allied himself with well-known groupies (groupie débutantes) whom he treated like princesses, speaking in a posh English voice like a lord as he served them Dom Perignon; he was so much fun I could understand why they enjoyed being with him. John often adopted one girl for an entire tour, who would become very familiar to all of us before disappearing for ever once the tour was over. I watched men in hotel bars, travelling salesmen or those attending conferences, speaking to girls they had just met, unbothered that they might be ladies of the night or just single women out for a good time. I could see what they needed, and why. But somehow I couldn’t understand it in my bandmates.

Some musicians in pop and rock, even those on the sidelines, have numbered their sexual conquests in figures that defy the imagination. My priority was being faithful to Karen, but that left me feeling somehow left out. And of course everyone who dealt with me, the outsiders, believed they knew how I lived and what I did; the legendary rock ’n’ roll life wasn’t easy to disown. Nor was there mileage in trying to explain that despite being in a rock band and smashing guitars I didn’t take drugs and was trying to be a good husband.

I knew I had to go back to work, but I left my flight to the US to the last minute. Our first three shows were at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit, where we had played the previous July. Joe Cocker and the Grease Band were supporting us, and I loved watching them play. It was also a chance to catch up once again with my art-school buddy and mentor Tom Wright, who was still managing the Grande.

Every night our soundman Bob Pridden and I hung out with Tom Wright, who had heard
Tommy
and gave me his unexpurgated critique. ‘Pete!’ he giggled, waving a bottle of J&B at me. ‘An opera. Man! A fucking opera. What were you thinking?’ A few minutes later looked at me earnestly, his eyes boring into mine. ‘Acid Queen … man! Who was she? Where is she?’

The Who moved on to Boston, to Don Law’s Boston Tea Party venue, which offered an eclectic mix of rock and jazz artists. Roland Kirk was the support act for three nights. (The following year he would add ‘Rahsaan’ to his name, after hearing it in a dream.) I was a huge fan, and a year earlier, wanting to share my passion, I had taken Karen and a couple of friends to see him play in London at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. We sat at a great table to the left of the stage, near the front, while Roland Kirk stormed his way through the most extraordinary feats of musicianship, dazzling jazz and showmanship. His gimmick was to play two or three instruments at once. We were astounded by him.

After forty-five minutes Kirk seemed to get bored and told his band, which included bassist Malcolm Cecil, who had lectured so brilliantly at Ealing, to go get a drink while he made his way to the piano. Roland’s noodling was wonderful – he had a two-fingered, two-fisted approach reminiscent of Duke Ellington in a playful mood. At one point I whispered into Karen’s ear, ‘I love this, but I’ll be glad when he picks up his horn again.’ He turned and glared in my direction. He’d heard me! I don’t really know how; being blind his hearing must have been highly acute, but I really was whispering.

‘Sorry,
Roland
,’ I shouted, saying his first name in the arch-cockney manner we all used at Ronnie’s to speak about him. He scoffed, then got up from the piano and walked back to the middle of the stage where he stuffed six different instruments into his mouth and played while singing at the same time. He looked over at me a few times, as if to make sure I was getting enough horn.

After we had performed
Tommy
, I stood exhausted in the dressing room as Roland Kirk pushed his way in shouting, ‘Where’s that little white motherfucking dude that wrote the thing about the deaf, dumb and blind kid?’ I stayed quiet, but he heard me breathing, came over to me and gave me a hug.

‘You don’t know what it’s like man, but you gave us blind folk our own opera thing at last! But I ain’t dumb, and I ain’t deaf.’

‘Sorry,
Roland
,’ I said, in arch-cockney.

‘Damn!’ Roland turned on me again, scowling in mock-anger. ‘You’re that white motherfucker who wanted me to stop playing the piano at Ronnie’s last year!’ I got another hug, this one more of a crush, but he sat backstage to listen to
Tommy
all three nights we played it that week.

Roland Kirk taught me that when musicians pay respects they don’t always do it with claps and hugs or fan letters. Sometimes they merely listen. If they happen to be blind, they listen with acuity.

Bringing
Tommy
to New York, our spiritual home in the USA, was an emotional leap for us, but by this time I was starting to feel confident, if not a little cocky. In early 1969 I approached performing as I always did: a hard-working professional musician with a mission: get to the stage, do my job, go home. No encore.

I had become frustrated with the generally disorganised, experimental nature of pop shows in the late Sixties. Many promoters were straight out of college and had learned their craft in the cocoon of the student union. Behind the psychedelic posters and hippy atmosphere, the way these new young people operated created chaos – except where money was concerned. They were the emergent hippy businessmen of the future, like Richard Branson and Harvey Goldsmith. Despite my irritation I never felt violently angry, at least not with those who ran this new business I was in.