Who I Am: A Memoir (26 page)

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.

‘What beautiful music,’ I said, forgetting that I’d written it.

The contrast between Roger and me was, by this time, dramatic. He looked beautiful, tanned, healthy, alive, alert and fit. I was shattered, bleary and hung over. And, to make things worse, I knew the toughest part of my work on the
Tommy
movie was ahead of me, at least technically speaking.

My workload, once post-production was rolling in earnest, was beyond imagination, but I was completely committed to restoring some musical sense to the new and extended scenes of
Tommy
by adding orchestrations, guitar solos and additional vocal schemes. Someone suggested that the film be dubbed in surround-sound, and I got behind the idea very quickly. For quadrophonic dubbing work we needed a specialised quad desk, so I used my own large Neve from Cleeve. Nothing seemed to stop me turning over my home to whatever project I was working on.

Terry Rawlings, our music editor, introduced me to John Mosely, who ran Command, a recording studio near London’s Piccadilly Circus. He met up with Ray Dolby, the famous creator of Dolby noise reduction, whom I knew through Trackplan and our Thames jaunts. Mosely was sometimes imperious and could be difficult, but he was technically brilliant and inspired, helping us create surround set-ups that worked. He understood how to move things around between speakers using phase cancellation between channels.

Ray Dolby found it tricky working with John Mosely, who wanted to tie the Dolby system to his own patent (Quintaphonic) for surround sound, and I’m certain Ray had his own ideas. When the two fell out we used the DBX noise-reduction system on our tracks instead, and in the première theatres it worked extremely well to deliver the rock dynamic.

Dubbing was completed in mid-December. For a while, apart from
Fantasia
, the first and only matrix-encoded five-channel surround film was
Tommy
. I learned more working on
Tommy
than I ever needed to know about film sound and editing. Taking on the technical aspects was challenging and exciting, but ultimately exhausting, and I promised myself I’d never work on another movie soundtrack. I certainly could never have done it without Terry Rawlings.

While I scrabbled on my own to write songs for The Who in early 1975, the other three members of the band were embarking on the most intense activities of their respective careers. This extramural work had taken root while
Tommy
was being made. Roger agreed to take the lead in Ken Russell’s next film,
Lisztomania
. John had no long-term role in the
Tommy
film, so while waiting for the rest of us to wrap it up he got serious about his solo career, compiling enough material for two records in quick succession. He also started to produce other bands.

Keith made his first solo album, too, and both of us joined Eric Clapton for a few days of his comeback tour. Keith introduced me to his new girlfriend Annette Walter-Lax, a Swedish model. He seemed very happy, and she clearly adored him. This was a good omen; it looked like Keith would get over losing Kim after all.

As a band and a business The Who had hit a speed bump. Kit was causing legal trouble, and had thoroughly confused our lawyers over who owned the copyright to
Tommy
. Keith was being disastrously irresponsible with money, and I thought he was wasting his time trying to be a movie star. John was, in my opinion, being impatient and overly ambitious to break out on his own; I felt he would have plenty on his plate when the band started up again. Roger had worked very hard on
Tommy
and had become a real actor, but I was irritated that he had accepted
Lisztomania
. Selfishly, it seemed to me The Who were suddenly playing second fiddle to the individual pursuits of the band’s members.

Despite my gloom, I wrote songs for The Who in my few days off. These rough pieces would be developed in my home studio on sixteen-track tape, but only after being approved by Roger. I couldn’t see the point in completing demos of songs he wasn’t going to sing. Before
Tommy
premièred, I had thirty songs and instrumental pieces for Roger to listen to. I visited him one evening at Shepperton, where he was filming, and played him the songs. We had a drink together, and then I left him two cassettes so he could listen again on his own.

He called the next day, very positive about what he’d heard. I had come up with a broad sweep of material, some upbeat, some R&B influenced, some reggae, some very light in tone, and some introspective or angry. I was surprised by the songs he liked best – the angry, cynical, depressive ones. The music was only partly complete, though; what I lacked on this collection, once again, was a defining context, a theme or concept.

The songs Roger selected may have been the ones he liked best, but as a group they were later described as a kind of ‘suicide note’
†
from me, and better suited to a solo album. I wasn’t feeling suicidal at all, but I was terribly tired.

During an interview with Roy Carr in
New Musical Express
‡
I talked about the way I felt The Who had got stuck:

I can tell you that when we were gigging in this country at the early part of last year I was thoroughly depressed. I honestly felt that The Who were going onstage every night and, for the sake of the die-hard fans, copying what The Who used to be.