Who I Am: A Memoir (56 page)

*
Ascott’s personal manifesto emerges in his course description: ‘The Questioning of Preconceptions. Analytical study of Nature and Machines introduces the student to structure, growth and form, cyclic and serial situations, and environmental problems. These practical activities are complemented by seminars in Cybernetics, Semiotics, Psychology …’ For more details, see www.frieze.com/issue/article/degree_zero

 

*
See Appendix.

 

*
This was used as the basis for ‘I Love My Dog’, released in autumn 1966 by Cat Stevens, and an immediate hit. Cat (born Steven Georgiou, later renamed Yusuf Islam) now pays back-royalties to Lateef. I remember him fondly – I spoke to him once in Brewer Street when he was a teenager. His family owned a restaurant around the corner from my Wardour Street flat. He was three years younger than me, but that would have been quite a gap between such young men. He had caught me in my big, blue Lincoln, seemed to know of me and where I lived, and fired a number of questions at me about songwriting and guitars.

 

*
More details on
Tommy
’s genesis are available at www.TheWho.com.

 

†
The full transcript of the Jann Wenner interview is available at www.TheWho.com.

 

‡
This TV film was called
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
but was not released until 1996.

 

*
In the US, the Library of Congress Grand Right is a copyright that aggregates three creative strands – music, lyrics and story. No such right exists in the UK but the form is respected as a rule.

 

*
It is now known as the internet or the World Wide Web.

 

†
For a complete exposition on the concept and history of
Lifehouse
, and its various incarnations, see www.TheWho.com.

 

‡
Melody Maker
, 19 September 1970.

 

§
OVERTURE: The farmers – Life – Beauty – Celebration, LIFEHOUSE: The City – Rock – Youth against finance – Individuals working for the whole, GLORIFICATION: They disappear – they triumph, leaving everyone behind.

 

*
The first workshop was held during the day, so attended only by truants. Also, frightened we would be overrun, we made no announcements at all. So in fact no one knew what we were doing. I felt the workshops would be best allowed to grow exponentially.

 

*
I may have sacked Kit as a record producer but he was still The Who’s manager and we were still on Track records, the label owned by Kit and Chris.

 

†
Commercially it reached the highest position of any Who album in the States at No. 2 and in the long term has achieved the recognition I hoped for it. IGN, for instance, placed
Quadrophenia
at No. 1 in their list of the greatest classic rock albums of all time.

 

*
There were many contracts to sign and I did not sign the assignment of copyright to Kit and The Who (I saw it as mine entirely). At a later date it
appeared
that I had signed this particular contract (in the presence of my PA Judi Waring) but my signature was stapled onto the bottom of the other signatures and Judi had not even been at the show. So we both agreed that it must have been literally chopped from a different contract.

 

†
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_by_Numbers.

 

‡
Roy Carr, ‘The Punk as Godfather’, interview with Pete Townshend,
New Musical Express
, 31 May 1975.

 

*
For example, Roy Carr, ‘The Punk as Godfather’, interview with Pete Townshend,
New Musical Express
, 31 May 1975.

 

*
Keith’s new doctor, Geoffrey Dymond, unaware of his history of prescription sedative abuse, gave him a full bottle of 100 sedative pills to alleviate his alcohol- withdrawal symptoms as he tried to dry out. Keith had taken 32 tablets.

 

*
First screened in the UK on BBC4 on 29 June 2012.

 

*
My version was never finished, but much later the general idea was used by Rachel Fuller for a song called ‘Ghost in Your Room’, told from the girl’s point of view.

 

†
I am using the word ‘eroticised’ here as it is used in therapy as a way of describing the way children’s sexuality is distorted by seeing sexual scenes too soon in their lives.

 

‡
This was to be an underlying theme of Pinter’s 1988 play
Mountain Language
.

 

*
I was still very proud of both
Tommy
and
Quadrophenia
, and my involvement in and commitment to these new incarnations was extensive, but I don’t propose to write any more about them in this book, except in passing, where they related to other events in my life, not only for reasons of space but because, in spite of their importance for me in my work, they essentially belonged to the past as far as this narrative of my life is concerned. Anyone who wants to read about these adaptations and my personal involvement in them can find them on my website at www.TheWho.com.

 

*
David later wrote a terrific book about his son Nic’s meth addiction:
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction
(Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

 

*
For more details on the subsequent legal wrangling over this, see www.TheWho.com.

 

*
For the full text, go to www.thewho.com/news/title/john-entwistle.

 

*
The White Knight Syndrome
by Mary Lamia and Marilyn Krieger suggests that ‘though most white knights feel that they are selfless and sacrificing, their rescuing behaviour is often misguided’. Helping others can cause delusions of grandeur – everything can be fine until someone the white knight is ‘helping’ falls by the wayside.

 

*
Bob Long was producing a BBC documentary series called
Police Protecting Children
, commissioned as a result of the publicity surrounding Operation Ore. I believe that Bob Long and his team were following the work of the Metropolitan Police’s Child Protection Unit as they made various arrests, one of which happened to be mine. The filming of my statement was included in the second episode, screened a year later on 30 March 2004.

 

†
So many letters came that I have not replied to them all. If you wrote, I will never forget your kindness. I still have your letter.

 

‡
I could have added ‘and in my forthcoming memoirs’.

 

§
‘Her songs are elegant and graceful affairs musically, and wonderfully gritty, vulnerable slice-of-life stories lyrically. The combination of the two creates a kind of emotional tension that pulls the listener in many directions, making equanimity all but impossible. […] This is adult music. It looks at the pop song as a way of expressing what is normally felt but nearly always hidden away; its expression of hope and willingness is tempered and strengthened by its wondrous candor and musical sophistication.’ (www.allmusic.com/album/cigarettes-housework-mw0000686253)

 

*
Endless Wire
reached the top 10 in both Britain and the States. More details on the album are available at www.TheWho.com.

 

†
I have been focusing much of my musical energy on
Floss
since 2008. In the summer of 2011 I produced the director’s cut of
Quadrophenia
. This included remixed demos, some surround-sound tracks and copious notes which were easier to write because I had gathered all my papers together again to write this book.

 

*
www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/01/pete-townshend-john-peel-lecture.