The Truth About Our Generation - Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle interviewed by Alan Freeman for Rave Magazine, February 1966
Transcript of full article below the cut
ALAN FREEMAN/THE WHO
HEART-TO-HEART
New sounds, new ideas - things that have made The Who famous. Things that have also made The Who the most criticised group since the Stones first hit the scene. What do The Who think about it all? What other shocks and surprises have they got in store for the pop scene? Find out, as they tell Alan Freeman the truth about their generation...
The times they are a-changing. The trouble is, they're changing too fast for that bunch of desperate individualists known as The Who
No generation in history has ever whizzed as fast through such a breakneck succession of crazes and phases. And for a group whose policy is to stay always one jump ahead of the In-crowd, it's the hardest of hard going.
"I just don't know where we've got to," said Pete Townshend, the talk-man for The Who. "I suppose in one way we've got what we set out to get a long time ago - fame and acknowledgement.
"But now it's all sort of closing in on us and we feel more or less trapped. We thought we could evolve our own kind of music. Well, we have evolved it. But ever since we got into the charts, everything we're doing is in the pop context.
"And pop was the very thing we tried to break away way from - in the old sense, anyway. We were playing rhythm and blues years before anyone here, even before the Stones. When other people started playing it, we dropped it.
"It's always been like that with us. Whatever we're doing at the moment, we change to something else as soon as others get in on it."
So as far as The Who are concerned, the pop art image that stunned listeners last summer with things like "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" is already a dead carcass.
Like obsessed scientists in a horror film, they were up till four o'clock in the morning experimenting with amplifiers, tape recorders and new mike combinations, searching endlessly for newer musical forms that would reflect nobody's ideas but their own.
Where that search has led them them up to now, they are not certain. "We're beginning to feel frustrated," Pete said morosely. "We've spent fortunes on equipment. In fact, nobody in town will give us credit any more, except one of two shops who understand what we're trying to do.
It's a funny thing about England that the ordinary bloke in the street can see violence done to the human body in all sorts of ways â bar-room fights, a thump-up in a dance hall, a vicious war like Vietnam â without ever feeling that it concerns him. But immediately a bit of property is smashed up he goes potty and cries out about senseless destruction."
I reckon it's this unfortunate national knack of putting higher values on things than people that has made The Who the most unpopular group in pop. When PДte crashes his guitar into an amplifier and Keith Moon demolishes yet another set of drums, they strike a mortal blow at the local reverence for property.
Younger fans treat it as a thunderously noisy game, no more serious than a kid knocking down a house of toy bricks he's just built. The people who get really angry about The Who are the kind who spend all Saturday morning polishing their scooters, lavishing on bits of metal the love they ought to be giving to people.
I've noticed The Who have another strange following they may not be aware of. Show business tends to attract quite a few gamblers and reformed villains who turn up at various parties and first nights. And I've heard some of them raving about The Who's records.
It occurs to me that maybe if some of these ex-hoods had the chance when they were younger of using up their violence as harmlessly as The Who do, they might have lived happier lives.
Troubled Eardrums
"I'd say we probably take it easier in our personal lives than a lot of other groups," said Roger Daltrey. "We use up so much juice in our act that we haven't got all that much energy left over for going wild afterwards."
"Yeah," said Pete. "It takes it out of us physically. It's beginning to affect our eardrums."
"Eh?" said John Entwistle.
"I said it's beginning to affect our ear-drums," roared Pete.
"I don't like rum," shouted John. "I'll have a Scotch and coke."
"What Scotch bloke?"
Roger grinned and said, "Gagging apart, it's true. You'd be surprised how many people in groups get trouble with their hearing."
I took Roger's word for it. He used to be a steel worker, so he ought to know something about noise levels.
With Keith Moon ill, The Who were temporarily reduced to three. We sat around in the big living room of my apartment, sipping our drinks and watching the pale winter sun set through the tall windows.
"Maybe I was painting a black picture when I said we don't know where we're going." Pete said after a while. "Thinking it over, we're beginning to get more normal reactions from the audiences.
"Before, we could only count on that in specialised areas like Leicester, Stevenage and a few other places. Everywhere else it was 'Let's go and dig The Who with their funny noises and their pop art sweaters.' Now we're getting a much better reception everywhere we go. Which knocks us out, of course. It makes us feel we're reaching people at last."
"There is a way of getting round to most people," said Roger. "For example, we've played all the big thick rocker areas. We know where they are and we wouldn't ever play there again, because we once publicly announced we were mods who play mod music.
Not Mods
"In Barrow-in-Furness we played for the first half-hour to a literally, empty ball. Then there was this onrush of drunken blokes from the pub next door and they let us have it with bottles, pennies and everything. They didn't care what they hit. And some of them get annoyed when we ducked the bottles and accused us of using swear words in front of their young ladies.
"Greenock, in Scotland, is another place we wouldn't touch again. Let's just say we were most embarrassed there."
I pointed out that at most times on this unfair little round planet of ours, not everyone will accept change as readily as most of the population would like, although the current scene is changing, pioneers have had to suffer for bringing the new message.
"Yeah, but we were bringing it to what we knew was the biggest part of the audiences," said Pete "The mod audience. But when we found out that mods were just as conformist and as reactionary as anyone else, we moved on from that phase too. We announced that we were ex-mods and that we were finished with all that label stuff."
Roger nodded agreement, and Pete continued: "It was just stupid dividing a hippy generation down the middle with this nonsense about mods and rockers. It was wasting everyone's time, particularly the groups' time."
"Okay" Roger said, "but what can you do about it? With us, it's a question of where we come from. We come from down South, around Shepherd's Bush. Everything's happening around London. The television centre's up the road. You're in the middle of things.
"Up the North they're still just thick. Who cares what they have to say? I don't mean Manchester or places like that, but - well, like Barrow-in-Furness. You'd have to be thick even to live there."
I said, "You're probably bored to death with this one, but what was the real beginning of this routine with smashing up your instruments and so on?"
Destructive Art
Pete shrugged patiently. "Well, I said once - and it was printed everywhere - that it happened one night when I turned round and hit the amplifier with the neck of my guitar by mistake, so that I had to do it again to cover and eventually it stayed in.
"Actually, though, it goes farther back than that. I started to take an interest in destructive art when I was a student at Ealing College of Art. I was knocked out by this Austrian geezer who was working in England at the time â I forget his name now. He used to make pictures by burning the canvas away with acid and what was left was... well, the art part.
"He had another idea of putting up statues with weak foundations so that they'd all fall down inside a year."
"Like Tingury," I said. "Ever hear of him? The Swiss sculptor who used to destroy pianos. He got a thousand people together one night in the Rockerfeller Plaza in New York and blew up a piano with explosive charges in the name of modern art."
"Yeah," said Pete. "That sort of jazz. Well, one way and another, I got this idea of auto-destructive music. A group which destroys itself on the stage playing quite valid music.
"We tried it out with me slamming the guitar into the amps. Keith pounded his drums into smithereens and hurled them into the audience and the audience threw them back."
"I couldn't think of anything to contribute, Roger said modestly. "So I scratched the speaker column with my fingernail. It made the best row of all."
"But it worked out," said Pete. "The last chords were struck and we put down the guitars and we walked off. They were astounded, and a few laughed at first. Then they began to clap, and that was it."
The cost of the ruined instruments appalled The Who's co-managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they took some convincing but eventually it was recognised as a 'Who' landmark which would eventually draw the fans and so after several arguments these tactics became part and parcel of the group's performances.
Group Split
"It keeps us continually broke and in a state of mental nervousness," said Pete. "It's cost me over two thousand quid in guitars alone so far. I've had five Rickenbacker twelve-strings, whereas George Harrison's very proud of the fact that he's had one."
Roger said, "They close the music shops in the Charing Cross Road when they see us coming." Not only did the music shops refuse to have anything to do with this new auto-destructive mood but The Who found their welcome in the insurance companies was equally dusty. Originally their instruments were insured against "malicious damage." But when Pete tried to claim for his latest slaughtered guitar the companies said no.
"Then one of them agreed to pay if we could prove I broke it on purpose," he said. "The bloke said it indicated some state of mental deficiency. But the hire-purchase people found out who I was and now we can't get away with it anymore."
I asked the boys about the constant reports of trouble and dissension within the group. John smiled quietly. He had said very little all afternoon to compete with Pete's ceaseless gusher of ideas and opinions.
"Do you feel left out?" I said. "Are you the oyster on the rock?"
"No fear," said John, "I'm the anchor of this lot. I'm the solid one in this terrifying organisation."
Pete said, "The truth is that we started as a dead loss group doing normal stuff. I wanted, like a kind of desperation, to try for wilder techniques and wilder statements than what we were doing. This led to each of us in the group being split inside himself, half for it and half against it.
"Some of us said, 'The reason people come to hear us is to hear pop entries.' And the others wanted to educate the audiences to accept something a bit farther out, to the point where we were offering them ridiculous stuff.
"We were all coming up with fantastic ideas. Everyone in the group had fabulous positions, but they all revolved around things which needed money. When we were playing at the Marquee in London we could do anything we liked, but now we've been broken down.
Endless Arguments
"Everything we do is in the context of pop music, even the LP we made. We're getting pop audiences and we're just not the same. Now I think we're up against it. You see, you've got to admit it. Sooner or later, you know you can't go any farther. You've got to admit you can't communicate to other people something you're not sure of yourself.
"We were never sure of what we were doing. We just knew we were blindly going on. So obviously there was to be friction among us from time."
I asked them how the word got around about the supposed trouble between members of the group, and whether or not they regarded the rumours as valid.
Roger said, "Pete started a lot of it by talking to a bird from a music paper."
Pete put down his drink and protested, "I told her we didn't get on, but she wrote it down that we hated each other."
"It all sort of blew up from there," Roger said. "I don't think we hate each other. We've all got so many different points of view. The group is not a lot of sheep. Sure, we have endless arguments. But we're not kids.
"At least when we argue we listen to one another. But if anybody happes to listen in on us having a barney it's blown up into something big, like the time in Denmark when the press saw us quarrelling over a couple of things. They made it sound as if we were at each other's throats all the time."
"I'll tell you one thing," said Pete. "Any arguments we have always start over ideas. But they don't stop there. Personalities get mixed up in it. It ends up with us criticising the words we use, the drinks we like, the kind of cigarettes we smoke, the way we walk."
Persistence
"It was bad about six months ago, but I think we've got past that. It's fine now."
John and Roger nodded.
"It doesn't matter in the long run," Pete said. "Eventually we're going to destroy ourselves as a group. It has to happen some time. You can't wrap your self up in someone else's life twenty-four hours a day forever."
But for the time being The Who remain as a unified team, to probe who knows what new frontiers of musical space. Strange new instruments and even stranger sounds are already on their way. Now the first launch of unidentified sound the has hit the jackpot for The Who will the new generation of sound be acceptable to the new generation in audiences? The groups who are the first to play them will need courage and persistence... the same kind of guts that has taken The Who through the storms of bottles and pennies from idiots who wanted pop to stand still forever.
This is one of my favourite John entwistle side quests that I would sell my limbs for the full performance and interview HE HAS A FUCKING ROLLER SKATER SKATING WHILE HE PERFORMS ROLLER SKATE KATE AHAHJSSJ AND A GIANT GUITAR IN HIS SKELETON FIT I NEED IT
But this is all I've ever found from the French news station that aired it just this 53 sec clip of all my hopes and dreams coming true
ok so first: I didnt really like the biography because I thought it would focus on totally different aspects. John was a musical virtuoso and that hardly ever gets mentioned in the book. But we get exact axccounts on how much money he spent on what day and in which pub he bought which champagne. like wow thanks. The other personal stuff is basic who knowledge you can read in any other Who biography. His autobiographical bits were joy and fun! Maybe the only reason to buy the book in my opinion. He writes totally different than the authorâŠ
ANYWAYS: here my fav facts from the book that you probably didnt know before
this is the face of a man who -when his father gave him driving lessons for his 21st birthday as a present- decided driving wasnt really his thing and he spent the money on clothes and parties instead. He never had a drivers license ever and also never desired to have oneÂ
the hospital he was born in, was bombarded and destructed one day after his birth
as a child he was really weak and thin and had basically every disease that existed
his family was poor af
his father left the family early and held contact with his son, but soon disappeared with a new family
his stepdad, Gordon, disliked John alot and would ignore him, hated everything John did or said and he let his bad moods out on Johns mother, which caused John to be very silent and observative around the house so that there wouldnt be any trouble
he did everything to please Queenie (his mom) so that there was no fighting, according to Alison
loved drawing and playing but usually alone since he had no friends apart from their dog
he heard a trumpet solo once from a trad jazz band when he was 6 or so and decided he wanted to learn the trumpet
my fav line of the book probably:Â âdespite his own expectations, he passed the exams to go to grammar schoolâ like same
at school he was bullied from the older boys but soon left alone by them because he would fight back with badass commentsÂ
he applied for the school band for the trumpet but the tallest guy in the year was chosen (he was the 2nd tallest)Â which made John mad, but he discovered the french horn
soon he found a friend, mickey brown, at last and he gave him the nickname âentâ
he was so terrible in P.E that he was dismissed with other pupils to play somehwere else, they were called âthe hockey misfitsâ and guess who was among them: Pete Townshend.
yeah as you might know they became besties because they loved music and black humour.
he found himself a gf (alison) and Pete & a school gang (like 4 ppl) and his life seemed to finally get where it should.
his worst subjects were geography and german like wow (im a german geography student lmao)
once they played in a pub and johns stepdad was there and was super angry and gave john a list with his fav pubs and told him âthese are the places I never want to hear your fucking music playingâ.
after walking home pete decided to switch the guitar and john wanted to become a musician more than ever
Roger found him and John kind of convinced him (it took months apparently) to get Pete into the band and then it all started
he judged the beatles because John Lennons harmonica was âout of tuneâ in love me do, wow ok you nerd
john started smoking with 20 and was the last one to quit his job for the band and he was against drugs at first (bc he had a âcivilizedâ job) but then decided to give a shit, dyed his hair black, bought cigarettes, smoked dope with pete and did speed too
he wanted to step out of himself and feel good about himself and he was always a fashionnerd so he started buying and trading and selling clothes (he once was dismissed from school bc he wore the school uniform incorrectly)
with 18 or so he was still living at home, had a toy soldier collection and a pet budgie
pete and his college friends made fun of john bc he wasnt a student and still lived at home, although john could have gone to college too and he wanted to, but his stepdad again said no and he had no choice.
he was very awkward and introverted but could open up with his musicÂ
he was really into pop art (esp pop art clothes)
was a pseudo mod bc he only liked the fancy clothes and motown music
with the who he found a purpose in his life and finally could be different than ordinary ppl
hated when people touched his hair, he literally hated it
would fuss much about his hair in general
once after a concert they were starving and the room service was alreday home so they had to look on used plates and food wagons and John found a shrimp and said: âwho wants to dine with me tonight?â (idk that really made me laugh)
keith moon was john entwistles soulmate and they were the cutest, most iconic and funniest duo ever end of discussion
his amps would soon be called little manhatten bc he had so many bc he wanted to be loud
he actually went to sing at church once when he was like 24 and the band made fun of him then he stopped
in the late 60s he bought a house with alison in a normal neighbourhood and went walking the dogs on sundays and stuff
but he was a party animal and always the last to go
he was really sensitive and cried often according to Alison but only in front of certain people
he would totally step out of his way to please people
when they played at the monterey pop festival they didnt bring their own amps along and john was furious bc he said the american amps are shit and kit was like ânoâ and john didnt talk to him for the whole festival until their perfomance was over and they had sounded like shit to tell kit âI TOLD YOU SOâ thats how extra he was
when he got money he would spend it bc he was so used to being poor that he thought it wouldnt last long and he had to enjoy it NOW
he was always calm and everyone respected him and kit told a story where he entered the room and roger was at keiths throat and and pete was screaming something and john was sitting in the corner cleaning his nails. thats who energy
he was also gentlemanTM and once paid taxis for girls from london to brighton after a party
once at a wedding the free drinks were out and John just gave the barkeeper his creditcard and said he will pay for all the drinks of the night for everyone (it wasnt his wedding)
Roger once said:Â âJohn made smartass comments that deserved a punch in the faceâ sounds like him yes
he didnt really care about money and always wanted to pay and never told anyone how much things had cost and brought gifts for everyone
soon that ended in a shopping addiction tho and he bought ridiculous things for ridiculous amounts of money
when the who was inactive he sank into depression :(
held the band together during who by numbers & who are you
wrote and played all the quadrophenia horn parts himself
never lost his passion for art and always drawed alot, said Alison
cried when Christopher was born aww
once he saw their manager in an art museum and how he wanted to buy a painting but couldnt afford it, so John bought it secretly and shipped it to said managers home as a gift
We all know John was a huge collector. His most treasured collection was .. wait for it: teapots.
he tried to save Keith from being arrested once and ended up being arrested too lol
wanted to write a scifi concept album but desorted the idea and gave some songs to the who (905) or Pete
was a good cook apparently
When he gave a hug HE was the one who decided when to let go sdfghjk
hated confrontation and would hire other people to tell someone bad news
he spent so much money on dumb shit like wtf
but didnt really care either
probably the master in picking up and seducing girls
he let his stepdad live in the quarwood mansion when he wasnt there but Gordon was still an asshole wtf
the contact to his real dad was really sporadic
when the who ended, it hit him really hard and he didnt know what to do besides partying and buying stuff/hording stuff
was very insecure and selfconscious in the 80s according to Maxene :(
he actually took pete breaking up the who really personal and was sad 24/7
was that kind of guy that said bad stuff about the who but when you said bad stuff he would try to kill you on spot
with cocaine he felt really confident and still like the 60s/70s rockstar he once was but he didnt understand that these times were over and he needed to move on
sometimes went into random pubs with friends and made jam sessions for the guests
he still was generous and loving until he died and tried to play with other bands but it was not the same
he really liked Kenney and hung out with him more than with his wife at some point lmao
was a total giver and people who worked at quarwood would steal money from him but when someone pointed that out he got angry with that person for even suggesting that
was a real softieee (and a huge nerd)
all his friends said that he was shy at first but once you got to know him he would come totally out of himself, was very funny, loved to tell stories, was very very loyal and would try evertyhing to make you laugh aww
all in all a glorious story with a sad ending and he did destroy himself completely, but lets remember that Pete Townshend described old John still as "wonderful, mature and elegantâ so lets cling on to that :)
Keith Moon and John Entwistle talking about Keith joining The Who on the Whoâs Who radio show, aired in the UK on February 28th, 1975 (x)
KEITH: I was the last one to join the band. Mainly because I'm the youngest, but we all used to play in the same sort of circuit. When I first met the band I was bright ginger. I- [laughs] I'd dyed the barnet, and I'd been out and bought this goddamn awful sort of... bright ginger suit! And it just so happened that when I first joined the band I was wearing this thing. [Unintelligible] It was horrendous. I mean, the ultimate in bad taste. But then, of course, you know, with the round-neck collar and all that, foam-backed... Terrible! If it rained, you know, the suit stayed wet like it was like a sponge, you know, it stayed wet for like three months! [Laughs] You went out in the rain and it swelled up, looked like the Micheline Man!
JOHN: We were playing in Greenville one night with the session drummer, and this fellow walked up to us and said, "My mate can play better than your drummer." So we said, "Well let's hear him then. Bring him up." So he brought up this little gingerbread man, and it was Keith with- [laughs] dyed ginger hair, and a brown shirt, brown tie, brown suit, brown shoes, and he just looked like a little gingerbread man, and he got up on the kit and we said, "Can you play Road Runner?" Because we actually hadn't come across a drummer that could play Road Runner with us, and he played Road Runner, and we thought, "Oh, well, this is the fellow." You know, he played it perfectly and he fitted in really well, and actually the first gig he actually turned up to with us was, I think it was a wedding. He turned up, and he put his little blue drum kit up, and then got this huge coil of rope, and tied it all together, and we couldn't understand why until he went into a drum solo and everything started like [laughing] swaying backwards and forwards!
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
