At that time it really did appear as though the Establishment was looking to make an example of Keith Richards by sending him to prison, and in what was possibly Keith Moon’s only act of political solidarity he and his girlfriend Kim stood outside the court with banners appealing for some balance. All this impressed me. Psychedelia, drugs, politics and spiritual stuff were getting knitted together all of a sudden, and I did my best to keep up.
By the time Jimi Hendrix was doing his first London shows in January and February 1967, the couple of acid trips I’d done had definitely changed the way I perceived things. Trees bare of their leaves in winter, for example, began to look like those medical student mock-ups of the vein and artery network inside the human lung; in effect I suddenly saw trees for what they really are: planetary breathing machines. I wasn’t a tripped-out freak, but the way I looked at things was evolving.
Around this time, Karen and I went to see some new friends, the illustrator Mike McInnerney and his wife Katie, whom I’d met at a Pink Floyd show. Their flat was on Shaftesbury Avenue. At the time Mike was painting the banner for The Flying Dragon, a clothes shop intended to rival Granny Takes a Trip. I waffled on to Mike about some of my revelations at the feet of Ron and Ralph of the Blues Magoos, who had introduced me to George Adamski’s extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. Mike tossed me a book called The God Man, written by an eminent British journalist of the Thirties called Charles Purdom.
I opened the book and saw a photograph of a strange-looking, charismatic fellow with a large, rather flattened nose, flowing dark hair and a generous moustache. He was an Indian teacher, Meher Baba, which means ‘Compassionate Father’. I read a few lines, and found that everything Meher Baba said fitted perfectly with my view of the cosmos. He was still alive at that time, and Mike told me that a group of his friends hoped to go to India soon to meet him.
On Karen’s bedroom wall were three Victorian black-and-white postcard photographs of scantily dressed actresses. One was the infamous Lily Langtry, mistress of Prince Edward, later King Edward VII, and one sunny afternoon while Karen was at work I scribbled out a lyric inspired by the images and made a demo of ‘Pictures of Lily’. My song was intended to be an ironic comment on the sexual shallows of show business, especially pop, a world of postcard images for boys and girls to fantasise over. ‘Pictures of Lily’ ended up, famously, being about a boy saved from burgeoning adolescent sexual frustration when his father presented him with dirty postcards over which he could masturbate.
‘Pictures of Lily’ was ready to go, but I didn’t have much else completed. Kit had heard the demo of ‘Glittering Girl’, and felt it might make a single. I also had a clutch of lyrics about frustrated romance. I have always said I never wrote love songs, but the truth is I rarely wrote good ones.
While I was working on the demo, a jazz critic for Playboy called to ask if he could bring Keith Jarrett over to use my piano for a few hours. I refused. Strange to think I turned down the chance of one of the greatest private concerts in my life, but I was fairly sure I had a hit in hand and didn’t want the distraction. Keith Jarrett then got on the phone and asked me a few questions about my demo recording method. I told him I was playing all the parts myself, and he seemed inspired to do something similar. On Restoration Ruin, the album he produced the following year, which I eagerly sought out, he sang, played guitar, harmonica, sax, piano, organ, flute, bass, drums and percussion with great facility. Of course it’s Keith Jarrett’s freewheeling piano play that has made him so beloved; like Jimi, Keith is clearly transported by what flows from his fingers.
Jimi Hendrix’s appearance in my world sharpened my musical need to establish some rightful territory. In some ways Jimi’s performances did borrow from mine – the feedback, the distortion, the guitar theatrics – but his artistic genius lay in how he created a sound all his own: Psychedelic Soul, or what I’ll call ‘Blues Impressionism’. Eric was doing a similar thing with Cream and, in 1967, Stevie Winwood’s band Traffic would release Mr Fantasy, posing another staggering challenge. The musicians around me were truly lifting off in a colourful, ascendant spacecraft, fuelled by Jimi, Eric and Stevie’s new musical creations – and yet Jimi, Eric and Stevie’s psychedelic songs were still deeply rooted in their blues and R&B upbringing.
For six years on our pub and club circuit we had first supported, and later played alongside, some extraordinarily talented bands. Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers were so authentic an R&B band that it was hard to believe they weren’t American. The Hollies, Searchers, Kinks and Pirates changed the face of British pop, not to mention The Beatles or Stones. The 1964 Searchers’ hit ‘Needles and Pins’ created the jangling guitar sound later picked up by The Byrds. The Kinks had brought Eastern sounds to British pop as early as 1965 with the hypnotically beautiful ‘See My Friend’. And there were dozens of other transformative influences all around us.
Like many songwriters I also listened to jazz for inspiration and ideas. A short Cannonball Adderley track called ‘Tengo Tango’ drove me wild, it was so tight, so rocking; Herbie Mann’s version of ‘Right Now’ was a classic of soft jazz; and flautist Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds, featuring the hypnotic track ‘Plum Blossom’, played on an ocarina flute, was very important to me.*
What had happened to The Who’s blues roots? Had we ever really had any? Did John and Keith feel a strong connection to blues and jazz? Was Roger only interested in the kind of hard R&B that provided a foil for his own masculine angst? Though we enjoyed our recording sessions, The Who seemed to be turning to solipsism for inspiration. My songs were pop curios about subjects as wide-ranging as soft pornography and masturbation, gender-identity crises, the way we misunderstood the isolating factors of mental illness, and – by now well-established – teenage-identity crises and low self-esteem issues.
I couldn’t see how to write about LSD, purple skies and free love. Despite my admiration of extemporised jazz I had no idea how to bring it into The Who’s music. I couldn’t see how The Who would ever become a band admired for their musicianship and ideology as well as their clothes, ideas, gimmicks, Pop Art transferences and aggression.
Why did that even matter? Wasn’t it enough that I had helped discover guitar feedback? I had certainly invented the power chord. With Ray Davies I had introduced the suspended chord into UK pop. But none of this felt like enough. Something dangerous and new was happening in music, and I wanted to be part of it.
While Jimi Hendrix conquered London, The Who’s first performance in the USA was almost an accidental event. Frank Barsalona ran Premier Talent, an agency in New York. He heard about The Who through someone in Brian Epstein’s camp, and was persuaded to put us on the bill of an annual New York package with the famous Murray the K, the first American DJ to get really close to The Beatles. Murray had also been tipped off about Eric’s new band Cream. The shows were planned to take place over a two-week period, during which we were expected to perform six shows a day, so we anticipated an intense period of work.
Flying into New York was a first for my bandmates. Having made two trips there on my own in connection with what became the Allen Klein takeover bid, I felt fairly at ease in the city. Keith and John were so excited they could barely contain themselves, and immediately started living in high style at the Drake Hotel, Keith ordering vintage champagne and John a trolley of several brands each of Scotch, brandy and vodka. The bill was astronomical, and the waiter chided Keith for giving him only a $20 tip. We ate our first real ‘chopped sirloin’ steak there, a big $15 hamburger. I think that’s all I lived on during my stay.
The shows in New York in spring 1967 were a smash for both The Who and Cream. Contrary to the drudgery I’d expected, this was one of the most wonderful two weeks of my life, and certainly the time when I fell in love with New York, a passion that has withstood the test of time.
At the RKO 58th Street Theatre, where the shows would be taking place, we convened for a sound-check and pep talk from Murray the K. By now
he had rather lost his ‘Fifth Beatle’ glow; his toupee was dusty and he sweated a lot. He insisted on having a gold-plated microphone, which no one else was allowed to touch, as well as the largest dressing room, which didn’t meet his standards until a star was hung on the door. His address to the bands brought out the worst in me; I hated what I saw as his inflated absurdity, even though I knew Murray the K had been a vital part of breaking British music on American radio. He seemed to have delusions of being a great showman. And perhaps he was.
Murray the K may not have been in his prime, but he did put together an amazing group of musicians. On the regular bill was Wilson Pickett, who took great delight in using Murray’s personal gold microphone whenever he could lay his hands on it. One day Simon and Garfunkel headlined; another The Young Rascals. It was basically a pop-music festival. A real sense of camaraderie developed that, in the end, extended all the way to Murray himself.
What is more difficult to describe is what happened in the audience during that series of shows, simply because we weren’t out there on the folding seats. Legend has it that, because one ticket purchased allowed you to stay all day if you wanted to, a large number of young people attended every single show, partly to find out when The Who would run out of equipment to smash.
While I laboured backstage with soldering iron and glue, rebuilding smashed Fender Stratocasters, The Who’s New York fan base was being built from human kindness and affection never equalled anywhere else on earth. If I set up a mattress on Fifth Avenue today, I could live for the rest of my life on the beneficence and loyalty of our New York fans. I still know at least twenty of those RKO kids by name. I know at least a hundred faces. I know the names of some of their parents. Several kids have come to work for me at various times over the years, and some have written books or made movies about us. Some simply watched, grew up and did everything they went on to do with the same dedicated, compulsive lunacy they saw in us as we performed. We advanced a new concept: destruction is art when set to music. We set a standard: we fall down; we get back up again. New Yorkers loved that, and New York fans carried that standard along with us for many years, until we ourselves were no longer able to measure up.
On our return to England I drove Eric Clapton and Gustav Metzger, the auto-destructive artist whose ideas first inspired me, down to Brighton Pavilion where we were playing with Cream; Gustav was doing the lightshow. Compared with Jimi’s shows I found Cream a little dry when they played a longer set. I wanted to see Eric do something more than just long, rambling guitar solos, just as I wanted something more from myself than silly pop songs and stage destruction.
It was the first time Gustav had seen my version of auto-destruction in process, and though he was pleased to have been such a powerful influence he tried to explain that according to his thesis I faced a dilemma; I was supposed to boycott the new commercial pop form itself, attack the very process that allowed me such creative expression, not contribute to it. I agreed. The gimmicks had overtaken me.
I remember going to a lunch gathering with Barry and Sue Miles. Barry was a founder of the Indica Bookshop, a radical establishment selling books and magazines relating to everything psychedelic and revolutionary. I met Paul McCartney properly there, with his girlfriend, actress Jane Asher. Paul had helped fund Indica, and he seemed much more politically savvy than any other musician I’d come across. He was clear-thinking and smart, as well as charming and essentially kind. Jane was well-bred, polite and astonishingly pretty; behind the demure exterior simmered a strong personality, making her the equal of her famous beau.
George Harrison arrived a little later with his girlfriend, Pattie Boyd. Pattie was immediately open and friendly. She had the kind of face you could only see in dreams, animated by a transparent eagerness to be liked. Karen was with me, and for the first time I felt part of the new London pop-music elite. Karen, strangely, seemed more comfortable than I was.
I saw Paul again at the Bag O’Nails in Soho, where Jimi Hendrix was making a celebratory return. Mick Jagger came for a while and then left, unwisely leaving Marianne Faithfull, his girlfriend at the time, behind. Jimi sidled up to her after his mind-bending performance, and it became clear as the two of them danced together that Marianne had the shaman’s stars in her eyes. When Mick returned to take Marianne out to a car he’d arranged, he must have wondered what the sniggering was about. In the end, Jimi himself broke the tension by taking Marianne’s hand, kissing it, and excusing himself to walk over to Paul and me. Mal Evans, The Beatles’ lovable roadie-cum-aide-de-camp, turned to me and breathed a big, ironic Liverpudlian sigh. ‘That’s called exchanging business cards, Pete.’
The Who had several roadies from Liverpool at this time, who seemed to operate on the assumption that there was a moral gulf between London and their home city. One of them took five or six of my broken Rickenbacker guitars home for his father to repair, and I never saw them again. The other developed a compulsion for stealing hotel furniture, emptying an entire room once while the band was still on stage around the corner. He even took the wardrobes and the bed, all of which were added to our hotel bill. When these thefts were brought to their attention they made us feel as if we were making a fuss over nothing.
By contrast, Neville Chesters, our first official road manager, was excellent and hard working. We were difficult to please in the best of circumstances, and the equipment smashing meant that a lot of his free time was being spent chasing up repairs. When he became associated with Robert Stigwood and began to appear wearing rather posh suits, we feared Stiggy had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. In any event, we lost him as road manager.
We then found the amazing Bob Pridden, who is still our chief sound engineer today. Bob’s first important show should have been at Monterey, but for some reason Kit and Chris felt we should take Neville instead, for one last job with us. I haven’t seen him since, but he played a vital part in our early career, and should receive a massive royalty share for everything he did.
That should flush him out.
The Who headed back to the States in June, flying out on the 13th, the day after Karen’s birthday, to play at Ann Arbor, Michigan, our first show outside New York. We then moved on to play four shows in two days at Bill Graham’s Fillmore in San Francisco. Cannonball Adderley was on the bill with his brother Nat, and I couldn’t wait to tell them how much I loved ‘Tengo Tango’.
Bill Graham told us firmly we had to play two one-hour sets with no repeats. We had rarely played more than fifty minutes, and most of that was filled by me, making my guitar howl. Suddenly I started to see the sense of Eric Clapton’s extended soloing. We rehearsed and brought in new material, and the attentiveness of the Fillmore audience and excellence of the PA system more than made up for the extra work. It made us feel for the first time that we were playing real music.
The atmosphere in Haight-Ashbury was peace and love, the streets full of young people tripping. The ones to watch out for were the many Vietnam veterans, attracted by the promise of easy sex. They were often badly damaged by their wartime experiences, and despite the mellowing drugs they took they could be pretty hostile. One man grabbed Karen’s arm as he passed and wouldn’t release it, gazing at her like he’d found his Holy Mother. I caught his attention by knocking his arm away; for a second his face hardened, then he broke into a grin and walked away.
It was at the Monterey Pop Festival, on 18 June 1967, that Jimi and I met our battleground. Essentially it was a debate about who was on first, but not quite for the reason one would assume. When Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ former publicist who was acting for the festival, told me we were to appear immediately after Jimi, two thoughts ran through my head. The first was that it seemed wrong that we should appear higher on the bill. Musically speaking, Jimi had quickly surpassed The Who; even then he was far more significant artistically than I felt we would ever be.
I also worried that if Jimi went on before us he might smash his guitar, or set it on fire, or pull off
some other stunt that would leave our band looking pathetic. We didn’t even have our Sound City and Marshall stacks because our managers had persuaded us to travel light and cheap. Jimi had imported his, and I knew his sound would be superior.
Derek Taylor suggested I speak to Jimi. I tried, but he was already high. He wouldn’t take the question of who would perform first seriously, flamming around on his guitar instead. Although I don’t remember being angry, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have been disrespectful, I knew I had to press Jimi to engage me. At this point John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas intervened, thinking we weren’t being ‘peace and love’ enough. He suggested tossing a coin, and whoever lost the toss would go on last. Jimi lost.
After being introduced by Eric Burdon, The Who blasted through a clumsy set, ending by smashing our gear. The sound technicians tried to intervene as we went into our finale, which only added to the sense of disarray. The crowd cheered, but many seemed a bit bewildered. Ravi Shankar was apparently very upset to see me break my guitar. I towelled myself off and ran out front to catch Jimi’s set.
It was strange seeing Jimi in a big music festival setting after only having seen him in small London clubs. Many of Jimi’s stage moves were hard to read from where I was sitting. In the huge space Jimi’s sound wasn’t so great after all, and I started to think maybe The Who wouldn’t compare too badly. Then he turned up his guitar and really started to let loose: Jimi the magician had made his appearance. What was so great about him was that no matter how much gear he smashed, Jimi never looked angry; he always smiled beatifically, which made everything he did seem OK.
Who I Am: A Memoir Page 11