I made a huge leap into the absurd when I decided that the hero would play pinball while still deaf, dumb and blind. It was daft, flawed and muddled, but also insolent, liberated and adventurous. I had no doubt whatsoever that if I had failed to deliver The Who an operatic masterpiece that would change people’s lives, with ‘Pinball Wizard’ I was giving them something almost as good: a hit.
I decided Mike McInnerney would be the first person to hear it. Mike and I had spent lots of time brainstorming about the music for Tommy and the way Mike’s illustrations would complement it. Meher Baba taught that life as we knew it was ‘an illusion within an illusion’, an angle Mike was developing for the album sleeve. The front cover and one of the inside panels showed a kind of latticed grid through which listeners had to pass in order to reach the music inside.
Tommy hadn’t been intended as a pop album. My new definition of what I did was ‘rock’, and musicians and journalists were starting to use the word to describe a youth movement and an attitude as well as the favoured popular music of the day. Jann Wenner and his writers at Rolling Stone were already using the word to describe more than a style of music, and when Creem magazine emerged a little later they coined the term ‘Punk rock’ to define the entire scene that produced such disparate individuals as John Sinclair and Abbie Hoffman on the one hand, and Iggy Pop on the other.
Meher Baba had spoken about ‘God playing marbles with the Universe’, and the newly introduced pinball element echoed that in Tommy. Mike was thinking about a new painting for the record sleeve to depict the way that illusion deceived us into believing that what we saw was real, but he was running out of time. His illustration work in gouache was meticulous and time-consuming. He decided to create a photograph instead, and enlisted someone he knew to set it up.
The problem for us both was to work out what the function of Tommy would be now that Meher Baba was gone. I had never intended for Tommy to be a proselytising vehicle for Meher Baba, but it was certainly intended to reflect spiritual yearnings during these post-psychedelic times. Youth movements were dividing and polarising into two camps – political activists and spiritual seekers, and I saw myself in the latter. We discussed whether Baba’s name should be credited on the sleeve and agreed that it should, but merely as ‘Avatar’.
By the beginning of March we had finished. The last track we worked on was ‘The Overture’, demoed by me in a haze of exhaustion after everything else was completed.
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 Marshal
l 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.
Tommy, for all its spiritual roots, is full of violence. It begins with bombs dropping, a young RAF pilot lost in battle (possibly captured as a prisoner of war), a domestic murder, bullying, sexual abuse, extreme drug use by a back-street quack, the incompetent medical treatment of a disabled child, and finally rioting by an aggrieved populace that has been promised nirvana but delivered boring day-job medication instead. When performing Tommy I often seemed to lose consciousness at some level. I wasn’t high, at least not on drugs. I kept very focused. I was buzzed on my own endogenous chemicals – endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and epinephrine flooded through my body.
For New York we had three shows planned at Fillmore East. On the opening night I was more excited than usual, and we were bullish that we’d have a good show. In the middle of a storming set a man appeared centre stage, tore the mike from Roger’s hands and started speaking to the audience. He didn’t ask us to stop performing. In fact he didn’t address us at all. One minute we were at work, and the next minute he was there, speaking to the audience – my audience.
Roger tried to get his microphone back, but the man pushed him away. In the middle of a heavy guitar solo, I ran over to boot his arse with a flying double-kick but as I approached he turned to face me and my Doc Martens connected with his balls. He doubled up, and a couple of Bill Graham’s men ran on stage and walked him off. We continued to play. Only later did I discover I had kicked an off-duty officer in the Tactical Police Force, who was trying to clear the theatre calmly because a fire had broken out in the store next door.
I went to stay at my friends Steve and Nancy Baron’s apartment that night. While I was discussing plans for Steve to come to London to record with me at my home studio, Nancy came in and said that a warrant was out for my arrest, and for Roger’s too. I decided to wait until the morning to turn myself in.
Who I Am: A Memoir Page 16