This was the first time we’d deployed our three argon lasers. They were large, hugely powerful things. The only way we could keep them cool enough to stop them exploding was to connect them to a fire hydrant. The beam from each laser was passed through a prism that formed a Tommy album cover of green light over the audience. The light then descended slowly onto the crowd. The sensation for anyone in the audience was one of being lifted up through a roof of light. It all fitted with the music and it was transcendental, man. They felt our energy and we felt theirs.
So it doesn’t matter what the audience is like, but it does matter that they’re there and that we’re creating energy together. That didn’t stop Pete. He had us all turning up to the Young Vic to work with a participatory audience. We just nodded at him like you nod at a crazy person and treated it like an open rehearsal. It was all very puzzling.
* * *
While we were waiting for Pete’s thoughts to crystallize, decrystallize, and recrystallize into something we understood, Track put out our first live record. Live at Leeds is supposed to be our defining performance. The New York Times called it “the definitive hard-rock holocaust.” I didn’t think it was that good myself. We recorded it at the University Refectory on Valentine’s Night 1970, and I couldn’t hear myself over the band. This happened a lot. John played too loud, Moonie was never quiet, and Pete amped up to compete. They were all too loud at Leeds. I had to work off the sound reflected back and the only way I could hear myself was to oversing. I always knew when I was doing it, and I did it at Leeds. It was a shame because it’s been a “defining album” for the last forty-seven years.
The very next night was a more defining show. We did it all again at Hull and the balance was better. I could hear myself. They put it out a few years ago as an album and I think it’s better. Maybe I’m just being oversensitive. You get like that when you’ve had to stand in front of Entwistle’s amps for so many years.
John was a genius bass player, but he couldn’t control his ego. He used to overplay all the time. Even Pete, who wasn’t exactly a church mouse when it came to volume, used to complain about it. I used to have really big conversations with John about it. In the 1990s, we were taking Quadrophenia on the road and I worked in a solo in “5:15” to give John the spotlight. He very rarely got the spotlight and that wasn’t healthy. A whole lifetime in a band, and everyone else basking in glory while he stands there, plucking away. Even for the most balanced ego in the world that’s not ideal. I understand that. So I put in this solo and gave John the same talk I’d given him a hundred times.
“I’ve got tell you, John, it’s all about the drama. If you’re thundering away at the same level from beginning to end, nothing will change when you get to your solo. The only thing the audience will notice is that someone in the lighting department has, for some reason, stuck a spotlight on you.”
“Yes, Roger,” he mumbled.
“John, you do not need to play at solo volume through the whole bloody show. When the singing’s going on, thin it out behind the vocal. When it gets to your bits, go for it. You’ve got the room to do it. But if it becomes just a cacophony, you’re throwing it away.”
“All right, Roger.”
“And for Christ’s sake, when you’ve finished your solo, turn it down again.”
We got to the show and, miraculously, John started out if not quiet then certainly not deafening. You could hear the vocal. You could hear everything. And then we got to “5:15” and the big bass solo. Up went the volume. Away went the Ox. Wow. A contrast. A beautiful moment. Except for the rest of the gig, with a wry smile on his face, he kept it right up at eleven on the dial.
Just for a laugh, or for payback for the years and years and years of volume, I put John with the Chieftains, the quietest band in the world, at my fiftieth birthday party at Carnegie Hall in February 1994. We were doing “Behind Blue Eyes.” Find it on the Internet. It’s worth it just to see John jamming with a band you could drown out if you tapped your foot too loud. It’s lovely. It still makes me smile.
Ego. That’s the problem. It’s a vital component of a rock band but it’s also a killer. I think I rose above all that during my sent-to-Coventry probation period, which sounds egotistical, doesn’t it? But I did become above all that, largely because I was out front. I was getting my share of the limelight. But ego could cause problems. It could escalate tensions. And it wasn’t always just the boys turning their amps up.
I started twirling my microphone not because of my ego but because I didn’t know what to do with my hands during the solos. It began in a small way on the Herman’s Hermits tour when we started including the mini-opera in the act. We had this longer piece of music and I just felt it needed animating. I was stuck in the middle of the stage holding the microphone. That’s quite a dull pose. You can only do so much choreography with one arm, and there was no way I could outdance Mick Jagger. So, in the breaks, I tried a bit of twirling. Over the next few months, it got bigger and bigger. And that’s when Pete started jumping.
So I did some more twirling. And he did some more jumping.
John just stood there, stoic. Keith was always thrashing away. But Pete and I got into a sort of dance arms race. It wasn’t choreographed. It all just came from the music. And, perhaps, our egos.
I don’t always catch the microphone. I had a perfect strike rate in the sixties but these days, now my eyesight isn’t so good, it’s more hit and miss. When I miss, it thwacks into my leg or my balls and hurts like fuck. But it sure helps me get the high notes.
I’ve only ever hit one person intentionally, and that was a bloke at the Chuck Berry gig, and he deserved it. The unintentional ones have been kit malfunctions. The microphone has left the lead a few times and that’s been scary. It’s just disappeared. It must go a hell of a way and, if it hit someone on the head, it would be pretty bad. Try not to think of that next time you’re in the first hundred rows of one of our shows.
I never practiced. I used to swing it a few times to get my arm in before the show because it weighs a pound or so. I used to swing it to work out how much energy to put into it. And I have to be aware, subconsciously, of where everyone is on the stage. I need to know my safe arcs. Poor Pino Palladino, our bass player for the last however many years. He was terrified at first. He’s cool with it now because he knows it’s safe. He can almost stand there without flinching.
I’m sure they were always nervous at first but, after a while, they came to trust me. Pete certainly does. And the thing to note here is that I’ve never hit Pete with the microphone. There’s still time but it just shows that he’s never pissed me off that much. It would have been relatively easy to knock him off during those months and months of Lifehouse deliberations. Or any of the other times we were at odds. A quick, off-center twirl and crack. Gone. But it never crossed my mind.
* * *
In the end, the grand Lifehouse project, the next Tommy, fizzled out and we recorded Who’s Next instead. I love that album. It’s a good one, and the reason it’s good is because Pete let us have the songs several months before we went into the studio.
Remember, he was always generous once we were in the studio. He let us work things through, to develop things from his demos. But because of the sketchiness and the way he worked, he never let us have time with the tracks beforehand.
I suppose that came from his family. His dad, Cliff, was a saxophonist in the RAF’s dance band, the Squadronaires. His mum, the indomitable Betty, was a singer with Sidney Torch & His Orchestra. Theirs was the itinerant life of the jobbing musician. You were told what to play and you played it instantly.
A rock band doesn’t work like that. A rock band has to digest the music, try it this way and that way, and, before you even get to that point, the most important thing is that everybody knows the song. You need to know it long enough that you’re not thinking about it. You need to live with it until the head goes away and the heart takes over. We never did that and I feel that�
�s the reason we always suffered in the studio. Here’s a song about X, Y, and Z. Off you go, boys. I used to find that so, so difficult.
With Who’s Next, we went out and rehearsed all that material. We played it onstage for about four weeks. We did some gigs up north. Then we went to New York and did some recording with Kit. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it but Pete’s relationship with Kit was starting to unravel so he just binned all that material.
We came back to England and started from scratch. By that time, we were completely comfortable with it. And it shows in the record. You get your timing. You sing it like you feel it.
Take “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It’s just a brilliant song. Brilliant lyrics.
We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song.
This was right in the middle of Vietnam. Just one generation from everything our parents had been through and it was all happening again. This song put it all in a package, and it made you stop and think. It made me stop and think.
We recorded it at Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s Gothic country house in Hampshire. It was a big old house with a massive double-height hall and that’s where I did the vocals. I’d listened to Pete’s demo and at the bit where the vocal came in again after the drum riff he’d done this leary, jazzy, smooth “Yeeah.” Like dig it, man.
I knew the song. I knew it was angry. Really fucking angry. I felt it, so I just let out a scream of rage. And it was from the heart, not the head.Everyone else was in the kitchen having dinner. They all heard that terrifying scream. The rest of the band must have thought the singer had died. Keith put his head round the door to check I was all right.
I was all right and it turned out to be a great record. We were in good shape. And then our accountant called a meeting. He said we’d had a fantastic year, which is what you want to hear from your accountant. He said we’d done all that touring, we’d done Who’s Next and Live at Leeds. We’d made loads of money. And he was pleased to tell us that we were only six hundred thousand pounds in debt.
If everyone assumed we were millionaires in 1969, they assumed we must have been multimillionaires by now. But we were still spending it faster than we could earn it. It wasn’t our living expenses. John was living on Popes Lane in Acton. I’d been in a two-up, two-down until that summer. It was all going on the tours. And, as we’d find out over the next few years, up Keith and Kit’s noses. “Profitless prosperity” is how Chris Stamp described it, which was a bit rich coming from him. He was certainly making a profit. But it was obvious that the more we toured the more we owed. So we decided to stop.
* * *
After how ever many years of nonstop slogging with The Who, we took our first break in 1972. A six-month sabbatical from the rock and roll circus.
It was nice to have some downtime. Bandmates can get under each other’s skin. You’re tightly knit on the road. You have to be. But after months and months, you’re tightly wound up, too. It becomes easier with age. It’s really relaxed now. We’re all friends and I love it. But that break in 1972 was a huge relief.
I know what you’re thinking. Six months swanning about. Lazy rock star lounging around his nice old manor house with his nice new wife. I’ve told you, I hate doing nothing. If I’m doing nothing, what’s the point of being here?
Week one: stripping the wooden beams of the black stain the Victorians had coated them with.
Week two: stripping the beams.
Weeks three and four: stripping the beams.
Week five: bored of stripping the beams so I built myself a home studio.
Week six: I was mucking about in the studio when Adam Faith called. He said he was looking for a place to record a new singer called Leo Sayer, so I invited them over. I always got on with Adam like a brother and what he’d found in Leo was like something else. He was just an amazing, amazing singer. Completely unique. And it counted for nothing because they were having trouble getting him a good a record deal.
Leo’s songwriting partner was Dave Courtney. Flippantly, I suggested they write me some songs. I’d put out a solo record, we’d see if anyone noticed, and it might help Leo get his deal. The only condition was that it couldn’t be anything like a Who record. Leo said fine, and off he went. I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it. The very next week, just when I was summoning the energy to have another go at the beams, Leo and Dave turned up with ten songs. Bosh. Just like that. It was a choice between more beams and music, so we started recording immediately.
Daltrey was released in the spring of 1973 and it sold better than any of the earlier Who singles albums. At one point, it was doing forty thousand copies a day. But musically it was completely different and that was deliberate.
John and Pete’s solo albums were much closer to The Who sound but I was always absolutely clear where my priorities were. Sadly, Kit and Chris didn’t see it that way. Nor did the record company. I found out later that they held it back in America deliberately. They worried that if it was a success, I’d leave The Who, and, at that time, The Who was their biggest product. I didn’t care about any of that. I’ve always had people telling me I should go solo, but I didn’t want to be a solo singer. I didn’t want to do a Rod Stewart.
Sometimes I look back and think I should have gone it alone. But it never felt right. I was part of this magical band. It wasn’t the most popular band in the world but the stuff we did felt important. I felt rewarded.
Pete and I never spoke about my solo album, but I’m sure he thought it was sentimental shit. I know John thought it was crap because when it came on the radio he blew a raspberry. Keith was equally encouraging. My cousin the photographer Graham Hughes took this photograph of me with a halo of curls, which he soft-focused to enhance the angelic look. I thought it fitted the whole Tommy vibe so I went with it for the cover of the Daltrey album. The shot then turned up in a teen magazine as a Pinup of the Month double-page spread. The following morning, I received a post from Keith. He’d torn out the spread and scrawled all over my angelic face in Biro. It said “Yuk,” and that was the extent of his review.
Did I care? Of course I didn’t. It was an album I knew they would hate. That was the whole point. To make an album John would like, it would have had to be some sort of depressing death metal record. And I would have hated it and he would have loved it.
The only thing that pissed me off about that whole experience was the way Kit and Chris reacted. They ran Track Records but first and foremost they were our managers. They were my managers. And when I took the record to them, they threw it up in the air, and we had this big argument in the basement at Track. They said it was too soft, too gentle. I said that was exactly the point. I didn’t want to take anything away from The Who. I wanted to do something that might add another dimension for me. They just said it was rubbish.
That upset me. I just completely lost it right there in the office. When I’d calmed down, I realized something I should have realized much earlier. They didn’t have my interests at heart. They were only interested in protecting their golden goose. After that, I knew they could never manage me again. It was Goodnight, Vienna. As soon as that happened, I asked Bill Curbishley to be my manager.
chapter twelve
Under New Management
In the weeks leading up to the row, I had noticed this guy in the office. He was a big, tall bloke with a beard and short, straight, nonfrizzy black hair (you’ll see why that’s important in a couple of pages), and I just got on with him. There was empathy. So I asked Mike Shaw, our production manager, who he was.
“That’s Bill,” he said. “One of our old mates.”
“Where’s he come from then, Mike?”
“He’s a Canning Town boy.”
“I like him. I think I�
��ll make him my manager.”
“He’ll be the best manager you ever had.”
“What’s his story?” I asked.
“Keep it quiet,” said Mike, “but every night, he has to go back to Pentonville. He’s residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure.”
In all the profiles and interviews of Bill Curbishley over the years, there is always a section about his seven years in the merchant navy. But Bill, the man who became my manager in 1972 and has been my manager ever since, was never in the merchant navy. He was in prison. The navy was just a cover story to protect his kids. Now they’re older, he’s told them the truth. And I can tell you the truth, too.
Bill was born in Forest Gate and he grew up in Canning Town. He was the eldest of six kids and his mum sent him to school a year early so she could go to work. Like me, he went to grammar school—smart kid to pass a year earlier than everyone else did. Like me, he didn’t have the privileged background of the other kids at school. During the war, his dad had been a Royal Navy marine engineer, patching up submarines in Ceylon. Every time he fixed one, he got a bottle of rum in thanks.
When he came back, he took work on the docks and the drinking became more intensive. Money was already tight and then the postwar dock strikes left the family more or less destitute. Bill used to go out on Saturday nights with a pram to steal coal from the local bakery, just to keep his family warm.
“It was the first stepping-stone to rebellion,” he said. “By the time I was eleven, I knew the only way to get out was to fight your way out. And if that involved crime, fair enough.”
Thanks a Lot Mr Kibblewhite Page 14