whereas I felt alive, not solely because I was young, but really alive, unencumbered by tradition, property and responsibility.
The Who played a string of summer shows, some at seaside towns, which brought back happy childhood memories of Dad’s band. We were invited to play in Sweden, where Chris thought we could perform without our usual equipment, but this proved an insane notion. Borrowing gear from our support bands, some who could hardly speak English, and trying to explain to them that we were expected by the audience to smash their gear to pieces just didn’t work. It was a frustrating tour. The Swedish press seemed to be really looking forward to some smashed guitars and were vocal in their disappointment.
We returned to Sweden again for three shows in October, and in an unfortunate recurrence of bad luck our gear got misrouted and we repeated lacklustre shows with borrowed gear. Keith, John and I took a lot of pep pills on this trip, prompting constant, mindless chattering, and in Denmark, worn down by our hyperactivity, Roger finally complained. When Keith challenged him, Roger lashed out with his fists, bloodying Keith’s nose, turning what would have been a minor spat into a melodrama.
One significant thing about this outburst was Keith’s response. Instead of responding with humiliation, he seemed to sober up. It was clear he was about to establish a boundary that Roger could never cross again.
Keith and John said they didn’t want to work with Roger any more, but after a long period of uncertainty Chris met with Roger and asked him to never use his fighting skills to win an argument again. Roger agreed, so Keith and John decided to put the matter behind them.
Home from Sweden we recorded the final version of ‘My Generation’. Kit had heard my first demo, a version that was very much inspired by Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’, a song we later introduced into our stage repertoire. The vocal on my demo was laid back in imitation of Mose, casual and confident. Kit hadn’t really seen the promise in the song, but Chris persuaded me to try a second demo with a heavier guitar riff. Then Kit chimed in, observing that the music was rather repetitive and needed several modulations – changes of key – to bring it to life.
This worried me a little, partly because I saw Ray Davies as a master of the art of modulation and I didn’t want to be accused of copying him. Chris picked up on a stutter on my vocal on the second demo, so I played him John Lee Hooker’s ‘Stuttering Blues’. Roger had been experimenting with stuttering on stage ever since Sonny Boy Williamson Jr had joined us on harmonica at our first Marquee dates; Sonny Boy used a stutter rhythmically when he sang. Before I completed the third demo we experimented until the stutter became exaggerated and obvious. On this final demo we also created space for an Entwistle bass solo. John was becoming the outstanding bass revolutionary of the day, and I wanted to provide him with a vehicle for his incredible playing.
I was listening to a lot of new music. London was full of specialist record shops, and I visited them all. A high point that summer was the UK release of Miles Davis’s live concert from Carnegie Hall, 1964, featuring his wonderful rendering of ‘My Funny Valentine’. This led me to Miles’s Sketches of Spain . I also found Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge , and listened to some Wagner operas for the first time. Best of all, I found two great albums by the Everly Brothers. One was called Rock and Soul , the other Rhythm and Blues . Noting the shift to R&B and soul music among groups in the British invasion of the USA, the Everly Brothers, whose superb stream of hit singles I’d grown up with in the late Fifties and early Sixties, had gone into the studio with their own incredible session musicians from Los Angeles and Nashville to show us how it could best be done.
The Everly Brothers played a number of
The Who played a string of summer shows, some at seaside towns, which brought back happy childhood memories of Dad’s band. We were invited to play in Sweden, where Chris thought we could perform without our usual equipment, but this proved an insane notion. Borrowing gear from our support bands, some who could hardly speak English, and trying to explain to them that we were expected by the audience to smash their gear to pieces just didn’t work. It was a frustrating tour. The Swedish press seemed to be really looking forward to some smashed guitars and were vocal in their disappointment.
We returned to Sweden again for three shows in October, and in an unfortunate recurrence of bad luck our gear got misrouted and we repeated lacklustre shows with borrowed gear. Keith, John and I took a lot of pep pills on this trip, prompting constant, mindless chattering, and in Denmark, worn down by our hyperactivity, Roger finally complained. When Keith challenged him, Roger lashed out with his fists, bloodying Keith’s nose, turning what would have been a minor spat into a melodrama.
One significant thing about this outburst was Keith’s response. Instead of responding with humiliation, he seemed to sober up. It was clear he was about to establish a boundary that Roger could never cross again.
Keith and John said they didn’t want to work with Roger any more, but after a long period of uncertainty Chris met with Roger and asked him to never use his fighting skills to win an argument again. Roger agreed, so Keith and John decided to put the matter behind them.
Home from Sweden we recorded the final version of ‘My Generation’. Kit had heard my first demo, a version that was very much inspired by Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’, a song we later introduced into our stage repertoire. The vocal on my demo was laid back in imitation of Mose, casual and confident. Kit hadn’t really seen the promise in the song, but Chris persuaded me to try a second demo with a heavier guitar riff. Then Kit chimed in, observing that the music was rather repetitive and needed several modulations – changes of key – to bring it to life.
This worried me a little, partly because I saw Ray Davies as a master of the art of modulation and I didn’t want to be accused of copying him. Chris picked up on a stutter on my vocal on the second demo, so I played him John Lee Hooker’s ‘Stuttering Blues’. Roger had been experimenting with stuttering on stage ever since Sonny Boy Williamson Jr had joined us on harmonica at our first Marquee dates; Sonny Boy used a stutter rhythmically when he sang. Before I completed the third demo we experimented until the stutter became exaggerated and obvious. On this final demo we also created space for an Entwistle bass solo. John was becoming the outstanding bass revolutionary of the day, and I wanted to provide him with a vehicle for his incredible playing.
I was listening to a lot of new music. London was full of specialist record shops, and I visited them all. A high point that summer was the UK release of Miles Davis’s live concert from Carnegie Hall, 1964, featuring his wonderful rendering of ‘My Funny Valentine’. This led me to Miles’s Sketches of Spain . I also found Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge , and listened to some Wagner operas for the first time. Best of all, I found two great albums by the Everly Brothers. One was called Rock and Soul , the other Rhythm and Blues . Noting the shift to R&B and soul music among groups in the British invasion of the USA, the Everly Brothers, whose superb stream of hit singles I’d grown up with in the late Fifties and early Sixties, had gone into the studio with their own incredible session musicians from Los Angeles and Nashville to show us how it could best be done.
The Everly Brothers played a number of
Similar Books
