The new issue
of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online, with free P&P for the
UK – features a massive 12-page interview with Pete Townshend about the past,
present and future of The Who. Up for discussion first of all is a major
reissue of 1967’s The Who Sell Out, which brings back memories of home
recording, hanging out with Bowie, Brian Jones and Small Faces, and trying to
engage “true musical anarchist” Keith Moon…
Aside from various new projects, there
are always Who anniversaries to deal with. How do you reconcile those two
aspects of your life?
I cash in on
my past! I live off it. If I tour with Roger I make a bit of money, but I don’t
do it because I love it, I do it because it keeps interest in the past. It
leads us to a new audience sometimes. For me, the past is something I’m very,
very proud of. I’m amazed at how much I achieved in the first five or six years
of The Who’s career. At the same time, I’m not amazed or surprised that I
eventually ran out of steam. I think it was very difficult when Keith Moon died
and when Kit Lambert, who was my friend and mentor and manager, died, which was
all in the late ’70s and early ’80s. But I look back and just feel very lucky
to have a catalogue that people are still interested in.
How do you view The Who Sell Out now?
The Who
didn’t make that many records, when you compare us to bands like Metallica or
even fucking Primal Scream, who’ve got dozens of albums. I think it was partly
because I was the main writer, but we were also touring so much. I know that’s
true of a lot of artists, but the way that I write is not with the band. I tend
to write at home, which The Who Sell Out is a good testament to, because it’s
got all the demos on and you can see how I gathered material.
Tell us a bit about the 1967 version
of Pete Townshend…
I was still
growing. A lot of people that talk to me about smashing guitars, for example,
will say, “Oh, you must’ve been an angry young man.” Then I give them my
art-school thing [the concept of auto-destructive art] and they go, “What a
load of bollocks!” I don’t think I was angry. I had a lovely girlfriend [Karen
Astley], good friends from art college and I had my own social circle, a very
supportive bunch. So I felt OK about myself. I had an early friendship with a
couple of other artists that I really liked. David Bowie was starting to emerge
around that time and he was a real friend. The Stones were friends of mine. In
’67, I was still seeing a lot of Brian Jones and hanging out with him.
And the Small Faces, too?
Oh, yeah.
Ronnie Lane and I used to spend huge amounts of time together. He was my best
friend. He’d moved to Twickenham two months after I’d moved there, and we used
to see each other twice a week if we weren’t on tour. We’d play together,
record demos together. He was a really extraordinary guy. He was a bit like
Neil Young, in that he had his own space that he was going to occupy,
musically, and never deviated from it. I was close to the other Small Faces,
too. I knew Stevie [Marriott] very well and would go down to his cottage in
Essex. I used to try to fucking save him, because I thought he was going to
die. He was in bad shape. But I knew Mac [Ian McLagan] and the guy that played
keyboards and guitar for the band [Jimmy Winston] before Ian came in. I was
close to Kenney [Jones] as well. I’d go along to their recording sessions,
which were in Olympic Studios, down the road from where I was living in
Twickenham. I used to love the way they worked in the studio; it was all about
having a laugh. Later, when the Faces came together with Ronnie Wood and Rod
Stewart, hanging out with them was the best place to be on the planet. Being in
The Who was fucking grim by comparison. I don’t know what it says about those
years, but I don’t think Roger could’ve been having a very nice time, although
he had some beautiful girlfriends. Apart from that, I think he was sort of a
permanent outcast. It must have been horrible for him.
Was it difficult to keep everyone in
the band interested?
I didn’t see
John or Roger as problematic. I saw Keith as problematic. I thought he was
really going to go off sideways. He was such a fucking huge fan of Jan &
Dean and early Beach Boys. It was all he listened to – that and The Goons. So a
song like “Call Me Lightning” has that feel to the backing vocals. “Silver
Stingray” was another one I wrote around that time that was a bit Jan &
Dean.
Did you keep Keith onside because you
were worried that he might quit The Who?
I was just
trying to get him fucking engaged, involved in the music of the band. Keith was
a true musical anarchist. He was still living at home in Wembley with his mum
and dad. When we went to pick him up in the van, the windows would be open and
he’d be playing The Beach Boys… yet we were an R&B band.
You can read much more from Pete Townshend in the April 2021 issue of Uncut.
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