The Who’s Career-Spanning Doc ‘Amazing Journey’ Now Streaming for First Time reports Rolling Stone

 

The Who work out their 1978 classic “Who Are You” in a clip from their career-spanning documentary, Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, which is now available to stream for the first time on the Coda Collection.

The clip features some raw footage of the Who performing an energetic, albeit somewhat shaky version of “Who Are You” while filming their 1979 documentary, The Kids Are Alright. The performance marked the band’s first time together in more than a year, and as Pete Townshend quips in the clip, “Unfortunately the band didn’t play as well, but I think all of us had such a good time together. But we were all wrecks!”

The live performance is followed up by a much more meticulous and precise rendition of “Who Are You,” captured during the studio sessions for the band’s album of the same name. The album, however, would end up being the band’s last with drummer Keith Moon, whose death and struggles with addiction are also discussed in the final moments of the clip.

Amazing Journey was directed by Murray Lerner and Paul Crowder and first released in 2007. Anchored by interviews with Townshend and Roger Daltrey, the film tracks the band’s rise and career, and features a trove of previously unseen footage and performance clips.

“It’s not easy to capture in film the power and energy of any rock band, especially the four characters that made up the Who, the brilliance of Pete Townshend’s music, and the magic that happened between Pete, John, Keith and myself,” Daltrey said in a statement. “But Who fans tell me Amazing Journey does just that. From the moment that Keith joined us in the Railway Hotel back in 1964, it was like a bottle of champagne being uncorked. We just clicked. And here we are, all these years later — we’ve lost our dear bandmates Keith and John, and Pete and I continue to play together and carry this story forward. Thanks to Coda for putting this show up, and enjoy this film about our journey. I’m still living it!”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-whos-career-spanning-doc-amazing-journey-now-streaming-for-first-time-1196276/

Primal Scream and Pet Shop Boys have remixed Paul Weller’s ‘Cosmic Fringes’ reports NME

 

Primal Scream and Pet Shop Boys have both remixed Paul Weller’s single ‘Cosmic Fringes’, it has been announced.

The original version of the track was released back in February and appeared on Weller’s latest album ‘Fat Pop (Volume 1)’.

Posting on Twitter earlier (July 16), the Modfather confirmed that two new versions of the song would arrive this week (July 23).

“Available for pre-order now! Music legends unite for the Cosmic Fringes remixes on vinyl, out on 23rd July!” he tweeted.

He said, “@Petshopboys have done an epic 12-minute HI-NRG remix, a thumping fuzzing disco banger also featuring Neil Tennant. Equally exciting, on the limited edition vinyl is a remix by @ScreamOfficial’s Andrew Innes.”

In a four-star review of ‘Fat Pop (Volume 1)’, NME described the original version of ‘Cosmic Fringes’ as “bursts into life with a pump of slick electro-pop synth, Weller singing with playful braggadocio: ‘I don’t believe my luck when I see him in the mirror.’”

Despite the record being titled ‘Volume 1’, Weller has said he doesn’t know if he will make another record. “It’s hard to say at the moment,” he said in May. “This is my 16th solo album! I can’t believe it!”

Meanwhile, the musician recently reflected on being a part of the 1984 Band Aid charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?, saying that filming the music video was a “horrible” experience.

“[The video shoot] was horrible. Everyone was getting off doing blow in the toilets,” he said. “It probably would have been all right for me in the ‘90s but I wasn’t into all that then. I was totally out of my comfort zone.”

Ronnie Wood Says Faces Have Recorded New Music reports UCR

 

Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood said he's been working with former Faces bandmates Rod Stewart and Kenney Jones on new music amid a series of musical projects he’s involved with.

Several attempts at reuniting have taken place since the band released its fourth and so far final album, Ooh La La, in 1973. In 2008, Wood and Stewart wrote some songs together, but a brief tour featured Mick Hucknall in place of Stewart, who couldn’t find time in his schedule. The surviving trio managed to perform at a low-key event in 2015, followed by a charity appearance later that year. After another private event in 2019, they performed their classic “Stay With Me” at the Brit Awards last year. Those shows took place without bassist Ronnie Lane, who died in 1997, and keyboardist Ian McLagan, who died in 2014.

In a new interview with The Times, Wood said he’s been having a busy time since buying a new home in London. “I saw Mick [Jagger] here last week, and Rod and Kenney were here yesterday," he revealed. “Me and Mick have done nine new tracks for the [40th anniversary] re-release of Tattoo You. And me, Rod and Kenney have been recording some new Faces music. ... I've had a front-row seat on some amazing rock 'n' roll projects these past couple of weeks. I’m making every day count. Not wasting a moment.”

While he expressed hopes that the Stones would tour again soon, Wood added that he's also releasing a tribute album to blues legend Jimmy Reed with former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor in September. “I go through art phases when music is secondary, but right now I really want to get out there and play," Wood explained. Part of his motivation was the success of his most recent cancer battle. “I’m well. I'm strong. And I'm adaptable. But it has taken a lot of fighting, a lot of stamina to get through it.”

He said Jagger’s health issues were in the past, too. “Mick is fighting fit, and we both can't wait to get working again,” he noted. “Having said that, lockdown was good for me, because when I got the cancer the second time, it enabled me to face all those horrible treatments under the radar. I had a lot of chemo and radiology, but I wasn't interrupting anyone else's schedule. I had the time and space to focus on getting well.”

Roger Daltrey: Three Adult Daughters Suddenly Turned Up on My Doorstep — and I Love Them All

 

Roger Daltrey is opening up about how his legendary hell-raising with The Who provided him with the greatest surprise gift imaginable: A bigger, loving family.

"When three daughters arrived on my doorstep [unexpectedly in the '90s, the products of relationships with women in the '60s], I accepted them and I love them very much," Daltrey revealed to The Times on Wednesday. "I am very lucky."

"I wouldn't have been a good father when I was on the road," the singer added about his hotel-hopping with bandmates Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon in the '60s and '70s. "There's no point in wishing that I could have. I couldn't.

"In the early days there were lots of parties, booze, and relationships," he continued about the band's extensive touring, which included a starring role at Woodstock in August 1969.

"We had no money, so we were sharing rooms and it was chaos," he said. "When we got arrested [in 1973 in Montreal, for wrecking a room], I'd been ordered to go to bed by the doctor, so I didn't do the smashing up. Some of those rooms did need a bit of redecorating."

Daltrey, 77, has a total of eight children and now lives a quiet rural life in Sussex, England with second wife, Heather. Yet he still regularly tours with Townshend (Moon and Entwistle died in 1978 and 2002, respectively) –— often in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust, of which he is a patron with Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, and her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

Despite The Who making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for playing the loudest concert of all time in 1976 (hitting an ear-splitting 126 decibels), the Pinball Wizard singer also has some surprising advice for a new generation of music lovers: Don't do the same!

"Young people should stop listening to such loud music. They don't need to," Daltrey told The Times. "If your ears are ringing, you'll pay. Pete and I both have to wear hearing aids and it's no fun taking them out; without them, life's a mumble."

As for the other trappings of rock 'n' roll success, Daltrey now firmly believes that nobody over the age of 50 should own a Ferrari and describes playing with a rock band as "like sitting on a stool and trying to maintain balance after four drinks."

While he's lent his voice to some of the most famous rock songs ever recorded, he also doesn't "actually like" his own vocals.

"I love voices like Joan Armatrading, Smokey Robinson, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Plant, Paul Weller," he told The Times. "And Van Morrison — his voice is the same as it always was."

On the pressures of touring, recording, and performing, Daltrey once led with his fists, these days the rock 'n' roll legend prefers to take everything in stride.

"I roll with things," he says. "What's the point of worrying? An Austrian physio I had in the Eighties would say, 'What are you holding on to pain for? When you let go, it will be alright.' That's how I approach everything now.

Pete Townshend named his all-time favourite Beatles songs reports Far Out Magazine

 

Pete Townshend is known for his uncompromising scathing nature. Infamously, there are very few of his contemporaries that Townshend hasn’t unleashed fury upon with his uncompromisingly sharp tongue. The Beatles are no exception, with The Who axeman speaking on plentiful occasions about what he dislikes about the iconic band from Liverpool. Despite all the disdain that Townshend has shown towards The Fab Four in years gone by, there’s a suggestion that perhaps he overplayed the negativity somewhat. Appearing to backtrack in recent years, the musician opened up about specific songs from The Beatles’ extensive repertoire that he considers to be his favourites.

The one-way rivalry between the two acts began in 1966, a time when The Who were beginning their meteoric ascent to the top of the rock and roll pile. Backed by a thunderous lead single in ‘My Generation’, the band carved out a career based on the fervent energy of youth. It got The Who some attention and, with that, a series of early TV interviews. One such discussion led to Townshend referring to the Fab Four as “flipping lousy” in what appeared to be a blatant attempt to speak out of line.

After a conversation around the idea of “musical quality”, something Townshend shrugs off as irrelevant to him and his band, the interviewers suggest that The Beatles have “quality” to rebuff his claims. “Ooh, that’s a tough question,” the guitarist replied with a sneering smile. “Actually, this afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles — in which the voices come out of the one side, and the backing track comes out of the other,” he continued. Townshend delivers his most telling line on the band’s output when he states: “When you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy,” it’s enough to hear an audible gasp from the audience. Whether or not Townshend has softened his view on The Beatles won’t ever really be known, but, at this moment, you can tell that the guitarist has no love for the most famous band in the world.

Later though, while speaking with Rolling Stone in 1982, Townshend was asked about McCartney’s then-recent record Tug of War. Kurt Loder, who was interviewing Townshend, suggested it had “virtually nothing to do with rock and roll,” to which Townshend replied by asking if McCartney “ever really had anything to do with rock”. He then answered his own question: “No, he never did,” Townshend said before adding: “You know, I could sit down and have a conversation with Paul about rock and roll, and we’d be talking about two different things.”

However, years later, Townshend seemingly stopped trying to be controversial just for the sake of getting a thrill from the constant conveyor belt of fires that he was stoking up and dramatically changed his tune on The Beatles. “I wasn’t crazy impressed with the Beatles when I first heard them,” The Who’s Pete Townshend shared with Rolling Stone in 2019. “But I loved them”.

“I did love them,” he continues. “They were joyful, they were funny. They were more a pop group than I would have liked [but] they had this incredible image. They were delightful, absolutely delightful. I suppose the first song [I heard] would have been ‘Please Please Me,'” Townshend recalls. “[But] what really blew him away was single ‘Day Tripper ‘and b-side ‘Paperback Writer.'”

“I just thought, wow, these two songs are really great,” he enthuses. “They weren’t about falling in love, they weren’t about girls, girls, girls. They were about jobs, creativity. They were interesting songs those two,” Townshend then poignantly reflected, “And it was then I realised they were going to do great things.”

Even when Townshend is praising The Beatles, he can’t resist throwing in a medley of backhanded compliments such as suggesting that most of their songs lacked sustenance. However, The Who guitarist clearly adores the band and has changed his opinion from 1966. This backtracking on The Beatles also offers a stark reminder always to take the hyperbolic insults thrown out by Townshend with a heavy pinch of salt.

'Modernity' by Various Artists (Kent/Ace U.K.) - review by Shepherd Express

 

https://shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/modernity-by-various-artists-kentace-u-k/

The Specials’ Terry Hall — ‘We had to really fight for it’

 

https://www.ft.com/content/1404021a-23fb-45cc-b399-b0950d53f39d

Home of the Week: Rock Legend Pete Townshend’s Historic London Mansion Hits the Market for $21 Million

 

https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/pete-townshend-wick-historic-london-mansion-1234622982/amp/

Teds, Mods and Rockers celebrated in youth culture exhibition

 

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/19420516.teds-mods-rockers-celebrated-youth-culture-exhibition/

To Be Someone review – a Guy Ritchie ripoff two decades past its sell-by date says The Guardian

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/06/to-be-someone-review

Is Mod Still Mod Or Is It Just Another Throwback? asks Rebels Market

 

https://www.rebelsmarket.com/blog/posts/is-mod-still-mod-or-is-it-just-another-throwback