Released almost simultaneously alongside the official Who 50th anniversary book which I reviewed last month, veteran rock music writer Mat Snow brings us another book celebrating fifty years of one of the world's greatest rock groups. As you can see from my review, I was quite disappointed with the official book and so was interested in seeing whether or not an unauthorized overview of the Who's entire career would fare any better. I'm familiar with Snow's work over the years, including his book set on the Beatles' solo careers which I reviewed a couple of years ago. That set was fun if not lightweight and riddled with errors, so I was slightly wary when diving into his new Who book. While it's not perfect and suffers from many of the same maladies that his solo Beatles book did, I am will say upfront that it's much more enjoyable than the official book.
***special thanks to Steve at Race Point Publishing for sending a copy of the book to review!***
When I first heard that book was titled 50 Years of My Generation, I initially thought it was going to be a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Who's debut album, also called My Generation and released fifty years ago in December 1965. Moving past the somewhat confusing title and realizing that it's actually a book celebrating the band's entire career, it's laid out in much the same way as the official book: chronologically beginning with the band members' births at the tail end of WWII in London and their youth spent during the post-war austerity years of the 1950s before rock and roll arrived in 1956 and changed everything. From here, the book travels the well-known path of previous Who books, following their career as a struggling covers band before Keith Moon replaced their original drummer in early 1964 and Pete Townshend took creative control over the band's music and message. Snow navigates their career through the heady days of the 1960s, the Who's ascension to legendary status in the 1970s, their limp to the finish line in the early 1980s in the wake of Moon's 1978 death, and the endless run of reunion tours that continues to the present.
Along the way, the chapters include a linear narrative of their career through each era, accompanied by photos of the band, concert tickets, programs, and other related images. While there were several images that were new to me, most have been seen many times over the years although they were reproduced in excellent quality. What was jarring about the entire experience, however, was that many paragraphs and photographs that would have fit better in the previous chapters were inserted out of sequence. As one example, in the middle of the chapter about the recording of Tommy in 1969 there would be a paragraph and accompanying photograph about something that happened in 1968 that was unrelated and should have been in the previous chapter. There were also several typos: many were just honest editing mistakes such as missing letters or slight misspellings, while others were flat out errors (such as discussing the recording of John's bass solo in "My Generation" but calling the song "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere"). A few of the photographs are miscaptioned as well, most egregiously a shot of Pete onstage in 1980 labelled as being from 1990 (the vast difference in the amount of hair on his head should have tipped the editors off!). These mistakes are minor, but there are enough of them scattered throughout the book that they add up after a while.
Overall, though, this book is enjoyable. I certainly had more fun reading it than I did the official history, although I do want to emphasize that 50 Years of My Generation is still not perfect. In addition to the shortcomings mentioned above, the book generally doesn't contain any new revelations or information that would necessarily appeal to any hardcore fan who is deeply knowledgeable about the band. It really is just an broad overview of the band's entire career, not particularly in depth although far more enjoyable to read than the official book. Much of this is down to Snow's writing style which, while a bit simplistic and clumsy in its construction, definitely conveys the excitement and enthusiasm of a real Who fan as opposed to the more cut-and-paste feel of Ben Marshall's prose in the official book. One thing I certainly noticed was his disdain for the short period of time after Keith died when Kenney Jones was their new drummer. While anyone who knows me knows that I am outright dismissive of any of the post-Moon work the band has done and that I can't stand the music they made with Kenney Jones (apart from one or two songs), Snow came off quite harsh in both his narrative and photo captions. While I certainly agree with his sentiments, I also don't place all of the blame for the downward spiral in the Who's quality once Keith died at Kenney's feet...they were a spent force and Pete saved his best songs for his solo albums. Fairly or not, Kenney became the scapegoat and while I didn't mind Snow's tone, I can see how some fans who like the music from that era of the band's history might take umbrage with the author.
In closing, while this isn't a perfect book, I definitely rank it higher than the official one; some of this is down to the tone and content, and some is because of how truly and utterly disappointing the official book was. While that book had a cleaner, more mature look and feel to it, 50 Years of My Generation is bold, colorful, splashy, and loud...all adjectives that can be used to describe the Who themselves and which convey the excitement and fun of their music and career. If you need to choose between one of the new career retrospective books released for their 50th anniversary, I would recommend this over the official as it's far less frustrating and a lot more fun.
2015 marks the year that The Who are celebrating their 50th anniversary. I disagree with this classification for a couple of reasons, mainly because A) 1964 was the year in which they solidified their lineup of Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and Moon and released their first single, "I Can't Explain," and B) they really haven't been The Who since Keith Moon died in September 1978. However, as it's their band, it's their choice as to when they want to celebrate their anniversary. In any event, as one of my favorite bands of all time and one of the most influential bands in history, it was with great excitement that I looked forward to the publication of this official history, especially as it promised to have input from the two surviving members of the band, Pete and Roger. Written by Ben Marshall, upon receiving this attractive book and seeing the eye-catching cover dripping with classic Who iconography, I proceeded to tear into it to see how the story of this fantastic band, this band that has meant so much to my life and the lives of countless others, would be told from an official perspective.
***special thanks to Leslie at Harper Collins for sending a copy of the book to review!***
The introduction of the book hints that, while written by Marshall, there will also be heavy input from Roger and Pete. Of course, upon reading this I was looking forward to the insight they could offer, but it became apparent rather quickly that in actuality there would only be photo captions written by Pete and for all intents and purposes, nothing from Roger, which was very disappointing and gave the book a whiff of being a bit of a half-hearted/cash-in. How could this be an official history with such minimal input from the last two remaining members of the Who? Pete's captions, as would be expected, are quirky, funny, honest, sarcastic, and unmistakably Townshend. The downside is that, the further I got into the book, the more they served as constant reminders of how more (much more) of his input would have enhanced the book. Ben Marshall starts the Who history (Whostory?) with the backdrop of WWII Britain and the birth of the four members at the tail end of the war (or in Pete and Keith's cases, after the war ended). Inserted in this section were sidebars on life in the post-war austerity period in the UK as well as the rise of Teddy Boy subculture and rock and roll. Sidebars such as these appeared throughout the book and become more and more intrusive and eventually threatened to overwhelm the Who's story, but I'll elaborate on that more later. From here, the author goes through their various pre-Who bands and how they came together until the line-up was completed in early 1964 with the arrival of Keith Moon. The remainder of the chapters are split into eras, focusing on their first album and singles during their Mod period, their Pop Art period of 1966-1968, Tommy in 1969-1970, their period as a top act in 1971-1974, and the remainder of their career with Keith until his death in 1978. This rightly takes up the bulk of the book, with the balance dedicated quite briskly to their attempt at carrying on post-Keith from 1979-1982 and the subsequent reunion tours of 1996-present.
When going through the book, I kept feeling like it wasn't meeting my expectations as to what an "official history" should be but that eventually something I'd hit upon something that would rectify this. However, I kept reading and after finishing the book I couldn't help but think that this book was a real disappointment and, worse than that, a huge missed opportunity. There are several reasons I feel this way. First and foremost, Ben Marshall's written history offers little to no new insight or information about the band or their history. Much of the narrative is quoted verbatim from the Who's remastered CD liner notes and various documentaries and previous books that will be well known and instantly recognizable to any of my fellow hardcore Who fanatics. There were also numerous typos/grammatical errors, as well as several flat-out inaccuracies. These ranged from what I'm assuming are honest errors such as calling the Who's album from 1978, Who Are You, Who's Next (which came out in 1971) by mistake, to the author constantly messing up the name of their recent documentary Amazing Journey, which got to be very irritating. The sidebars, which grew to be almost as long as the chapters themselves, were sometimes fun and informative (such as the ones on Mods and Teddy Boys), but eventually became too long and off-topic, detracting from the central story of the Who. One of them was a long treatise on the history of the hippie subculture; while I understand this happened during the Who's career in the 1960s, the Who were one of the few bands of the era who, apart from dabbling in some florid clothing and LSD, were never remotely close to being a hippie/psychedelic band either in terms of their sound or attitudes, and as such were set apart from the entire movement. There were also some long sidebars on the Mods vs. Rockers fights of 1964 (which made sense as Pete wrote about these on the Quadrophenia album) and a heartwarming but unnecessary (at least in my opinion) vignette about a former London punk drummer telling the story of his brother watching the Who rehearse a few times in the mid-1960s. In all honesty, the book ran out of steam, and quickly, after the chapter-long tribute to Keith Moon. Granted, from that point onward I don't consider the band to really have been the Who, but in my mind if this is to truly be a definitive official history, there should have been more detail on the post-Keith years. There was very little to nothing, for instance, on the Cincinnati incident of 1979, the 1996 Hyde Park Quadrophenia reunion, or their subsequent tours in the 2000s. Apart from a chapter-long tribute to John Entwistle, this final section of the book seemed unnecessary and hurried, and for a band who has desperately tried to convince their fans and themselves that the years after 1978 (and especially after 1982) have been just as vital and essential a part of their history as the 1964-1978 period, it seemed half-assed. Finally, there were far too few picture captions by Pete and far too little input from him throughout the entire book...combined with their being zero input or insight from Roger, it seems a little specious, at least to me, to call this an official history and imply on the cover that it's Roger and Pete telling their story when really, it isn't. This may be an officially sanctioned history of the Who, but it certainly isn't their version of, say, the Beatles' Anthology book which was truly 100% in their own words. A band as important, influential, and revered as the Who deserves better as the official word on their own career.
For all of their visceral, reckless, and aggressive energy, The Who were always one of the most cerebral, reflective, and introspective bands who also were the first (and in my mind, still the best) to reflect back at their audience who they really were. Given what Pete's autobiography was like and what the best of their music offers, it was only natural that I would assume that the official history of the band would embody all of these qualities. However, I have to conclude that this book is a major disappointment and a real missed opportunity to tell their history in their own words, especially as it could have been done really well in a way only Pete and Roger could do. This book is more accurately a band history written by an outside author with minimal input from the two surviving members. Yes, there are some great photographs throughout the book, several that were even new to me, but the actual story, i.e. the words, were almost inconsequential and will offer nothing to any dedicated Wholigan. Is this a book hardcore Who fans should have? Yes, it probably is, but at the same time it's not one they need to have. For a band who has given so much to their fans, and who in turn have demanded so much from their fans in return, the incongruity with respect to this book is jarring. The end result is disappointing, especially if this ends up being the final official word from Roger and Pete on The Who.
*THIS* is what the Who were all about. Crank up the volume and enjoy!
Apart from the years 1964-1978, this year is shaping up to be a good one for fans of The Who. The band is celebrating their 50th anniversary (which they date from the release of their first album in 1965...I consider last year to be their 50th as 1964 is when the band's line-up was solidified and their first single, "I Can't Explain," was released) with a pair of new hardbound books. These both have just been released and I got them in right before I left for China a couple of weeks ago. The book on the left is the officially sanctioned history of the band as told by the two surviving members, Pete and Roger. The book on the right is another one published by well-known author Mat Snow. Both are handsome volumes full of black-and-white and color photos on nice glossy paper. For any of my fellow Who fanatics, stay tuned as I will be reviewing these books for the site as soon as I can get to them. Coupled with the rumored released of a new career-spanning box set at the end of the year, this is shaping up to be a great year for fans of this legendary band.
Recently I was having a conversation on Twitter with someone about the Rolling Stones when their great song "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" was brought up. The fellow I was chatting with mentioned that, to him, this was the quintessential Stones song. Since it's one of my favorite Stones songs, I could totally see his point, but it also got the wheels in my head turning. Does every band that any of us like have that one song that perfectly encapsulates everything about them? And could this be a fun and interesting way to help each other discover new music by grabbing our interest with that first, special song? I allowed my imagination to get away from me a little bit more and the longer I mulled this over, I decided to have some fun with it.
So here's the challenge:
Imagine that you've just met a time traveler...they could be from 100 years in the past or from 100 years in the future. Or maybe you've met an alien being from another planet who has no idea what music is. Regardless of the scenario, pretend that you are confronted with this person and have to describe what music is (doesn't have to be rock music, it can be any genre). You're explaining it and they're just not understanding what it's all about. You think to yourself "you know what? It'll be easier if I just play them some music...that will convey it better than mere words can." However, they don't have a lot of time before they have to be on their way...you've only got time to play them ONE SONG from each artist, so you need to make sure it counts. This one song needs to:
- encapsulate the artist's essence and overall sound - be memorable enough that it will stick in their head after just one listen - if the artist has distinctly different eras to their music, it should cover enough of them such that it can bridge most, if not all of them in the one song
Sounds tough, right?
After a lot of thinking and analyzing, here are the quintessential songs I've come up with for some of my favorite artists, with explanations why (and audio) to help my arguments. If you like some of these bands, please share your picks in the comments section, as well as your picks for other bands not mentioned here. This is Part 1 of what will be as many posts in the series until I run out of ideas, so here goes!
The Rolling Stones: I have to start with the band that was the impetus for this entire exercise, don't I? I thought long and hard about this because "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" as discussed above would be a great choice: it's got an iconic Keith riff at the beginning, a sexy groove, sneering vocals from Mick, and a killer jam during the second half. However, it's not my choice for their quintessential song mainly because it's not too well known outside of serious Stones fans. That's not to say that the quintessential songs should be the most popular ones, but they should have enough mass appeal such that someone uninitiated could pick up on why after just one listen...after all, that's the reason the song is popular in the first place, right? With that being said, my choice is...
Jumpin' Jack Flash. Released as a non-album single in 1968, for me this song (which narrowly beat out "Satisfaction" and "Gimme Shelter") has all of the ingredients that capture what the Stones are all about: an instantly recognizable riff, a slinky groove, a catchy chorus ("well it's aaaaaaaaaaall right now...") strutting, cocky vocals from Mick, and a darkness and swagger about the lyrics. It's also has one foot in the experimental 1960s Stones approach that they were soon to leave behind while the other foot is firmly planted in the powerful blues/roots rock approach they'd reach their zenith with over the next five years. In short, it captures everything great about the Stones as they were exiting the singles-driven Brian Jones era and entering the album-driven Mick Taylor era.
The Beatles: This was a really tough one because, I mean, how do you only pick ONE song to explain to someone how great the Beatles are? Beyond that, they had so much artistic growth in such a ridiculously short period of time that it's almost impossible to choose just one track that encapsulates everything they did. The early years were marked by infectiously catchy and exciting pop songwriting, the middle years had more complex songs, arrangements, and pioneering recording techniques, and the final years had a more stripped down but no less innovative approach. Beyond that, the sheer number of insanely popular and beloved songs means that there's a huge amount of stuff to choose from. That being said, I thought long and hard about this and came up with my choice, which is...
Hey Jude. Perhaps it's no coincidence that this is also my favorite Beatles song of all time, but I think it really does capture the essence of the band. Play, or even just say, those first two words of the song to anyone and they'll instantly know what you mean. Hell, all of my kids knew this song when they were so young that they could barely speak. It's got a beautiful melody, uplifting lyrics, a great arrangement, and an anthemic chorus that you can't help but sing along to every time you hear it (go ahead and try to resist...I dare you!). Seeing Paul play this (and singing along with the entire crowd) when I saw him in concert was one of the highlights of my life, and that's no joke. It hearkens back to the pop craftsmanship of the early years, the stripped down sound of the later years, and an ambitious production (strings and horns at the end) as in the middle years. Plus, John Lennon was on record for after stating that it was his favorite song that his longtime collaborator ever wrote...coming from John, that's got to count for a lot, doesn't it? (Songs it narrowly edged out: too many to list!)
The Who: There's a lot of ground to try and cover here with this band if you're going to reduce it down to just one song. There's the early, high-energy R&B stuff (1964-65), the mid-1960s power pop with all of those great, classic singles (1966-68), the rock opera/stadium anthems of the 1969-73 period, or the more introspective, cynical, and experimental later era stuff (1975-78). For me, there is and has always been one Who song that perfectly captures the essence of the band, and tough as it is to pass over classics like "Won't Get Fooled Again," "Pinball Wizard," "My Generation," "Love Reign O'er Me," "Slip Kid," and "Who Are You" among many others, the ultimate Who song for me is...
Bargain. First of all, this song has been hailed by critics, fans, and the band themselves as containing one of, if not THE best ensemble performances of the Who's entire career as captured on record. As Pete Townshend once said of this song, "I didn't play the guitar on that one...it played me." It's the perfect balance between the hard rock they were masters of and the melodic introspection Pete was always able to inject into his songs. And of course, you have Roger Daltrey getting inside the heart, mind, and soul of the main character, delivering the vocals with incredible passion and power. The chorus is instantly recognizable and hits you like a ton of bricks ("I call that a bargain...the best I ever had...the best I EVER HAD!"), and the quieter middle section sung by Pete Townshend is so beautiful and moving, musically and lyrically, that it's enough to make you cry. And that, to me, is what makes this the quintessential Who song: it goes from ass-kicking rock to tear-jerker back to kicking your ass again in the span of a few minutes. It doesn't hurt that in addition to Daltrey's and Townshend's tremendous performances, Keith Moon and John Entwistle turn in one of the performances of their lives. John's bass guitar is all over the place, melodic and powerful, while Moon is a monster on the drum kit but is at the same time incredibly tasteful and plays to the song. His double-bass drum flutters and the workout he gives his entire kit during the outro is exciting as all get out, and the final strummed guitar chords and synth melody still give me chills after all these years. Everything great about the Who, all in one song...that's the whole point of this post, isn't it?
(I had to include this live version from San Francisco in December 1971 because it's just so damn good!)
The Kinks: Along similar lines, the Kinks' career was so long and so varied that there are numerous distinct eras that need to be taken into account. There's the early R&B and proto-punk rock/heavy metal of early singles like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." There's the mature, groundbreaking string of brilliant hit singles from 1965-1968 like "Tired of Waiting For You," "See My Friends," "Waterloo Sunset," "Sunny Afternoon," "Autumn Almanac," "Days," and more. There was the string of brilliant albums beginning with 1966's Face to Face and running through 1972's Everybody's in Showbiz. There was the concept album phase of the early to mid-1970s, their hard rock/arena rock phase of 1977-1984, and the gradual petering out of their career from the mid-1980s until 1996. Ray Davies was one of the most brilliant and prolific songwriters of his, or any, generation (and his brother Dave was no slouch in this department either) and managed to steer the Kinks on an always unpredictable course over their thirty-two year career. And as a fan of all of their material, I found it incredibly hard to choose just one song to encapsulate everything about this great band. How do you pick just one song to cover all of the ground that they did over such a long career? Surely some aspect of their essence, their sound will be left out, right? Keeping all of this in mind, and thinking long and hard about this, I came up with...
Lola. An obvious choice, perhaps, but hear me out. I was trying to come up with one of the more obscure, but no less excellent, Kinks songs to fit the bill and while several came close, all roads kept leading back to Lola. For me, it's the right song for a number of reasons. It has an instantly recognizable and iconic riff at the opening of the song. It straddles the hard rock side of the Kinks' music with a bit of theatrical camp. It has classic Ray Davies lyrics that are not only cerebral and thought-provoking, but very humorous. It's got great harmony vocals from Dave (which I've always found to be absolutely integral and vital to the Kinks' sound), as well as a great band performance from all involved. And the chorus is catchy and, at this point, known by just about anyone in the English speaking world whether they even know the song or not. It also fits perfectly within the Kinks' ethos of being a great standalone single, yet also fitting in context perfectly on the album it was lifted from. Finally, the seemingly humorous (and true!) tale of a man falling in love with a woman who may or may not be a man in drag hints at deeper things, such as questioning and reaffirming what it is that makes the singer masculine. The ambiguity when Ray sings "well I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man, and so is Lola" is classic Davies: is Lola glad he's a man, or is Lola a man, too? It's left unresolved and for the listener to decide. In my mind, the answer to this open-ended question has always been "yes"...as unresolved as the question itself. That's the mark of a great song, and for me Lola is quintessential Kinks.
Led Zeppelin: Yet another band who had distinct phases to their career, although perhaps in a different way to the Kinks, Who, or Beatles. While they definitely incorporated different elements into their sound and effectively utilized dynamics and acoustic instrumentation, they never strayed too heavily from their heavy blues and folk roots. Still, they were definitely a 1960s band that evolved as the 1970s went along, unlike the one-dimensional heavy metal bands they subsequently inspired. That being said, it was still quite difficult for me to distill their musical essence down to just one song because there were so many facets to Led Zeppelin: hard rock, blues, Celtic/English folk, and more. Beyond that, there are signature elements of their sound, from Robert Plant's powerful vocals and Jimmy Page's virtuoso guitar work, to John Paul Jones' brilliant bass guitar and multi-instrument work and John Bonham's fantastic drumming. In addition, Bonham and Jones were one of the finest rhythm sections in the history of rock...one of the few that really locked in and could swing. I had to keep all of this in mind when making my decision, which ended up being...
Over the Hills and Far Away. No, I didn't go for the obvious choice of "Stairway to Heaven"...great song, but overplayed to death. As for other signature Zeppelin songs like "Black Dog," "Whole Lotta Love," "Immigrant Song," "Achilles Last Stand," and others in that same vein, they didn't have as much of the famous light and shade that Zeppelin traded in. Honestly, this song beat out "Kashmir" and "Ramble On" by a very slim margin: "Kashmir" just doesn't feature enough of Page's guitar or Jones' bass, while "Ramble On"...well, it's a GREAT song but I just feel "Over the Hills and Far Away" beats it by a nose. In my opinion, it's got it all when it comes to Zeppelin: a quiet acoustic intro that builds up, a hard rock main body of the song, Plant singing in his best, most powerful wail, driving bass and drums from the Jones/Bonham rhythm section, a great Page electric guitar solo, and a gentle acoustic outro. Plus, it's catchy and melodic, two things Led Zeppelin almost always was (and for which they don't get nearly the credit they deserve). It may not rock as hard as their heaviest moments, but Led Zeppelin was never only about being heavy, and to me "Over the Hills and Far Away" is the perfect cross-section of everything that makes Led Zeppelin great.
The Doors: For the last entry in Part 1, I've decided to pick a song from one of the greatest American rock bands to come out of the 1960s, and again, a personal favorite: The Doors. Besides being one of the biggest bands of the era, the legendary band from Los Angeles had one of the most unique line-ups and sounds in all of rock, consisting solely of guitar, organ, drums, and vocals. No bass guitar at all in the band except on some of their studio tracks. The bulk of the bass parts on record, and all of them on stage, were handled by keyboard player Ray Manzarek's left hand on a Fender Keyboard Bass; at the same time, he played his intricate and complex keyboard/organ/piano melodies with his right hand. Beyond Ray's talent, they had a solid and talented drummer in John Densmore who had more of a jazz background than in rock, but he had a very unique style and sound. The same can be said for guitarist Robby Krieger, who was not a blues and rock based guitarist like the vast majority of his peers, but rather was rooted in classical, jazz, and flamenco guitar. He played without a pick, had a one-of-a-kind style, and wrote the majority of the band's music (along with Morrison). While their various albums had subtle shades and shifts in sound, at their core the Doors were a blues-based psychedelic band with more classical and jazz leanings than anyone around at the time. With all of that said, and with all of their music to choose from, I perhaps still took the obvious way out by choosing their first #1 single...
Light My Fire. Written mainly by Robby Krieger (with significant input from Jim Morrison), the Doors breakthrough single from 1967 is widely considered to be their signature song and in my opinion, is the ultimate Doors song. Starting with a machine-gun crack of John Densmore's snare drum, it's got every element of the Doors sound wrapped up in its 7-minute duration. First, there's Ray Manzarek's throbbing keyboard bass and classical flourish lead melody line that drives the entire song. There's Krieger's bluesy/jazzy fingerpicked guitar licks filling the spaces between throughout, playing more of a supporting role to Ray's keyboards. Densmore's Latin-influenced jazzy drumming and rock-steady backbeat underpins it all and is the foundation the other three rest upon. Jim Morrison's vocals, ranging from his hushed baritone before he gets into his throat-tearing screams, build excitement before he ends the song by whipping himself into a frenzy at the end of the song. The lyrics range from a simple professing of the singer's desire for his girl's love to some slightly darker, almost mysitcal elements as to what needs to happen so that they can "set the night on fire." Sandwiched in between the beginning and ending verses is a long solo section that takes up half of the song and is a showcase for both Manzarek and Krieger, the former playing a hypnotic bassline with his left hand while his right hand solos masterfully, the latter playing a very jagged and dissonant solo that sounds nothing like all of the blues noodling of his fellow American guitar contemporaries. While the Doors had loads of great songs throughout their career, for me, "Light My Fire" is the song that has all of the elements that made the Doors one of the biggest American rock bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
So concludes Part 1 of this series! It was a lot of fun and made me really think about what it is about each of these bands that appeals to me when it comes to their music. If you're a fan of any of these bands, what do you think of my selections? Agree/disagree? And for your own favorites, what would your one song be to show an uninformed listener what they were all about? Part 2 will have more of these song choices from other bands, so I hope you'll stick with me as we go through this exercise!
Today I'm very pleased and very excited to bring you the following interview with Ray and Caroline Foulk, authors of the fantastic new book When the World Came to the Isle of Wight, Volume 1: Stealing Dylan From Woodstock. I reviewed the book earlier this year and Ray and Caroline were kind enough to answer my questions regarding the second Isle of Wight Festival in 1969, what is was like booking Bob Dylan for the festival, and much, much more. Before we begin, how about a little background on the authors?
Ray Foulk, now based in Oxford, has fostered many passions since his early days as a promoter. After the dizzy heights of the Isle of Wight Festivals and stadium events in London, the Foulk brothers were head-hunted by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation to help plan the leisure content of their new city. Through this, Ray brought the inventor/scientist/designer Buckminster Fuller to the project, embraced his environmentalism, and eventually trained as an architect himself at the University of Cambridge. Combining design, education, and promotion he spent much of the nineties and noughties as an environmental campaigner, and led the ambitious in-schools project, Blue Planet Day, rekindling the satisfaction, and more, that the festivals had brought to his youth. Recent years have been dominated by environmental architecture and writing.
Caroline Foulk has worked with her father, Ray, for many years, researching, writing, and co-promoting the schools environmental project, Blue Plant Day. Recently, together they have completed a screenplay for the cinema about the invention of modern art. Caroline trained and worked as a teacher and lives in Oxford with her husband and three children.
RNRChemist: First off, can you give us a bit of background on you? How did you come to settle on the Isle of Wight? What year was that and what were the circumstances? How did you like living there?
RF: After the relatively sudden death of my father in 1956 it was no longer practical for my mother to keep up a large house in Derbyshire with 5 young children to bring up. We moved to the Island because my Uncle already had property there. Also my aging grandmother lived there. It suited Uncle Ronald to encourage Mother to move.We were disappointed in some respects with the island, especially the house we relocated to, which was parochial and small compared to the amazing mansion house we left behind. Sutton Rock had seemed such a marvel to my father’s family who had lived for generations as coal miners. I think we had an overall general feeling of immense loss, but the seaside was a plus.
RNRChemist: What was the impetus for you and your brothers to decide to stage the first festival in 1968? Why did you decide to do that?
RF: We put on the first IOW festival because my brother Ronnie got involved in raising funds for a local charity – IWISPA, whose remit was to raise money for an indoor swimming pool for the IOW.
RNRChemist: That first festival seems to be the forgotten one of the three you promoted...looking back on it, what are your thoughts on it?
RF: The first festival seems almost a little embarrassing in retrospect. Although it was put on with a degree of professionalism, the stubble field was painful to sit on and we made wild claims about the national significance of the event, for instance we put it about that the Beatles would attend, (little did we know that they really would come the following year). We were disappointed that only about 10,000 attended. My brother Bill had assured us of the importance of Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Brown and the various underground bands. The island felt like a hopeless place for events.
RNRChemist: What did you have to go through to get Jefferson Airplane to headline that first one? How was their performance?
RF: My brother Ronnie had to keep plugging away for Jefferson Airplane. He was casting around for any big names really. He had little knowledge of the contemporary scene and was turned down many times. He had no track record as a promoter and had to rely on his abilities as a salesman to finally convince the Clayman Agency that we were really serious contenders able to host an event worthy of an international band like Jefferson Airplane.
When it came to playing the Airplane were on form. Although it was freezing cold they brought rock genius into the night and lifted everybody’s spirits. They made everything seem worthwhile even though their light show was constrained by the dusty conditions.
RNRChemist: When you decided to plan the festival for the following year, what sort of things did you feel you needed to improve upon from 1968?
RF: The IOW festival ‘mark one’ had seemed makeshift in many ways. We definitely wanted to make our festival-goers more welcome and comfortable – to go bigger and better in every way. It was important that we found a decent grassy site with proper facilities. Probably the biggest difference was that we styled it a ‘Camping festival’, which was unusual at this time. Because we were on an island we wanted people to have enough time to travel. Trench type toilets were replaced by cubicles and we appointed staff, often friends, to different departments overseeing every aspect of festival necessities. Everything was more designed from the tickets, to the programmes, posters etc. to the stage. We tried to address everything with excellence.
RNRChemist: Why Dylan? What made him your top choice as headliner for the second festival? Did you think you had a realistic shot at booking him? Was it more a "shoot for the moon" type thing?
RF: It was obvious that we needed the biggest names to draw people across the water. Jefferson Airplane hadn’t been able to do this – the task of finding somebody with enough clout seemed daunting. Dylan really was the holy grail in 1969, he had acquired a god-like status due to his influence upon a whole generation. He was more than an ordinary musician, whether he liked it or not.
RNRChemist: I'm assuming you were expecting to be turned down outright by Dylan's management when you first called? What was your reaction when they didn't immediately say "no?"
RF: I don’t think we set out believing that we had a chance to get Dylan. The fact that Dylan’s management didn’t dismiss us out of hand was a green light to us. We resorted to scheming over what might make the difference, bearing in mind that we had very few resources at all.
RNRChemist: Can you describe in more detail what the process was like for dealing with Block and Grossman as you warmed Bob up to the idea of coming to the island?
RF: We had less dealings with Al Grossman than with Bert Block owing to the demise of the Dylan-Grossman contract. Dylan was in the process of distancing himself from Grossman. During my visit to New York for the signing when I dined with Grossman and the lawyers almost immediately at a Chinese restaurant (something I’d never experienced before). And after the signing when we visit Grossman’s flat at Gramercy Park. It was there that Al skinned up a joint to celebrate the deal (to my alarm). Al was like a presence but not so much involved. He came to the festival with Michael Lang and seemed more interested in seeing the Who than Dylan.
I mostly dealt with Grossman’ partner, Bert Block. We developed a good rapport, over the phone initially. Sometimes Bert wrong-footed me. When he said ‘bring the dollars’ (in preparation for my trip to meet Dylan) I really had to think about what he meant. I looked after him whenever he visited the Island. I made it my mission to make sure Bert was okay and therefore Dylan was okay. Bert seemed a really good old timer, kind of avuncular, though he probably wasn’t that old in reality. I recall I scared Bert a couple of times with my driving, but he always had faith in our abilities as promoters. As for the process of dealing with Block and Grossman it was pretty smooth, apart from Rikki Farr’s little indiscretion. They were decent, friendly and business-like. We knew we had to present ourselves in a business-like way at all times, especially in order to surmount our youthfulness and it paid off. I had too much to think about to be too overawed by their stature as managers.
RNRChemist: How was it traveling to New York to meet with Dylan and his management? Can you describe how that whole trip went?
RF: Travelling to New York was a lot of fun. I hadn’t been abroad before of course. Once I had my passport, visa and the guarantees for at least most of the performance fees I could almost sit back and enjoy the ride. A downside was Rikki and his antics. He was a loose cannon and wont to step in claiming he was the organiser, which he patently wasn’t, as well as louse things up, but I had the benefit of his demeanour as a bonafide show producer. We needed to be a convincing duo and Rikki certainly helped.
RNRChemist: After you got Bob, how did you guys feel? I'm guessing it was relief mixed with the immediate pressure of "now how are we gonna make sure it all goes smoothly?
RF: Securing Dylan was unbelievable but the time period (5 weeks) between him signing and the festival itself was so short that there was really no time to do anything but get organised as rapidly as possible. Ticket sales were the priority. We had to raise enough cash to meet the contracts and build a city. But it wasn’t like a relief it was more euphoric than that.
RNRChemist: Why choose Dylan? Why not the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, someone else? What about Bob made you want to go for him above all others?
RF: Dylan was a way bigger draw than the Stones or Hendrix at this point. The Beatles would have measured up to Dylan but they were in the process of their break up and hadn’t played live in eons. Elvis’s name even came up, but we couldn’t imagine him playing in a field. We were after one of the big three. Dylan was the only viable option. It’s easy to underestimate how big Dylan was at this time.
RNRChemist: You mention that you and your brothers weren't promoters, you were businessman...how did that gibe with trying to put on these massive festivals?
RF: Although we were businessmen rather than promoters I was pretty heavily into some of the issues of the time and was active with the IOW CND and labour party. In fact I set up a CND group in the West Wight. So although I was making a living in business my heart was with the counterculture. The same is true of my brother Bill who was a student at the Royal College of Art. It’s true that my musical education was lacking at the time of the first festival. Bill was easily able to point us in the right direction groups-wise. But it suited us well to have a business-like approach to the festivals. The organisation of the two large events was very complementary from the viewpoint of those that mattered, ie. the health authorities, police and bulk of the audience. It just wouldn’t have been possible to host such large numbers without a budget, plan, capable staff and their departments, at least not without creating a disaster area.
RNRChemist: You mention that you were a late convert to Dylan and weren't necessarily a huge rock fan at the time...what were your listening habits like in the 1960s? Did they change after putting on these three festivals?
RF: My musical taste changed dramatically. Above all I persisted with Dylan and soon became a genuine fan. We were fully incentivized to get familiar with as much current music as we could find the time to listen to it. It was soon flooding in too with demos coming at us from all quarters. Before this time I was a Johnny Cash fan, I liked the Beatles, trad jazz and knew about (by then) old hat stars like Adam Faith and Billy Fury.
RNRChemist: Can you give us a little flavor into how it was organizing this massive festival out of your house, and with 1960s technology to boot! I'd bet most young people today couldn't even imagine how much harder it was than it would be now.
RF: In some ways organising the massive Dylan festival was easier than it might be nowadays. We had less technology available, but those were the days when the fixed line telephone really worked. People tended to answer reliably and it was easier to make contact even with celebrities. In the case of going above people’s head a person-to-person call would often do the trick. Social media nowadays can take up a lot of time and work. Being restricted to largely paper publications, telephone, radio and television for advertising actually meant concentrating on the job would have been easier in some ways. We employed messengers to deal with some of tasks now taken care of by email and text. Conditions at Mother’s house were hardly consistent with a world-class rock festival but we did make use of a suite of rooms on the upper floor, which became workable office space. Of course dining tables doubled as desks etc. as far as furniture was concerned. Mother was fairly self-contained in a separate wing of the house, but would help on occasion by answering international phone calls in the middle of the night, or providing voluminous quantities of good home cooked food for whoever might be staying.
RNRChemist: What were some of the most difficult parts of the entire festival for you in terms of planning and execution?
RF: Raising funds was always the most problematic planning issue from the moment that Dylan agreed to sign especially in the early stages when potential backers just really wouldn’t believe that an event headed up by Dylan would happen. Without funds nothing could happen smoothly, but once Dylan had signed of course tickets were selling like lightening, which freed us up to concentrate on other vital matters like building the arena and finding Dylan and co. places to stay. One of the hairiest moments was when Dylan disembarked from the QUEII following his son‘s accident on board. Everything was riding on Dylan’s appearance. We suddenly realised how vulnerable we were.
RNRChemist: What was it like meeting the Beatles and other titans of the music world in 1969?
RF: It was quite surreal meeting famous people like the Beatles and other rock titans but to be honest I wasn’t interested in hanging around such people too much. There were plenty of others ready to do that. We were so consumed by the operation at hand that you could only take it in your stride. We were there to do a job and we had to concentrate hard on the necessities of keeping the thing together.
RNRChemist: What was Dylan like as a person? How about George Harrison? The other Beatles? The Who? Other rock musicians you met at the festival?
RF: My first impression of Dylan was that he was quite shy, probably shyer than me even. He was very ordinary, a regular down to earth kind of guy, polite and well spoken. He was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket and I suppose he appeared smaller than I expected, not that he is especially small but anyone with that big a name you kind of imagine to be larger.
George had all eyes for Dylan and clearly set about resuming the relationship he had been building with him after he had visited the Dylan’s home some months before. I enjoyed very much standing there and listening to them harmonizing beautifully to some Everly Brothers hits. That was a truly special moment, like a private concert.
The Beatles were very charming and seemed relaxed either hanging out at the farmhouse or backstage. They were keen on talking between themselves and were apologetic, saying that they didn’t get much chance to talk shop. John and Yoko were quite clingy as I remember.
The Who? We developed a good relationship with them which continued after the 1969 and 1970 festivals with Rock at the Oval in 1971. It has been said that the Isle of Wight gigs were the events of the Who’s career, which I’d be inclined to agree with. They could only have been pleased by their performance, reception, everything worked like a dream for them.
RNRChemist: What was your relationship like with your two brothers, Ronnie and Bill? How about with Rikki Farr? He certainly seemed to have had a knack for saying the wrong thing at a most inopportune time!
RF: The relationship between my brother Ronnie and I had always been close and inevitably under the circumstances we pulled together. Ronnie is a visionary. I would endeavour to bring in to reality whatever the latest idea was. We worked well as a team and developed ideas together around the clock. Our brother Bill was younger and away at the Royal College of Art some of the time. He was a very important advisor to key decisions such as what acts to go for, what type of festival we were putting on aside from his general duties on site and stage design.
Rikki was a mixed blessing. He was loud, gregarious and amiable. We had a good working relationship with him though he could be unruly. He would breeze in from his Portsmouth menswear shop as something of a VIP but he really wasn’t around on the Island that much. Most of his input came to the fore at the festival itself. He could be a liability in terms of saying the wrong thing, at other times he was able to pull us out of a difficult spot and had valuable experience to add to our credibility. It was said that he took after his boxer father using his mouth like other people use their fists!
RNRChemist: How did you feel about things heading into the moment when the festival was actually about to start? Confident? Nervous? Terrified? All of the above?
RF: There were so many balls to keep in the air there was barely time to think about whether we felt nervous or terrified. In reality there were moments of feeling overawed by the event – like the first time stepping on to the stage at Woodside Bay and seeing that immense crowd – that was quite something.
RNRChemist: Who were your favorite acts from the entire weekend?
RF: Dylan was the favourite act for me that weekend. It was only during his set that I really sat down in the wings and listened without distraction. The Bonzo Dog Band were certainly amusing as I recall, The Band were stunning and Gary Farr did well. There were many great moments. Ronnie was really excited about the Who, though sadly he heard them only from a great distance away.
RNRChemist: What was it like to see a crowd that size? How do you remember them? Overall, were they well behaved?
RF: Generally the crowd was well behaved (with certain exceptions like towards Mr and Mrs Thackham, with their bungalow adjacent to the stage, or suffered a minor insult). We never expected otherwise. In fact there was earnestness in the demeanour of most folks, like they really came to hear the music – that was what they were there for. Generally nobody stood up during the acts. Etiquette was that you would sit and refrain from obscuring the view of your brother or sister in front of you. Otherwise you might find yourself pelted with coke cans.
RNRChemist: What was going through your head when the Band were delayed for a couple of hours and Dylan was getting antsy?
RF: We were not overly worried about the delay to see Dylan. It wasn’t as if the crowd was going anywhere and 10pm would have been a rather early finish. Of course it did cut out the likelihood of Dylan playing on longer, which would have been a bonus and certainly knocked out the possibility of a jam with the Beatles or Stones. Of course that was never really going to happen anyway. We were most aware of the discomfort and general scrimmaging in the press arena. We didn’t really intrude on Dylan during his preparations so we weren’t really too aware of his level of discomfort.
RNRChemist: Dylan's set: your thoughts? How do you think it went down then, and how do you feel about now with hindsight (and being able to listen to it in full via his recent release of it)?
RF: I enjoyed Dylan’s set immensely. Sure he was different. He sounded for the first time like he could really sing well. It was a well-constructed set, the Band were perfect in sync with what he was doing. There were quiet moments and raucous moments. It was great music. The digital release of recent times bears out the quality of the gig and it is a joy to hear it in its remastered form. The audience listened attentively rather than reacted in raptures and calls for encores continued for 20 minutes. There is no doubt that he was well received. For all those expecting the wired rock poet of 1966 they would have been disappointed. Dylan had leapt ahead in with his stage persona. Many were left behind wondering where the old Dylan was.
RNRChemist: How accurately (or not) do you feel the press covered Dylan's set, as well as the whole festival, afterward? It certainly seemed that both you and Bob weren't too keen on what was printed!
RF: Positive press reports were widespread. There was negativity expressed afterwards in certain quarters of the UK gutter press regarding Dylan cutting short his set - which of course was not true, but perhaps this might have been a reaction to the pre-festival hype predicting a super-jam with the Stones and the Beatles. Others were casting around for something to write – a peaceful trouble-free festival was really not exciting enough. The negatives were easily outweighed by the positives, but it was significantly damaging to Dylan for him to reflect uneasily on playing in the UK afterwards although initially he had seemed delighted with the event. Comments were as varied as George Harrison’s words reported in the Daily Mirror ‘I could go on talking about Dylan for eight hours. He’s unlimited in what he’s doing…’ to the Daily Sketch’s ‘Dylan cuts it short after midnight flop’ For us the flimsy complaints were irritating to say the least but by and large we were very happy. Reporting in general ranged from generally accurate to accounts laden with descriptions of debauchery and depravity, some of which could be quite funny.
RNRChemist: After the festival, can you describe how you felt? How did you think things went?
RF: After the festival and the initial exhaustion, we felt elated combined with a huge sense of relief for having pulled it off. We were astonished at how well it had gone really. We were completely inspired to repeat the event, if not to surpass it.
RNRChemist: What was the festival site like after everyone left? How long did it take to clean up and return to normal?
RF: The festival site was awash with rubbish as far as the eye could see. As you might expect, but there was no permanent damage other than minor damage to the catering tent, which had been used as a vantage point by Bob-spotters. It took three or four weeks to restore the site to its former condition.
RNRChemist: Any folks in particular that you want to single out as being particularly helpful throughout the whole festival, from planning to execution to wrap-up?
RF: There are certain individuals who were particularly helpful throughout the festival. Turner Smith on site was a powerhouse of a man, strapping and strong and willing to take on any task. He had good knowledge of construction and general engineering matters. Electrician Harry Garrood was similarly around from the beginning. He was very skilled and kept with us. Another older gent Dr Quantrill was willing to stick his neck out for us in influencing the authorities to have faith in us and to dismiss scurrilous health scares as ridiculous.
RNRChemist: What was the local reaction before, during, and after the festival? RF: Local reaction to the oncoming festival was not initially as great as you might think. In fact a large number of Isle of Wight residents simply had no time to really contemplate what was actually arriving on the Island. Obviously there was great excitement among the youngsters. Some of this was evidenced on site when youths would come by and offer to do any job, sometimes without pay. Older people expressed dismay at the prospect of the Island being flooded with festivalgoers – perhaps our slogan ‘Help Bob Dylan Sink the Isle of Wight’ didn’t help there. During the festival itself there were stresses on certain resources for instance provisions in local shops -but others saw the festival as a great opportunity and set out their stalls, literally! The reaction afterwards was similarly mixed. On the whole young people were very much in favour of the festival while those of the older generation who objected were wild with antagonism and would express their hostility in extreme terms.
RNRChemist: Why did you decide to jump right into planning the next one? How much time did you take to relax and bask in the afterglow of the '69 festival before starting to plan for '70?
RF: After just a few days or weeks of reflection, recuperation and taking stock our thoughts gravitated towards another festival. It was inevitable. There was no question of basking in an afterglow for very long. There was just too much to do if we were to repeat the festival only go one better.
RNRChemist: What's your overarching memory of that year and what you and your colleagues accomplished with the 1969 Isle of Wight festival?
RF: It was a staggering realisation to have accomplished what we had set out to do. It was life changing. It felt like we could do anything or that anything was possible, once the finance was organised.
RNRChemist: Ray and Caroline, thank you so much for your time and insight. You've got me looking forward to volume two even more and I hope we can continue our discussion after that book is published. In the meantime, to my readers, I can't recommend Stealing Dylan From Woodstock enough...if you're a fan of the era and/or any of the acts that played the IOW in 1969, you'll definitely enjoy reading about how it all came together. Britain's answer to Woodstock was bigger and in many ways better, and incredibly they topped it the following year, but the story of how that happened will have to wait for volume two...
As much of a Beatles fanatic as I am, I'm as big a fan of the Who. In fact, while I absolutely adore everything the Beatles did and count John Lennon and Paul McCartney as two of my favorite (and two of the best) songwriters of all time (along with Ray Davies), for reasons which I've gone into before and will touch on briefly here, the top songwriter in my life has been and always will be Pete Townshend. I don't exaggerate when I say that no other songwriter and guitarist has had a bigger influence on me than Pete. As a musician myself, his songwriting and lyrics are among those I've studied and deconstructed the most over the years and which I've tried to amalgamate into my own songwriting. Likewise, his inventive and fantastic guitar playing is the closest comparison to my own style and ability of anyone else I've ever been influenced by. He and I are both excellent rhythm players, better soloists than we give ourselves credit for, and we both have to find new and interesting ways to express ourselves through the guitar. (Let me stop here and say that I readily acknowledge that I'm not half the guitarist Pete is...his fingerstyle playing continues to blow my mind yet still slightly elude me, while I'm nowhere near the composer or pianist he is). As a fan, his songs have meant more to me than those written by probably anyone else, part of their magic and impact coming from the fact that they mean different things to me now that I'm a grown man than they did when I was a confused teenager, but no less relevant. Finally, as one of the most articulate, intelligent, and ambitious musicians in all of rock music, I'm always interested in what Pete has to say, and his vulnerability, self-esteem issues, and somewhat tortured soul have always fascinated me, not least of all because I can personally relate to them in my own ways.
All of that is a long-winded way of saying that I all but worship at the altar of Pete Townshend, so when I first heard the news in 2011 that his long-awaited memoirs would finally be published, to say I eagerly awaited the book would be an understatement. It was released in 2012 and my thoughtful wife bought me a copy for Christmas that year, knowing as she does how much Pete and his music mean to me. I read it cover to cover in a matter of days over the Christmas holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it, but then a funny thing happened...I started to read comments from music fans and Who fans online, on Amazon reviews, and elsewhere and they were a mixed bag. Many people felt the same way as I did and loved the book, but an even larger contingent of fans, as well as reviewers, disliked the book, saying it was too narcissistic and focused too much on Pete's personal life and not enough on the Who. I found this very strange since the whole point of a memoir is to discuss one's entire life, not just the most exciting bits. With that in mind, when it came time to review the book for this site, I decided to give it a fresh re-reading, and so that with that I'll (finally!) get on with it...
Who I Am took Pete many years to write and was originally over 1,000 pages long before his editor and publisher asked him to trim it to just over 500 pages. When I had first learned this it disappointed me because I would love to read all 1,000 pages that Pete wrote...I remain hopeful that someday an unedited collector's edition of the full manuscript will be published for us hardcore fans. In any event, the book as constituted begins with Pete's birth in London in May 1945, mere days after the end of World War II in Europe. He was born into a musical family: his father Cliff was a saxophone player in the RAF and led a popular dance band called the Squadronaires, while his mother Betty was a well-known singer and dancer. Young Pete was not encouraged to pursue music as a child and in fact, in many ways he was discouraged, mainly by his father. He paints the portrait of a very lonely and isolated childhood, always on the road with his parents when they were performing, and of feeling left out at school. His lone friend was Jimpy, a neighborhood boy he fondly remembers. He was further traumatized at the age of six when he was sent to live with his crazy grandmother Denny, who he later says was literally "insane." His parents' marriage was falling apart due to their alcoholism and persistent extramarital affairs and for some reason that Pete to this day doesn't understand, they thought sending him to live with Denny would help. She was in the beginning stages of severe mental illness and abused him mentally, emotionally, and physically. She also allowed several strange men she would randomly invite in from the bus station across the street to sexually abuse Pete, the memories of which he would suppress until much later in his life. After this harrowing year, Cliff and Betty reconciled and brought Pete back to live with him. It was during these subsequent school years that he befriended future bandmates John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey (the latter who punched Pete on the playground during their first encounter...a rocky start to a lifelong friendship!). After displaying some musical aptitude while noodling on a piano, and encouraged by his beloved Aunt Trilby, Pete took up guitar, taught himself to play, and the rest is the well-known story of the Who.
I don't intend to go into much detail on the Who's career in this review as it's been done to death, both by me right here on this site, as well as countless others. Pete himself goes through their career in good detail, from his time in art college when he joined the Detours in 1961 to the solidifying of their line-up in 1964 and their subsequent career. The interesting part of all of this is how he describes his creative process as he learned how to write songs, developed his home recording studios (an area in which he was a true pioneer), and created masterpieces like Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia. Throughout this period in the book, he also touches on his feelings of loneliness, emptiness, and the spiritual vacuum that was eventually filled by his becoming a lifelong disciple of Meher Baba in 1968. This went hand in hand with his self-loathing and low self-esteem, especially as he slowly sank further into alcoholism and was sporadically unfaithful to his wife Karen. In fact, it's his constant relationship problems that run throughout almost the entire book which even to such a huge fan as myself, are difficult to comprehend. He was incredibly shy and lacked confidence around girls as a young man, and he didn't have his first sexual experiences with a woman until he was around twenty years old. From that moment on, it's not that he was a serial philanderer in the mold of Mick Jagger or many other of his rock and roll peers; Pete's problem was that he was a serial romantic. Apart from a handful of one-night stands during his years on the road with the Who, he mentions how he tried very hard to stay faithful to Karen, which he able to do for long stretches at a time. However, getting back to the "serial romantic" bit, he was constantly falling in love with other women and embarking on newly obsessive relationships with them. At the same time, he kept professing his love for the long-suffering Karen, wanting desperately to stay married and be a good father to their young children, yet his periods of fulfillment were always countered with flights of fancy with other ladies. As a husband and father myself, this is the biggest aspect of his personality of his that was most difficult for me to understand; it fascinated me that he could rationalize it as much as he did, while at the same time it confused and disturbed me, especially because Pete didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about his marriage or the way he fell in and out of love with just about every woman, including his wife. It was almost anti-climactic when he and Karen finally divorced in the late 1990s after 30 years of marriage (with long stretches of separations over the final decade). He does, however, seem to be finally happy (and faithful!) with Rachel Fuller, with whom he's been in a relationship with since 1996. As he himself admits, much of this is due to her being a workaholic musician and hot-tempered individual, just like him...finally, he has found someone who can relate to him on that level and vice versa.
As for the biggest revelations in the book, in my opinion those would be Pete's discussions about his struggles with alcoholism, his hearing loss, and the scandal involving his investigation of his past childhood sexual abuse which led to his arrest in an online sting operation. Regarding his alcohol abuse, he grew up with two parents who had drinking problems and though he was able to control it reasonably well throughout the main part of the Who's career, after Keith Moon died he used alcohol (and a newly developed drug habit) to cope with his grief. Indeed, he touches on how he has never been good at coping with grief or expressing his sadness, and called the decision to carry on the Who in the wake of Keith's death, especially so quickly, as "insanity." He spent a long time sober in the 1980s but fell off the wagon again until he finally sobered up for good by the mid-1990s. When John Entwistle died in 2002, Pete was no less devastated but was able to handle his grief much better and didn't need alcohol as an emotional crutch. As for his hearing loss, the incredibly loud volumes the Who were famous for playing at during their live career certainly contributed, but Pete also pinpoints several specifics examples of when his hearing was acutely and irreparably damaged, including the famous Smothers Brothers Show performance in 1967 (thanks to Keith Moon purposely overloading the explosive charge in his bass drum), and an instance in the 1970s when the PA speaker stacks fed back so loudly next to him that it brought him to his knees.
And then finally, we get to the "child pornography" scandal that has dogged him to this day, is misunderstood by most of the public, and for which Pete still gets unfairly labeled a pervert. In the late 1990s, Pete had been blogging on his personal website on the evils of exploiting children, a crusade which was inspired by a friend he'd made earlier in the decade who had escaped from a Russian orphanage that was involved in this criminal activity. During a bout of "white knight syndrome" which he now regrets, he accessed a site and paid a small fee on his credit card in order to prove in a subsequent blog post not only how easy this material was to access, but that banks and credit card companies were complicit since they processed the financial transactions that contributed to the abuse of children. He called his bank to cancel the transaction, published his blog post, and thought nothing of it until nearly four years later when he was contacted by investigators and told that he had been caught in a sting called Operation Ore. Pete cooperated fully with authorities, who found nothing on any of his computers from his houses and studios which they forensically examined...they didn't find any images at all. Not only that, but the transaction on Pete's credit card never even went through in the first place because the bank never processed it since they were involved in the sting. However, this last fact wasn't learned by Pete until much later, well after he was presented with two choices by the police: admit his guilt (even though they themselves didn't believe him to be guilty and had cleared him of all wrongdoing) and be placed on a sex offender registry for a few years, or go to trial, plead not guilty, and clear his name. At the point at which he faced this decision, Pete was so tired and stressed from the entire ordeal and didn't want to remain in the public eye and go through the ordeal of a trial, so he took the first option which he has regretted to this very day. Even the revelation of all facts in the case, as well as many of his friends and colleagues, including bandmate Roger Daltrey defending Pete in the media has not done enough to exonerate him in the public's eyes. For Pete, as he explains, it's just something he'll have to live with and his only comfort is that his true friends and fans know the real story.
It's an age-old axiom that you should never meet (or learn too much about) your heroes, because you'll always be let down. I suppose in a way I've always been lucky in that I can separate the person from the art because if that weren't the case, there wouldn't be too much music I would be able to listen to! In the case of Who I Am, the book has done nothing to dampen my admiration for Pete Townshend the musician and musical innovator, and as for Pete Townshend the person, apart from his confusing views on love and marriage (which, given the strange and dysfunctional marriage of his parents, which involved his mother having a long-time boyfriend on the side that she made no effort to hide from Pete or his dad, explains why Pete had this attitude himself), there was nothing that made me like him any less. In most cases I was able to understand and appreciate why he is the way he is a lot more than I did before I read his book. A criticism often levelled at this book is that Pete is too verbose, pretentious, and that he goes on and on about boring things like the various houses and boats he's owned, or his recording studios. For me, I could listen to/read about Pete talk about recording gear and technique all day, but that's probably because I'm a musician myself...I realize that more casual or non-musician fans would find this boring. I can see certainly where these multiple criticisms come from and they do have some validity, as even I got a bit tired of reading about every house Pete decided to buy on a whim (to his credit, he is honest about the fact that he's rich and privileged in ways most of us aren't), but at the same time anyone who is enough of a Townshend fan to want to read this book should already have a pretty good idea going into it what he's like. Again with the disclaimer that I'm a massive Townshend fan, my only major complaint with the book is that I wanted more...my sincere hope is to someday read the unedited 1,000 page manuscript. Otherwise, the book is enjoyable, easy to read, brutally honest and candid, and contains numerous examples of the trademark Townshend dry humor as well as some very insightful and thought-provoking passages. It's not a perfect book but it's damn good...needless to say, whether you end up loving or hating the book, it's essential reading for any Who fan.
As you know, I've always been musically inclined and music and writing have long been my two creative outlets for all of my life. However, only people who know me really well personally would also know that in my youth I was also quite a good artist. I used to love to draw and spent many hours during those years making pictures of all sorts of things, especially super heroes. I wasn't the greatest artist, but I was better than decent and even now, as out of practice as I am, my kids love it when I draw with them. For those of you who might remember, I found a drawing of some of my favorite guitarists that I did when I was sixteen which I posted last year...not too bad, right?
But enough of that...the whole thing that prompted this little post is what is shown above. While I was in high school, I took art classes for a year and learned all sorts of things about drawing and painting. We kept a portfolio of all of our work that was saved throughout the year and which we got to keep at the end of the class. I was going through it a few weeks ago as I moved it from a closet to another closet (of course) and remembered this painting I did of the album cover triptych from Tommy. I did it during a free period I had at school, just for fun...my art teacher allowed me to come in and use the materials for it. It's not perfect but I think it came out pretty good...you can compare for yourself with the real cover which is shown below. Mine doesn't have the proper depth on the edges of the sphere as the actual art by Mike McInnerney but otherwise it's fairly close. I did this at the end of senior year of high school, when I had just turned seventeen, so this would have been in the spring of 1997.
