Pete Townshend on recording Quadrophenia: extract from Who I Am

7/28/2019 Pete Townshend on recording Quadrophenia: extract from Who I Am

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HarperCollinsPublishers7785 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Pete Townshend 2012

Permission to reproduce extracts from letters is gratefully acknowledgedto Roger Daltrey, Bill Curbishley and Jackie Curbishley.

Melody Maker extracts on pages 205 and 211

IPC Media/IPC+ Syndication

While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyrightmaterial reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publisherswould like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to

incorporate missing acknowledgements in any futureedition of this book.

Pete Townshend asserts the moral right tobe identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book isavailable from the British Library

HB ISBN 978-0-00-746603-0TPB ISBN 978-0-00-746604-7EB ISBN 978-0-00-746687-0

Printed and bound in Great Britain byClays Ltd, St Ives plc

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16

A BEGGAR, A HYPOCRITE

In early 1973 I made several visits to Eric Claptons house, butnothing had changed. Lord Harlech, Alices father, joined me

there one day. It was tense. While Alice was out of the room,

Eric told Alices father his fears that if he and Alice stopped

using heroin their relationship might change, and he might not

still feel in love with her. Harlech gently made it clear that he

cared only for their lives at this point. Later he called me and

proposed that to help Eric I should ask him to perform inJanuary at a concert at the Rainbow for a charity Lord Harlech

supported.

When Eric agreed in principle I began to put a band together.

I turned first to Ronnie Wood, who provided positive, gener-

ous energy. We invited Jim Capaldi, Traffics drummer, and

Steve Winwood. Rick Grech from Family, whom I adored,

played bass. He introduced me to amyl nitrate in liquid form,telling me it was harmless, not a real drug at all. I hadnt used

any drugs since 1967, so my tolerance was low, and I was

impressed by the simple power of having the blood supply to

my brain quickened.

We started rehearsals at Ronnie Woods house, The Wick (a

house I had always loved, and dreamt of owning). Stevie

Winwood didnt appear. Speedy Aquaye, Georgie Fames

conga player, played along with Jim Capaldi on drums. Ron

Wood played in support of Eric, mainly slide guitar. I played

electric rhythm, chugging along in my usual way. Eric had a


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244 PETE TOWNSHEND: WHO I AM

very clear idea of what he wanted to do, and we very quickly

started to sound like a band. The room we rehearsed in was

oval, opening through three sets of french doors to the gardenand an open view of the Thames. Ronnies wife Krissy sat on

a stool smiling like an angel, wearing a flowery dress, her

blonde hair framing her schoolgirl-pretty face, which belied

both her stunning figure and her mischievous spirit. She made

it like a rock n roll affair that would have been perfectly

appropriate in California.

With only a few days to spare before we moved to a propertheatre to do a soundcheck, there was still no sign of Stevie

Winwood. I rang and threatened him with unspecified

violence, and the next day he duly arrived with his Hammond

organ. From then on the band took off into another level of

stratus cloud. There had always been a deep connection

between Eric and Stevie; they had, of course, played together

in Blind Faith, and worked together intuitively.The soundcheck was a breeze. On the night of the concert I

rolled up to Ronnie Woods house in my Mercedes 600 limo

and we all piled in. It felt like an epic event. Ronnie Lane and

his partner Katie came along for the ride. Stevie rolled a joint,

and I took a small puff of my first marijuana in more than five

years.

The concert, on 13 January 1973, passed flawlessly, and theatmosphere was quite glorious. Everyone who attended had

good things to say about it. Ron Wood played an astounding

solo exchange with Eric on Layla, and we extended the song

for ten minutes (it was edited for the live album release). With

no leaping around, I wasnt affected by the usual adrenaline

rush I had with The Who, which allowed me to enjoy every

note of the music played that evening. The stage seemed to

elevate slightly as we ended.

Id been part of the creation of a new band from the ground

up. Id known precisely how to play my part as a solid rhythm


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A BEGGAR, A HYPOCRITE 245

guitarist, and my contribution had been valuable. I hadnt

worked like this since the early days of The Who, and it felt

very good indeed.

Once the concert was over I settled back into my boozy

routine, wine at home with my family, cognac in my studio

when I was composing. I returned to Quadrophenia, the story

still incomplete, looking for a simple hook on which all the

music could hang.

I began to experience a powerful comedown from the lack ofamyl nitrate. I felt cold, depressed, tragic, lost and hopeless. On

a dark, wet, winter weekend in the jerry-built cottage at Cleeve,

with the river flooding part of the lawns, the wind howling

through the badly made doors and windows, my memory

pulled me back to a single night when I was 19 years old.

I had slept for a few hours under Brighton pier in 1964 with

my art-school friend, the pretty, strawberry-blonde Liz Reid.We had been together for a riotous night at the Aquarium

Ballroom after our gig on the night of a ModRocker street

battle on the seafront. Walking along the beach in the dark,

under the pier, trying to stay out of the drizzling rain, wed

come across a group of Mod boys in their anoraks. They were

giggling as the tide came in, getting their feet wet. We sat with

them for a while. We were all coming down from takingpurple hearts, the fashionable uppers of the period.

As I thought back to that night, a sense of falling and vertigo

came flooding back with the flooding river outside I felt that

same sense of depression and hopelessness. But I also felt

again the remembered romantic warmth of nodding off on the

milk-train home in the early hours, with Liz by my side. For a

short time we had both felt like Mods. There was something

wonderful in all that. We also fell in love, and yet I didnt go

on another date with Liz, never again. The moment with her

was frozen, exalted and would always be special.


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In the house at Cleeve, the river raging outside in the black-

ness as I looked back, I realised Id worked up or down to

this moment of epiphany for quite a few months. I wasntactually alone: I had a wife, kids and friends asleep upstairs in

the cottage. I grabbed a notebook and, anxiously and quickly,

while still in this sad, lonely mood, scribbled the story featured

on the inside sleeve of the original vinyl album of

Quadrophenia.

This was the story of Jimmy, a young Mod, hopeless,

stranded on a rock in the rain, wondering if he might findredemption through the recounting of his pathetic life thus far

by the four members of the band he felt had once reflected

him, now loved and lost, just as he had loved and lost every-

thing else important to him as a teenage Mod.

I wanted Quadrophenia to be released in quadrophonic sound,

four channels representing the four facets of my hero Jimmy,each channel taking the form of one member of The Who. As

the recording unfolded it became clear that, technically speak-

ing, Quadrophenia was going to be a complicated, audacious

project. I planned to emulate Walter Carloss Sonic Seasonings

album, with extraordinary soundscapes between tracks

providing atmosphere for my simple story. I wanted to capture

the raging sea in quadrophonic sound.My Cleeve studio would make a terrific quadrophonic

mixing suite, but it couldnt accommodate The Who for

recording. I needed a large commercial studio whose control

room included a quadrophonic speaker array I could trust.

Nothing like this existed in London, so we would have to do

what Id done in Cleeve, and build it ourselves. I turned to

Wiggy.

Wiggy, our dedicated, technically driven, seemingly insane

production manager, had started life with the band as Keith

and Johns driver (a baptism by fire), had progressed to


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looking after lighting, and then to dealing with promoters on

the road, booking hotels, making travel plans and bailing us

out of jail when he wasnt conspiring with us in the businessof getting arrested in the first place.

I explained to Wiggy that the studio at Cleeve would be fine

for mixing, but that the recording room there was basically a

tractor garage. He invited me to check out the road crews

storage facility and tape archive in Thessaly Road in Battersea,

which turned out to be a very large church hall full of road

gear.What a pity we dont have enough time to turn this build-

ing into a studio in time to record the tracks, I said.

Wiggy screwed up his eyes. When do you want it?

Sort of now? I replied apologetically.

Now, he repeated.

That would be good.

Six weeks later, through Wiggys employment of a troop ofthirty workers from an off-season circus, and with consider-

able help from John Alcock of Trackplan, we moved in. The

large studio room was complete, massively soundproofed,

lined in hardwoods, with two booths, one for grand piano,

one for acoustic guitar, and another smaller corridor that

doubled for guide vocal. The layout was perfect for us. I

believe Ramport, as the studio was known, was the first studioin London to offer three isolation booths in this way. It meant

we could record drums, bass, piano and acoustic guitar with

a guide vocal simultaneously.

The sound was glorious. We hired Ronnie Lanes mobile,

and used that to record the basic tracks until the work and

acoustics in our own control room were sorted out.

For Quadrophenias album sleeve I felt we needed an

approach that was photographic, truly authentic in detail.

Glyn Johns, who had co-produced Whos Next, suggested his

close friend Ethan Russell to shoot the sleeve photo for that


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album in 1971. Although I hadnt personally liked that

obelisk-pissing album cover, I loved Ethan and his work, and

knew he was perfect for a serious photo-document about ayoung Mod.

Barney had come back into my life around the time Karen

and I became interested in LSD and Meher Baba, back in

1967. He too became a follower of the Silent Master. From

then on we saw each other often, and I regarded him as inval-

uable in all matters relating to The Who. On this occasion he

helped put together some Mod consultants and a group ofpeople to pose as models for the Quadrophenia shoot. My

brother Paul and Janie Simons future wife were also in the

cast. It felt like a family affair.

Recording Quadrophenia with The Who was a joyful experi-

ence. Not having a driving licence, I travelled to and from

Ramport studio in Battersea by speedboat on the Thames.Inside the studio the walls were hung with Who trophies

gold discs, awards and souvenirs, most of which Id never seen

before. A flight case containing a full bar was always sitting

by the piano booth. I drank Rmy Martin by the pint from an

old-fashioned, heavy, dimpled mug, borrowed from the local

pub. Keiths drumkit faced the huge window between the

studio and control room, John was set up to his right and meto his left just as we appeared on stage. When Roger was

present he occupied a vocal booth next to the control room.

The studio was filled with exotic instruments we rarely

played: marimbas, glockenspiels, xylophones, vibraphones,

gongs, drumkits and tympani. (Keith knocked them all over in

the finale of the album.) There was also a Hammond organ,

electric pianos, a beautiful Bsendorfer piano, guitars, ampli-

fiers and all kinds of strange things. Wiggy had purchased

them from Mannys Music Store in New York City, and

charged them to a touring account.


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The control room completed in June, about a month after

we began recording was graced with brand new Studer tape

machines, 16-track, 8-track and twin stereo machines. Everyadd-on gadget deemed necessary was present in triplicate. We

had a gorgeous, eccentric, blue Helios desk, de rigueur in rock

at that time. Instead of the usual two (or at the most four)

large monitor speakers our control room had twelve JBL

4320s! Four pairs at the front, two pairs at the back. The

sound level was monstrous.

There was a button on the desk that said Do Not Press.The button had no purpose other than to create shock

and was potentially the stuff of heart-attack. If pressed, a

nuclear explosion shuddered the room at a reading of about

138db. The effect would send most normal folk to the floor in

tears.

Ironically, because of the UK miners strikes, triggered by

mining disasters and poor working conditions, there weremassive strikes while we were recording the Quadrophenia

album in 1973, and we had to work with a government-

imposed three-day working week meant to preserve energy.

After a couple of weeks preparation the Ramport recording

began in earnest on 22 June. Kit pretended to be the albums

producer for the first several weeks. Showing up smashed,usually extremely late, he sometimes brought delicious but

unwanted food from the trendy South Kensington restaurant

AD8, in which he had shares. He scribbled his usual incom-

prehensible notes on tape boxes, and for a while prevented

our engineer Ron Nevison doing his job properly.

By the end of the second week I had had enough. Kit had

been distracting the recording process, erasing tapes while I

was out of the room, and I just snapped. Close to punching

Kit, I sacked him instead. For weeks afterwards we were

visited by irritated heroin dealers trying to find him.


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Ramport started to take on a new life. I loved working

there. Wiggy and Keith always managed to hire gorgeous,

sexy women to help run the studio. Three local girls sat at thedesk behind the control-room window, watching us play,

wide-eyed and impressed. There was no better audience.

When John started work on the brass parts, he gathered for

the purpose at least twenty or thirty magnificent trumpets,

horns and valve trombones. He could play all of them, writing

out his parts on manuscript paper like an orthodox composer,

and working through the recording meticulously until his lipsstarted to go numb. He was wonderful to work with, disci-

plined, funny and inspired. What he arranged and played on

a whole variety of exotic brass instruments fitted my own

synthesiser and strings arrangements perfectly. The Who

members still had that one all-important facility when we

were making music: we listened to each other.

The rule we established during recording was that energeticmusical rage would be used throughout. We didnt need

throwaway tracks for light relief, we didnt need light and

shade, irony or humour. An iconic Daltrey bellow could

convey an extraordinary range of human emotion: withering

sadness, self-pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual despera-

tion, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage

and frustration, joy and triumph.The angst of those teenage years in which we all feel misun-

derstood is easy to make fun of, but its real, and it brings my

hero Jimmy to the brink of suicide. When, at the end of the

album version of the Quadrophenia story, Jimmy steals a boat

and takes it out to a rock in the middle of the sea, his anguished

but jubilant cry, Love reign oer me, suggests that he has

finally been able to integrate his multiple selves. Even as author

and composer I realised I had no right to decide whether or

not Jimmy should end his own life. I let Jimmy decide for

himself.


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Studio recording was completed by 1 August. Mixing began

at my studio in a barn two days later. I was excited by this

move, and looked forward to creating the soundscapes I feltwould transform the music wed just recorded into a stunning

sonic journey. When finished it would provide us with a rock-

opera piece cohesive enough to replace even improve on

Tommy as the backbone of our stage show.

I spent part of the summer recording sound effects: rain,

storms, thunder, trains, traffic and of course the sea. I also

commissioned a radio announcer to cover the Mods andRockers battles on the beaches, and recorded myself walking

along a beach singing the first few lines of Sea and Sand to

use as a prelude. Taping birds taking off on the river was a

major coup, and I had a lucky moment as I approached a

gaggle of geese in my punt. This kind of sound design is almost

as fulfilling to me as composing music.

Mixing ran from 3 August to 12 September. There were afew short breaks for business, family (as it was the holiday

season) and catching up on the quadrophonic technology I

hoped would allow me to do a quad remix once wed

completed the stereo. This was the most intensely creative and

demanding studio work I had ever done.

Thus far, by mid-September 1973, every part of my evolvingplan for Quadrophenia had unfolded gloriously. Apart from

Keiths occasional antics the band had supported me, given me

creative space and done the most extraordinary work in the

studio. All we needed was a month and we might have finished

things properly. Instead, I was shocked to read in the press

that the UK release date of the double album was less than a

month away, on 13 October, with the first tour date a little

more than two weeks later.

I still had to complete the quadrophonic mixes that I esti-

mated would take about a month. And Id figured that the rest


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of the work we had to do mastering the stereo album in Los

Angeles, mastering a quadrophonic version, preparing quad-

rophonic backing tapes for our stage rehearsals, rehearsingand getting the show on the road would take us through the

winter. Id imagined we would probably tour the album in

spring 1974, but the idiots at Track couldnt bear to miss the

lucrative Christmas selling period, and forced the premature

release date.

I should say, in their defence, that the idiots at Track were

as deeply in the red financially as The Who by this time, sotheir decision was probably necessary to keep the company

afloat. Building Ramport studio had cost 330,000 at the time

of opening (nearly ten times that at todays standards). Roger

was on edge. He had been harbouring grave doubts about our

managers honesty.* The heavy spending of his fellow band

members, and Wiggy for the new studio was driving Roger

crazy.Tension was building for me, too. When I rushed from

Cleeve to Shepperton with stage tapes that had taken forty-

eight hours to prepare, having had no sleep at all, and Roger

announced he had waited long enough and was about to go

home, I flipped. It wasnt Rogers fault, but I lashed out at

him, trying to give him the Abbie Hoffman treatment with the

neck of the guitar, while a film crew recorded for posterityevery move we made. Roger responded by knocking me out.

Some observers claim I arrived drunk. Yes, Bob and I had

celebrated finishing the stage tapes with a brandy in my limo,

but on this occasion it would have been mainly exhaustion

and frustration, not booze, that was ailing me.

* * *

* I may have sacked Kit as a record producer but he was still The Whos managerand we were still on Track records, the label owned by Kit and Chris.


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Critical reaction to Quadrophenias October 1973 release was

relatively muted compared with the raging success ofTommy,

but over the years it has come to be seen as superior to Tommyboth musically and conceptually, and as my redemption after

the collapse ofLifehouse.* The album sleeve note ends this

way:

So thats why Im here, the bleeding boat drifted off and Im

stuck here in the pissing rain with my life flashing before me.

Only it isnt flashing, its crawling. Slowly. Now its just thebare bones of what I am.

A tough guy, a helpless dancer.

A romantic: is it me for a moment?

A bloody lunatic. Ill even carry your bags.

A beggar, a hypocrite, love reign over me.

Schizophrenic? Im Bleeding Quadrophenic.

Roger was the helpless dancer; John, the romantic; Keith, the

bloody lunatic; and I, needless to say, was the beggar/hypo-

crite. But the four aspects of Jimmy the Mods multiple person-

ality were, in a sense, allto be found in me, and I had always

known it.

I had spent money creating a quadrophonic PA system similar

to that used at the time by Pink Floyd. Again Roger was

concerned about the cost, being particularly attuned to the

financial chaos that surrounded us. We all had a longstanding

gripe with Kit and Chris over the fact that seven years previ-

ously we had allowed our recording contract to be vested with

* Commercially it reached the highest position of any Who album in the States atNo. 2 and in the long term has achieved the recognition I hoped for it. IGN, forinstance, placed Quadrophenia at No. 1 in their list of the greatest classic rockalbums of all time.


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Track (instead of directly with Polydor). We had thought that

we would be partners or shareholders: this never happened.

Jimi Hendrix was their biggest signing by far, but Id broughtthem two No. 1 artists in Arthur Brown and Thunderclap

Newman, and had received no royalties.

I was also covering some of Keiths day-to-day expenses by

lending him money that I clawed back in band meetings with

accountants that he rarely attended. Kit and Chris didnt try

to hide their troubles, or their addictions at the time. They had

hired two managerial second-in-commands in Peter Rudge(who went on to manage the Stones office in New York for a

while) and Bill Curbishley, a childhood friend of Chriss.

Keith himself had massive personal problems at this time.

We all knew he was crazy about his wife Kim, so it was hard

to work out what he was doing, bringing girls in and out of

the studio, behaving as though we were on the road.

Meanwhile my best friend Barney had taken to spending a lotof time at Tara House, ostensibly to hang out with Keith, but

Barney had fallen in love with Kim.

When Kim left the family home in October to file for

divorce, Barney sought out my advice. He wanted my permis-

sion to pursue her he was terribly torn between loyalty to the

band and his new passion for Kim. I pleaded with him not to

be a party to the break-up, as it would mean my having tochoose between him and Keith. Barney gave himself some time

to consider my plea, and missed his moment. Kim went to stay

with Ian McLagan (Mac) from The Faces. A week later Kim

and Mac were an item. They fled somewhere together, leaving

Keith to make death threats while Barney went back to Jan.

Not for the first time it occurred to me that I had to look no

farther than life right around me to find the makings of a rock

opera at least of a rock soap opera.

I listened to Keith on the finished Quadrophenia album. His

playing was great, but I worried about him: he had lost his


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Pete Townshend on recording Quadrophenia: extract from Who I Am

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