Tomorrow marks the 68th birthday of one of the most influential musicians of the 1960s. The 60s were the stand-out decade for musical expansion beginning as they did with Elvis, Buddy and Cliff and ending with Led Zepellin, Elton John and David Bowie. Of course, it was the acts in the middle who dominated the scene. In particular, the Beatles bestrode the decade as Gulliver amongst the Lilliputians. Not far behind them came The Rolling Stones and The Kinks. For their part, the Americans gave us the Beach Boys, the Byrds and the Monkees. Back in the UK, the band who were to conquer America unlike any other were the Who. They alone played all the iconic gigs: Woodstock, Monterey and the first Isle of Wight festival. As a stage act, they were second to none.
Yesterday marked the 49th anniversary of the multiple arrests made on Brighton Beach as rival gangs of Mods and Rockers engaged in fights on the beach. Culturally, they constituted the polar opposites of 60s youth. The Rockers gravitated towards the early rock and roll sound of people like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochrane. The film Easy Rider could have been made for them. The Mods by contrast were more concerned with looking the part and espoused the early rhythm and blues music which was making its way over to the UK from the States. A wave of British groups sprang up to epitomise Mod Culture. They dressed in the coolest Italian fashions and eschewed large British motorbikes in favour of the more aesthetically stylish Italian scooter. The Mod movement was very image-orientated and even its music was very cool compared to established sound of rock and roll.
The main UK proponents of the Mod cause were the Small Faces, the Yardbirds and the Who. Each started off covering rhythm and blues standards and quickly progressed to writing their own songs. The Small Faces had the songwriting partnership of lead singer and guitarist Steve Marriott with diminutive bass player Ronnie Lane. For the time they were together, they turned out a very impressive back catalogue culminating in the highly regarded concept album "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" featuring the gobbledygook English narration of the incomparable Stanley Unwin. The Yardbirds became the laboratory for guitar players and restricted themselves to three - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Difficult to top that trio in any era. The Yardbirds relied on song writing from all parts of the band with Paul Samwell-Smith, Keith Relf, Chris Dreja and Jim Macarty all contributing regularly. The Who were reliant on the songwriting genius of the man who turns 68 tomorrow. Peter Dennis Blanford Townshend remains the driving force for the group as it approaches its fiftieth year in the business.
In 1964, they scored their first hit with "Can't explain" but it was their third in 1965 which brought them to everyone's attention. My Generation was the youth anthem for the 1960s. It is remarkable to reflect that Pete Townshend was still only nineteen when he wrote it. The immortal lyric "I hope I die before I get old" seemed somehow to sum up how the youth felt about the older generation. They struggled to relate to a generation who had lived through the Second World War with all its hardship and distress. Townshend's generation didn't want that life. They wanted excitement. They wanted to experiment. They wanted to push the boundaries. They didn't want to be dictated to by an older generation who just didn't understand. The song was, and remains, a masterpiece which captured the musical zeitgeist of the time. The stuttering vocals of Roger Daltrey suggest the use of the F word but cleverly transmute into Fade away.
Townshend's musical accomplishments seemed always to be one step ahead of the game at least until Quadrophenia was released in 1973. Two years earlier, he had released the album which remains their finest, Who's Next. The album resulted from an aborted project in which Pete Townshend had placed much faith. The Lifehouse project never came to fruition but had been intended to stage a new type of musical show in which the audience and the band where as one, all searching for that elusive perfect note. In hindsight, it all probably seems a load of hippy nonsense. Be that as it may, the album which resulted was extraordinary with ten tracks. It is impossible to point to a weak track. Of the ten though, three in particular stand out: "Won't get fooled again", "Baba O'Reilly" and the semi-autobiographical "Behind Blue Eyes".
The lyrics of the latter are widely held to be written about himself. "No-one know what it's like, To be the bad man, To be the sad man, Behind blue eyes". Its a very poignant song dripping in angst and frustration. I suspect few people could listen to it without identifying at least in part with the lyric.
Well, he didn't die before he got old although plenty of his musical peers did. Like them, he too experimented with drugs and alcohol but he got lucky. The death in 1978 of the Who's legendary drummer Keith Moon at the age of just 32 was surprising only for the fact that he had managed to live that long. At the height of his own addiction in the early 1980s, few would have foreseen the Modfather reaching his 68th birthday. That he has done so is perhaps testament to the irony of his 1965 lyrics. "I hope I die before I get old" was perhaps just a passing swipe at the establishment which he so despised. To coin an interesting quote from the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited, rather than having a great will to live perhaps "he has an even greater fear of death". Anyway, Happy Birthday Pete and as a lifelong fan, many thanks for the music.
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