Between
Monday June 10 and Friday June 14, 1974, The Who played four shows at Madison
Square Garden in New York and I attended every one. Unfortunately they weren’t
at their best, and it turned out that much of the problem was down to fans in
the front few rows shouting 'Jump, Pete, Jump' to Townshend, which shocked him
enormously. For the first time, he said later, he felt he was parodying
himself, even resembling a circus act, and needed to force his uniquely
athletic stage style that was so much a part of the excitement of The Who and
which had previously come naturally to him. In the short term this contributed
to an unsatisfactory season of concerts, at least by the absurdly high standards
The Who had set in the past, and in the long term the behaviour of these fans
had a profound effect on his attitude towards the group. Most fans loved the
band no matter what, of course, and their blind faith depressed Pete still
further.
From where I was sat I couldn't see the fans up
front but I could tell something wasn't right. I put it down to sound problems,
as was so often the case with The Who, especially when they hadn't played for a
while. It was the first time they’d played the Garden so the acoustics were new
to them. I thought they'd iron out the problems after the first gig but they
didn't, not really. It was only later that I realised the true problem ran far
deeper, and I suspect that the band used the dodgy sound as an excuse when
they, or at least Pete, knew the problems lay deeper too. They hadn't recorded
any new material since Quadrophenia,
so the set they played was a run-through of their past, a kind of greatest hits
selection. The only real surprise was that they re-introduced 'Tattoo' into the
set which the fans (and I) loved but which somehow contributed to a slightly unsettling
feeling of nostalgia that had hit me earlier when I saw High Numbers t-shirts on
sale outside the arena. Pete always wanted to progress but the others were
content with the way things were, and I think this was also part of the
problem. It was a problem that would never go away.
There was a terrible atmosphere backstage after the
opening concert. The Who were screaming at each other behind a locked dressing
room door. Kit Lambert, who wasn't often seen at Who concerts by 1974, had
turned up unexpectedly, drunk as a lord and demanding to mix the on-stage PA in
future, a ludicrous suggestion, and that didn't help matters either. Soundman Bobby
Pridden ran out of the dressing room shouting that he was through with The Who,
and I took him aside into another room and spent ages telling him not to quit,
and of course he didn't. Poor loyal Bob, the real fifth member of The Who, caught
it in the neck so many times but he loved them far too much to ever quit.
Eventually everyone calmed down and Pete Rudge, who was managing them in the US
at the time, asked me to quietly steer Lambert away from the scene which I
somehow managed to do. On our way back uptown to the Navarro I asked Kit if he
could ask his limousine driver to stop so I could buy a pack of cigarettes. We
stopped and Kit rushed into a liquor store and came back with two cartons for
me – 20 packets!
The concerts improved as the week went by but they were never really
firing on all four cylinders. Tuesday was much better than Monday, though, and
after this show I took Pete and John down to Club 82 where Television were
playing. Pete said he wanted to see some young New York bands, and he liked
Television but John hated them.
I
did an interview with Pete on the Wednesday but he seemed in a bad way,
stressed out through working on the Tommy
film soundtrack, drinking too much and torn between the wishes of the fans, the
band and what he wanted to do himself. The Who was like a high-performance
sports car which needed to be kept in tune in order to obtain optimum results.
When they took on a lengthy tour the first show or two might have been slightly
under par but when they hit their stride, Olympic fitness as it were, they were
superb. When they played the odd show here and there they suffered through
being out of condition – and sometimes it showed. Before these MSG shows they
hadn't been playing live as often as they used to but Pete had certainly been
working for the benefit of The Who, and I think he felt a great responsibility
to everyone: the other three, the fans, the film producers and, of course, his
family. Everybody wanted a piece of him, even me interviewing him for MM, but he
needed a break from everything.
During their stay in New York, Pete stayed at the
luxurious Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue while the rest of the band took suites
at the Navarro on Central Park South which over the years had become the band's
regular New York hotel. It was the first time that the whole group hadn't
stayed together in the same hotel, but Pete stayed in touch with developments
at the Navarro by using a rudimentary cordless mobile phone, probably one of
the earliest of its type, that had been assembled by the group's sound crew.
After the Thursday show Keith and I visited John
Lennon at the Pierre which I’ll write about in a separate post. On Friday, the
final night, Pete smashed three of his Gibson Les Pauls and Keith joined in,
chucking his drum kit everywhere and smashing the fourth and only remaining guitar.
My date for this show was Debbie Harry and afterwards we went to The Who’s party
at a roller skating rink where the picture on my fb header was taken.
Since I wrote this I have been told by people who were at the front that at the Monday show just one 'fan' yelled jump to Pete and he was roundly snubbed by the genuine fans surrounding him.
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