Pete Townshend:"'Won't Get Fooled Again' was really about the fact that at one point in the story there's an offer made to the wilde ones, the gypsies. They're offered a kind of amnesty if they accept the status quo. In other words, 'You come into the system, you be part of the system, you become systemised, you come onto the grid with us, instead of running wild concerts and living this wild life, causing a threat to the way that we want to run society, come in with us and we'll give you power in return.' And the hero of the piece warns, 'Don't be fooled, don't get taken in. If you become a leader or I become a leader, we'll just be as bad as everybody else.'" ..... "The basic lyric came from the first verse, which was a short stanza I wrote called 'Never Again', I think, after somebody had writen to me. Mick Jagger had been seen in the square outside the US Embasy in the marches here against the Vietnam War, John Lennon was becoming actively involved in a worldwide peace campaign, and The Who were doing absolutely nothing politically." (1989:BBC Radio)
Roger Daltrey:"That big scream I did on ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ was totally instinctive, but it became kind of the focal point of the song. It pisses me off because I don’t get any royalties for it! But I hated it when they chopped it down. I used to say ‘Fuck it, put it out as eight minutes’, but there’d always be some excuse about not fitting it on or some technical thing at the pressing plant." (2015:Uncut)
Roger Daltrey: vocals
Pete Townshend: acoustic and electric guitars, synthesized organ, backing vocals
John Entwistle: bass
Keith Moon: drums
Produced: The Who
Engineered/Asociate Produced: Glyn Johns
Recorded at: Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, Stargroves, Berkshire, England AND
..... Olympic Studios, London, England, April–May 1971
Pete Townshend:"My Generation' was very much about trying to find a place in society." (Rolling Stone)
Pete Townshend:"I wasn’t made to feel particularly welcome in that area (where he lived), I thought they were snobs. I was an angry, cocky young man but I felt pushed around. The funny thing back then was that you didn’t have to pay for parking, so I plonked it (his Packard V12 hearse) outside my place thinking it looked rather cool (towed on Queen Mother's request). Í saw her as a boring old lady who had nothing better to do than go around taking away teenagers’ cars. But I got a rather decent song out of it, so, cheers, Ma’am." (2014:The Daily Mail)
Roger Daltrey:“I have got a stutter. I control it much better now but not in those days. When we were in the studio doing ‘My Generation’, Kit Lambert came up to me and said ‘STUTTER!’ I said ‘What?’ He said ‘Stutter the words – it makes ?it sound like you’re pilled’ And I said, ‘Oh… like I am!’ And that’s how it happened. It was always in there, it was always suggested with the ‘f-f-fade’ but the rest of it was improvised. But… it’s a fucking great record, it really is.” (2015:Uncut)
Pete Townshend:"Without Mose (Allison) I wouldn't have written 'My Generation'."
Townshend reportedly wrote the song on a train and is said to have been inspired by the Queen Mother who is alleged to have had Townshend's 1935 Packard hearse towed off a street in Belgravia because she was offended by the sight of it during her daily drive through the neighbourhood. Townshend has also credited Mose Allison's "Young Man Blues" as the inspiration for the song. (Wikipedia)
The Queen Mother, God bless her, can’t claim responsibility for many rock songs. But she can take considerable credit for The Who’s My Generation, the loudest, snottiest rock ’n’ roll anthem of them all. A howl of teenage angst that still reverberates through the music of U2, Oasis, Robbie Williams and even One Direction, the song takes pride of place on their latest release, The Who Hits 50, and is certain to feature in all its live and livid glory when they start their two-year ‘Beginning Of The Long Goodbye’ tour next month, celebrating The Who’s half-century. My Generation came kicking and screaming into the world in late 1964, when Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter, purchased an ancient Packard V12 hearse for £90 and parked it proudly outside his flat in Belgravia.
Within days, the vehicle had vanished. A mysterious telephone call informed Townshend that the car had been impounded upon the request of the Queen Mother, as she had to pass it every day and it brought to mind her late husband King George VI’s funeral 12 years earlier. Recovery would cost an extortionate £250, but the caller offered to pay this fee in exchange for ownership of the majestic motor. Whether or not the enigmatic Royal representative ever really existed we’ll never know. But Townshend resentfully agreed to the dubious deal then, suitably incensed, finished writing My Generation (‘which I’d had brewing’) and dedicated it to the Queen Mum. (The Daily Mail)
Pete Townshend:"“It worked. It made the whole story lighter, but it also made it more accessible and that allowed me to go deeper. Suddenly there was this sense that pinball was about the universe and an autistic, Asperger’s-afflicted, deaf, dumb and blind kid could be the key to it all.”" (Toronto Star)
Roger Daltrey:“Kit’s production on ‘Pinball Wizard’ is absolutely tremendous. The whole montage of sounds he got in emulating the pinball machine is extraordinary. I don’t think he got enough recognition for his work on that. Not necessarily the sound he got – because most of the time making Tommy we were out of our boxes, God knows what we were doing – but the actual arrangements and the ideas, the harmonies and the structures.” (2016:Uncut)
Pete Townshend:"the most clumsy piece of writing [I'd] ever done"
The lyrics are written from the perspective of a pinball champion, called "Local Lad" in the Tommy libretto book, astounded by the skills of the opera's eponymous main character, Tommy Walker: "What makes him so good?; He ain't got no distractions; Can't hear those buzzers and bells; Don't see lights a flashin'; Plays by sense of smell.; Always has a replay; Never tilts at all; That deaf dumb and blind kid; Sure plays a mean pin ball.", and "I thought I was the Bally table king, but I just handed my pinball crown to him". (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, harmonica
Pete Townshend – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
John Entwistle – bass, French horn, backing vocals
Keith Moon – drums
Produced: Kit Lambert
Engineered: Damon Lyon-Shaw
Recorded at: IBC Studios, London, England
Pete Townshend:"This was a number I wrote while I was doing these experiments with tapes on the synthersizer. Among my plans for the concert and film of the concert at the Young Vic was to take a person out of the audience and feed information - height, weight, astrological details, beliefs and behaviour etc - about that person into the synthersizer. The synthersizer would then select notes from the pattern of that person. It would be like translating a person into music. On this particular track I programmed details about the life of Meher Baba and that provides the backing for the number." (1971)
Pete Townshend:"The music I was writing for Life House was more interlude music than individual themes. The nearest thing I got to the type of music I thought I would come up with was 'Baba O'Riley'. It was a theme I put together in reaction to Meher Baba himself. That was his theme. That was the sound I thought represented the power and, at the same time, the ease of his personality. Life House was an incredibly ambitious project, but it got entirely out of hand." (1974)
Townshend originally wrote "Baba O'Riley" for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera that was to be the follow-up to the Who's 1969 opera, Tommy. In Lifehouse, the song would be sung at the beginning by a Scottish farmer named Ray, as he gathers his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. When Lifehouse was scrapped, eight of the songs were salvaged and recorded for The Who's 1971 album Who's Next, with "Baba O'Riley" as the lead-off track.
Townshend stated in an interview that "'Baba O'Riley' is about the absolute desolation of teenagers at Woodstock, where the patrons were smacked out on acid and 20 people had brain damage. The irony was that some listeners took the song to be a teenage celebration: 'Teenage Wasteland, yes! We're all wasted!'" "Baba O'Riley" title combines the names of Meher Baba and Terry Riley, two of Townshend's philosophical and musical mentors.[3] The song is often mistakenly called "Teenage Wasteland", after the phrase repeated in the song. "Teenage Wasteland" was in fact a working title for the song in its early incarnations as part of the Lifehouse project, but eventually became the title for a different but related song by Townshend, which is slower and features more lyrics. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals
Pete Townshend – lead vocals (middle eight), Lowrey TBO-1 organ, piano, guitar
John Entwistle – bass guitar
Keith Moon – drums
Dave Arbus – cello
Produced: The Who
Engineered/Associate produced: Glyn Johns
Recorded at: Olympic Studios in London, England, May 1971
Pete Townshend:""Who Are You" was written about meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols after an awful 13-hour encounter with Allan Klein who, in my personal opinion, is the awesome rock leech-godfather. In one sense the song is more about the demands of new friendship than blood-letting challenge. Roger's aggressive reading of my nihilistic lyric redirected its function by the simple act of singing "Who the fuck are you..." when I had written "Who, who, who are you..." Steve and Paul became real 'mates' of mine in the English sense. We socialized a few times. Got drunk (well, I did) and I have to say to their credit, for a couple of figurehead anarchists, they seemed sincerely concerned about my decaying condition at the time."
Pete Townshend:"I'd like to think that where the song came from wasn’t the feet that I was drunk when I did the demo, but the fact that I was f--king angry with [manager] Allen Klein, and that the song was an outlet for that anger."
Roger Daltrey:"We were getting incredible accolades from some of the new Punk bands. They were saying how much they loved The Who, that we were the only band they'd leave alive after they'd taken out the rest of the establishment! But I felt very threatened by the Punk thing at first. To me it was like, 'Well, they think they're f---ing tough, but we're f---ing tougher.' It unsettled me in my vocals. When I listen back to 'Who Are You?' I can hear that it made me incredibly aggressive. But that's what that song was about. Being pissed and aggressive and a c---!" (2015:Uncut)
Musically, the origins of "Who Are You" can be traced back to "Meher Baba M4 (Signal Box)", a 1971 synthesizer instrumental track that was later released on Pete Townshend's solo album, Psychoderelict. Early performances of the song were seen in both 1976 and 1977. ..... The lyrics of "Who Are You" were inspired by an incident Townshend experienced. After going out drinking with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Townshend was found in a "Soho doorway" by a policeman, who let him go if he could safely walk away. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, percussion
Pete Townshend – guitars, piano, synthesizer, backing vocals
John Entwistle – bass guitar, synthesizer, backing vocals
Keith Moon – drums, percussion
Rod Argent – piano
Andy Fairweather-Low – backing vocals
Produced: Glyn Johns, Jon Astley
Engineered: who are you
Recorded at: Ramport Studios, Battersea, London, England, October 4, 1977
..... (Overdubs: Eel Pie Sound, London, England)
Pete Townshend:"One of the best songs I've ever written. Quite a fiery Wagnerian piece. I spent a lot of time working on the vocal harmonies and structuring it. It was [originally] written about jealousy but actually turned out to be about the immense power of aspiration. You often see what it is you want to reach, and know you can't get at it and say, 'I'm gonna try.' Those words start to move you in a directin, as long as you say, 'I can see what I want, but there's no way I can get it.'"
Pete Townshend:“I think it’s one of the best-produced singles we ever did. We spent literally a whole day putting down layer and layer of harmonies on the ‘miles and miles’ section. I always loved that song and you listen to the drumming on it, it’s extraordinary – like a steam engine. That time, though, psychedelia, it was ?a bit too spongy for me. I found it pretentious and I didn’t like it – I couldn’t wait to get back to a good bit of Otis Redding. We did get into it in some ways but the difference between The Who and all these other bands getting into psychedelia was that, though we were all into the anti-war movement, every time we went on stage we were showing them what war was really like! At Monterey they’d come to hear all this peace and love music, not see us smash up our gear and blow things up. That’s what we did – woke them up a bit! That was all part of our success, though. The Who were the odd men out, totally different.” (2015:Uncut)
Pete Townshend: "To me it was the ultimate Who record, yet it didn't sell. I spat on the British record buyer."
Townshend wrote this shortly after meeting his future wife Karen. It was a reminder that even though he was on the road, he could still keep an eye on her from miles away. (Songfacts)
Recorded in several separate sessions in studios across two continents, the recording of "I Can See for Miles" exemplifies the increasingly sophisticated studio techniques of rock bands in the late 1960s, such as those used for the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The backing tracks were recorded in London, the vocals and overdubbing were performed in New York at Talentmasters Studios, and the album was mastered in Los Angeles at the Gold Star Studios. The initial UK mono pressing (Track Records) and the US Decca single has an overdubbed second bass line mixed upfront, whilst the drums are mixed slightly lower. (Wikipedia)
Pete Townshend:"The interesting thing about "Behind Blues Eyes" is it's one of the original songs for Lifehouse, which was my first film script - which was abandoned by the Who. That song was written for a lead character, and I think when I do that sometimes I actually do plunge deeper into my own psyche that I would at other times. I get accused of having been through a long period of self-analytical writing. That is not the way it felt to me. It might have been the way it appeared, but it was not the way it felt."
Pete Townshend:"Intended as a poorly aimed dirty joke. I had bought myself an accordion and learned to play it one afternoon. The polka-esque rhythm I managed to produce from it brought forth this song. Amazingly recorded by The Who to my disbelief. Further incredulity was caused when it became a hit for us in the USA."
Roger Daltrey:"It's so refreshingly simple. An incredibly catchy song. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is and I love it for that. Live audiences love it. Nothing wrong with a bit of ‘in-and-out’, mate!" (2015:Uncut)
"Squeezebox" is a slang term for accordions and related instruments. The song's lyrics consist mostly of sexual innuendo. Although Pete Townshend later said that the song originated as a dirty joke, he said that there was no double entendre. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – Lead vocals, tambourine
Pete Townshend – Acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, accordion, harmony vocals
John Entwistle – Bass guitar, harmony vocals
Keith Moon – Drums
Produced: Glyn Johns
Engineered: ??
Recorded at: Shepperton Studios' soundstage using Ronnie Lane's mobile studio, May 30, 1975
Pete Townshend:"[It] refers to Meher Baba's one time comment that rain was a blessing from God; that thunder was God's Voice. It's another plea to drown, only this time in the rain. Jimmy goes through a suicide crisis. He surrenders to the inevitable, and you know, you know, when it's over and he goes back to town he'll be going through the same shit, being in the same terrible family situation and so on, but he's moved up a level. He's weak still, but there's a strength in that weakness. He's in danger of maturing."
"Love, Reign o'er Me," along with "Is It in My Head?"(also from Quadrophenia), date back to 1972. Both songs were originally intended to be part of the unreleased autobiographical album, Rock Is Dead—Long Live Rock! This later evolved into Quadrophenia. "Love, Reign o'er Me" concerns the main character of Quadrophenia, Jimmy, having a personal crisis. With nothing left to live for, he finds a spiritual redemption in pouring rain. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals
Pete Townshend – lead and acoustic guitar, piano, synthesizer, "falling rain"
John Entwistle – bass guitar, brass
Keith Moon – drums, assorted percussion (timpani, gong)
Produced: Glyn Johns, the Who
Engineered: Glyn Johns
Recorded at: Olympic Studios, London, England, May, 1972
The message of unification and hope in this song was inspired by Meher Baba, a guru Pete Townshend was following. Townshend wrote Tommy in an attempt to bring people together through rock music. (Songfacts)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, harmonica
Pete Townshend – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
John Entwistle – bass, French horn, backing vocals
Keith Moon – drums
Produced: Kit Lambert
Engineered: Damon Lyon-Shaw
Recorded at: BC Studios, London, England
Roger Daltrey:"I remember when Pete came up with ‘Join Together’, he literally wrote it the night before we recorded it. I quite like it as a single, it’s got a good energy to it. But at that time I was still very doubtful about bringing in the synthesizer. I just felt that with a lot of songs we’d end up spending so much time creating these piddly one-note noises that it would’ve been better just doing it on a guitar. I mean, I’m a guitar man. I love the guitar; to me it’s the perfect rock instrument. I don’t think Pete did much with those sequencing things that he couldn’t have done on the guitar anyway." (2015:Uncut)
Pete Townshend:"Well there are dozens of these self conscious hymns to the last fifteen years appearing now and here's another one. This was featured briefly in the film for which Keith made his acting debut, That'll Be The Day. Billy Fury sang it. This is most definitely the definitive version. I had an idea once for a new album about the history of The Who called Rock Is Dead—Long Live Rock!. That idea later blossomed into Quadrophenia."
"Long Live Rock" was to have been included Rock Is Dead—Long Live Rock!, a 1972 Who album which was also to have had an accompanying television special, before the album was shelved. The lyrics of the song describe a concert at the Rainbow Theatre. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, harmonica
Pete Townshend – guitar, piano, synthesizers, backing vocals
John Entwistle – bass, backing vocals
Keith Moon – drums
Produced: The Who
Engineered: Cy Langston
Recorded at: Olympic Studios, Barnes, Richmond, England, June 5, 1972
Pete Townshend:"I developed ['You Better You Bet'] over several weeks of clubbing and partying. I had gone through a lean period in my marriage and was seeing the daughter of a friend of mine. I wanted it to be a good song because the girl I wrote it for is one of the best people on the planet. 'You Better You Bet' was a very spontaneous lyric. A fairly spontaneous, peppy song; it's a pop song, really, it's just a pop song."
Roger Daltrey:"A wonderful, wonderful song. The way the vocal bounces, it always reminds me of Elvis. But it was a difficult time, yeah. The Moon carry-on was much harder than carrying on after John, because we’re more mature now. ... ‘You Better, You Bet’ is still one of my favourite songs of all." (2015:Uncut)
Roger Daltrey - lead vocals
Pete Townshend - guitars, keyboards, backing vocals
John Entwistle - bass, backing vocals
Kenney Jones - drums
John "Rabbit" Bundrick - keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals
Produced: Bill Szymczyk
Engineered: Allen Blazek
Recorded at: Odyssey Recording Studios, London, England, 1980
Pete Townshend:"When I wrote this song I was nothing but a kid, trying to work out right and wrong through all the things I did. I was kind of practising with my life. I was kind of taking chances in a marriage with my wife. I took some stuff and I drank some booze. There was almost nothing that I didn't try to use. And somehow I'm alright." (2000:Live at the Royal Albert Hall)
Roger Daltrey - lead vocals, harmonica
Pete Townshend - six/twelve-string acoustic/electric guitars, backing vocals
John Entwistle - bass, backing vocals
Keith Moon - drums, percussion
Nicky Hopkins - piano
Pete Townshend:"The song was written after I had been to see The Wall with my friend Bill Minkin and the actress Theresa Russell who was about to marry the film director Nic Roeg with whom I hoped to work on a new version of Lifehouse. I got drunk as usual, but I had taken my first line of cocaine that very evening before meeting her and decided I was in love. When I came to do the vocal on the following day [Feb. 15, 1980] I was really out of my mind with frustration and grief because she didn't reciprocate." -
"[Original name changed to 'Athena']Because I didn't want to blow the whistle on myself, I didn't want to do anything which, at that time, would hurt her, would hurt Nic any more than I already had. I don't think my pursuit of her was any sort of threat to them, none whatsoever, but that's not how I felt. I felt the centre of my own little, teeny, world and she was, I have to say…..I'd been through a period of being fairly promiscuous, which was unusual for me because I'd always been very loyal to my wife, but when I'd hit an emotional rock bottom after Keith's death I'd started to get quite promiscuous and nobody had ever turned me down. So, when I was finally turned down it hit me hard." (2001:petetownshend.com)
Roger Daltrey:"No, I never liked that song. It's a great record. I think what happened with that song, it was originally called 'Teresa' and then Pete was talking to me about Nick Roeg's girlfriend and how he fancied her, and that song was written about her - but then it changed into 'She's a bomb' and I think I've got a psychological problem with it. I listened to it on the record the other day, and it's a great record; there's so much energy on that thing but I still don't think there's a center to that song. The fact that he changed the title in that and didn't stick to what it was supposed to be lost it's center to me." (2010:News of The World)
Roger Daltrey:"I remember when I first heard ‘Happy Jack’, I thought, ‘What the fuck do I do with this? It’s like a German oompah song!’ I had a picture in my head that this was the kind of song that Burl Ives would sing, so ‘Happy Jack’ was my imitation of Burl Ives!
But listen to Moon on that track – in those days he was so distinctive. Even from the very first night he played with us. We got Keith, this kid we didn’t know out of the audience, on the drums and it was like this fucking jet engine starting. I was like, ‘What the fuck’s THIS?!’ It was such instant chemistry. Really, we couldn’t have had any other drummer. He was incredible." (2015:Uncut)
According to some sources, Townshend reported the song is about a man who slept on the beach near where Townshend vacationed as a child. Children on the beach would laugh at the man and once buried him in the sand. However, the man never seemed to mind and only smiled in response. According to Marsh, "the lyric is basically a fairy tale, not surprisingly, given the link's to Pete's childhood. Greg Littmann interprets the song as a possible reaction to alienation, as Jack allows "the cruelty of other people slide off his back." (Wikipedia)
Pete Townshend:"the idea was inspired by a picture my girlfriend had on her wall of an old Vaudeville star – Lily Bayliss [sic]. It was an old 1920s postcard and someone had written on it 'Here's another picture of Lily – hope you haven't got this one.' It made me think that everyone has a pin-up period." (2006:Lyrics book)
Pete Townshend:"Merely a ditty about masturbation and the importance of it to a young man." (Mark Wilkerson)
Roger Daltrey:"When Kit and Pete came in and said this is the next single, yeah, straight away I saw the words and knew what it was about. So I deliberately thought I’d sing it the opposite way, with complete innocence. So instead of it being something suggestive, it tweaks it the other way and gives it a little bit more intrigue. But ‘Pictures Of Lily’ never sat well on stage for some reason." (2015:Uncut)
In the beginning of the song, the singer laments his inability to sleep. When his father gives him the pictures of the song's eponymous Lily, he feels better, and is able to sleep. Soon, he feels desire for Lily as a person instead of a photo, and asks his father for an introduction. His father informs him however that "Lily" has, in fact, been dead since 1929. Initially, the singer laments, but before long turns back to his fantasy. (Wikipedia)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals
Pete Townshend – guitars
Jolyon Dixon – acoustic guitar
Stuart Ross – bass
Peter Huntington – drums
Rachel Fuller – keyboards
John "Rabbit" Bundrick – Hammond organ, backing vocals
Billy Nicholls – backing vocals
Simon Townshend – backing vocals
Produced: Pete Townshend, Bob Pridden, Billy Nicholls
Engineered: ??
Recorded at: Pete Townshend's home studio, London, England AND/OR
...... Eel Pie Oceanic Studios, London, England
"Relay" is thought to refer to the final setting up of and spreading the word about the Lifehouse concert. The fictional Relay bears strong similarities to the modern Internet, and as such in concerts in the 21st Century, Pete Townshend introduces the song as being about the Internet.
"Relay" was originally written as part of the Lifehouse album, but the song was shelved with the rest of the album. In 1972, the song was resurrected to be used in Rock Is Dead—Long Live Rock!, another abandoned Who album that was to be released in 1972. The song was recorded during the same sessions as "Join Together" and a demo of "Long Live Rock" in May 1972.[ (Wikipedia)
Pete Townshend: "It can't be beat for straightforward Kink copying. There is little to say about how I wrote this. It came out of the top of my head when I was 18 and a half."
Roger Daltrey:"We already knew Pete (Townshend) could write songs, but it never seemed a necessity in those days to have your own stuff because there was this wealth of untapped music that we could get hold of from America. But then bands like The Kinks started to make it, and they were probably the biggest influence on us – they were certainly a huge influence on Pete, and he wrote 'I Can't Explain', not as a direct copy, but certainly it's very derivative of Kinks music." (1994:Q magazine)
Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, tambourine
Pete Townshend – lead and rhythm 12-string guitar, handclaps
John Entwistle – bass guitar, handclaps
Keith Moon – drums, handclaps
Perry Ford – piano
Jimmy Page – rhythm guitar
The Ivy League – backing vocals
Lead singer Roger Daltry and guitarist/writer Pete Townshend, the two creative members are still with the band. They are the only two members still with us. R.I.P Keith Moon (1978) and John Entwistle (2002).
Rolling Stone List, 100 Greatest Acts of All Time: 29
THE WHO
1964 - 2016
CLASSIC LINE-UP: Mark I
Mark I
1964 - 1978
Roger Daltrey - V,h Pete Townshend - G John Entwistle - B Keith Moon - D
Mark II
1978 - 1982
Roger Daltrey - V,h Pete Townshend - G John Entwistle - B Kenney Jones - D **
Mark III
1989 - 2002
Roger Daltrey - V,h Pete Townshend - G John Entwistle - B
Mark IV
2002 - Pres
Roger Daltrey - V,h Pete Townshend - G
RELATIONSHIPS
Roger Daltrey / Pete Townshend
Daltry and Townshend have had a long history of feuding. Unlike other bands, who have disintegrated early on, they never let it prematurely destroy the band.
Roger Daltry: “Ah, ‘Waspman’. Keith’s wonderful creation! That was hilarious. There’s a long story behind that track. It all happened on a flight from Copenhagen back to London. We hit some bad weather and, my god, I’ve been in some planes that have done some things in my time but this fucking plane was like a rollercoaster ride, it almost flipped over.
We’d got through this weather and it all sort of levelled out and everybody was puking and sitting in almost total silence. Now, meantime, Moon’s disappeared. He was sat with this groupie bird who had this tiger-skin coat which he’s taken, and her bra. Needless to say this girl had very large mammaries. So he disappears up the back of the plane to the bog. Everybody’s still puking and the captain’s come out and he’s standing there apologising, saying it’s the worst weather he’d ever been through.
Then from the back suddenly there came this ‘bzzzzzzzzz!’ We looked round and it was Moon stood with the two bits of her bra over his eyes like big fly eyeballs and he’s got her tiger-skin coat tied round his neck like a cape. And he shouted, ‘Don’t worry, folks – Waspman’s here to save you!’ And he did this thing up and down the plane buzzing away as Waspman, kissing all the women and just fucking around in general. By the end of it everybody was just rolling about laughing. He’d taken the edge off that hairy situation and cheered everyone up. So that’s how ‘Waspman’ was created. We’d already done ‘Batman’ a few years before so we said, ‘OK, we’d better write a theme for Waspman!’” (2015:Uncut)
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