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Authors: Pete Townshend
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I wanted to be a sculptor, but Ealing Art College lost its diploma status for Fine Arts and Sculpture, and my parents were concerned I might emerge from college without any qualification. The band still felt like a side-project to me, so I considered moving to another college. I was particularly interested in kinetic sculpture: installations combining vibrant colour, lighting, TV screens and complex, coded music. All this, I imagined, would be interactive, brought to life by the computers that Roy Ascott talked about. * However, I knew I would miss my friends if I left Ealing, and so, with Barney, I decided to switch to Graphic Design.
Everything changed when I met Tom Wright, the stepson of an American Air Force officer stationed nearby. It turned out that he and his best friend Cam had been the ones responsible for adding R&B singles to the café jukebox. They were notorious for having introduced marijuana in their circle, and for their enormous record collection. One of their buddies had heard me playing blues guitar in the classroom one day and ran to bring Tom to hear me.
I had already bought a number of blues albums of my own – by Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy. I had heard Chuck Berry, but only his pop-chart stuff. Tom and Cam had albums by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, Snooks Eaglin and other blues artists entirely new to me. As long as I’d play my guitar sometimes, they’d let me come back. Every album was a revelation, but the real richness of their collection was on its fringes: Mose Allison sat alongside Joan Baez; Ray Charles alongside Bo Diddley; Jimmy Smith alongside Julie London.
The mainstay of the collection was Jimmy Reed. They had every recording he’d ever made, and ‘Big Boss Man’ and ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’, big R&B hits in the US in the late Fifties but unheard in the UK. Simple riffs supported basic lyrics provided by his wife. Steady low bass, chugging rhythms and shrill harmonica solos set the scene for Reed’s whining, wavering, old man’s voice. But there was something absolutely unforgettable about the music, especially when you listened to several albums in series, a little stoned.
I was also drawn to the jazzier side of R&B, especially at first. I had grown up with Ella, Frank, the Duke and the Count, so I liked Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith and Mose Allison. But I couldn’t play keyboards, had no access to one and was still a fairly rudimentary guitar player. But you didn’t have to be fast or clever to play R&B guitar blues. You had to be prepared to really listen, and ultimately really feel the music. This seemed less absurd for a young middle-class white boy in 1963 than it does today, so I proceeded without difficulty to learn to play the blues, especially rhythmic blues. I loved emulating Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker and Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, and I started to develop my own rhythmic style based on a fusion of theirs.
If I felt torn, I’m sure the other members of the band felt the same. They had regular jobs. Doug was a bricklayer and a father. Roger worked in a factory that cut tinplate for specialist equipment boxes and recording studio racks. John worked at the local tax office. I was an art student – and I was also becoming a recreational drug user, smoking several times a week. Lately Roger needed to bully me out of bed to get me to gigs. I was often very sarcastic about the music the band members wanted to play, and Doug had to come to my rescue a couple of times when Roger and I nearly came to blows over the musical direction of the group. I kept pushing because I felt that if we didn’t change we’d never appear cool to my art-school friends. On the other hand, the chart-type songs I was trying my hand at writing for us to perform were really quite corny.
We recorded my first song, ‘It Was You’, in late 1963 at the home studio of Barry Gray, who wrote
I wanted to be a sculptor, but Ealing Art College lost its diploma status for Fine Arts and Sculpture, and my parents were concerned I might emerge from college without any qualification. The band still felt like a side-project to me, so I considered moving to another college. I was particularly interested in kinetic sculpture: installations combining vibrant colour, lighting, TV screens and complex, coded music. All this, I imagined, would be interactive, brought to life by the computers that Roy Ascott talked about. * However, I knew I would miss my friends if I left Ealing, and so, with Barney, I decided to switch to Graphic Design.
Everything changed when I met Tom Wright, the stepson of an American Air Force officer stationed nearby. It turned out that he and his best friend Cam had been the ones responsible for adding R&B singles to the café jukebox. They were notorious for having introduced marijuana in their circle, and for their enormous record collection. One of their buddies had heard me playing blues guitar in the classroom one day and ran to bring Tom to hear me.
I had already bought a number of blues albums of my own – by Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy. I had heard Chuck Berry, but only his pop-chart stuff. Tom and Cam had albums by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, Snooks Eaglin and other blues artists entirely new to me. As long as I’d play my guitar sometimes, they’d let me come back. Every album was a revelation, but the real richness of their collection was on its fringes: Mose Allison sat alongside Joan Baez; Ray Charles alongside Bo Diddley; Jimmy Smith alongside Julie London.
The mainstay of the collection was Jimmy Reed. They had every recording he’d ever made, and ‘Big Boss Man’ and ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’, big R&B hits in the US in the late Fifties but unheard in the UK. Simple riffs supported basic lyrics provided by his wife. Steady low bass, chugging rhythms and shrill harmonica solos set the scene for Reed’s whining, wavering, old man’s voice. But there was something absolutely unforgettable about the music, especially when you listened to several albums in series, a little stoned.
I was also drawn to the jazzier side of R&B, especially at first. I had grown up with Ella, Frank, the Duke and the Count, so I liked Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith and Mose Allison. But I couldn’t play keyboards, had no access to one and was still a fairly rudimentary guitar player. But you didn’t have to be fast or clever to play R&B guitar blues. You had to be prepared to really listen, and ultimately really feel the music. This seemed less absurd for a young middle-class white boy in 1963 than it does today, so I proceeded without difficulty to learn to play the blues, especially rhythmic blues. I loved emulating Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker and Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, and I started to develop my own rhythmic style based on a fusion of theirs.
If I felt torn, I’m sure the other members of the band felt the same. They had regular jobs. Doug was a bricklayer and a father. Roger worked in a factory that cut tinplate for specialist equipment boxes and recording studio racks. John worked at the local tax office. I was an art student – and I was also becoming a recreational drug user, smoking several times a week. Lately Roger needed to bully me out of bed to get me to gigs. I was often very sarcastic about the music the band members wanted to play, and Doug had to come to my rescue a couple of times when Roger and I nearly came to blows over the musical direction of the group. I kept pushing because I felt that if we didn’t change we’d never appear cool to my art-school friends. On the other hand, the chart-type songs I was trying my hand at writing for us to perform were really quite corny.
We recorded my first song, ‘It Was You’, in late 1963 at the home studio of Barry Gray, who wrote
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