THE WHO: Live At The Oval

September 18, 1971, a Saturday, was a lovely autumn day, perfect in every way. At lunchtime in Kennington, just south of the River Thames, the sun shone down on a vast horde of rock fans streaming from Oval Underground Station and making their way along Harleyford Street to the cricket ground that since 1845 has been the home of Surrey CCC. Some were running, hurrying along to secure a spot near the front; for that evening, as dusk fell, the greatest live rock group in the world would perform on a rickety stand long since demolished. Like the game of cricket itself, with its many formats and multi-coloured strips, the Oval is much redeveloped since that night but it remains the traditional venue for the final, often deciding, Test Match in five-game series involving England and one of the cricket-playing nations that take turns to visit our shores each summer. For this reason, it is often the scene of noisy celebrations. 

The group who played at the Oval that night certainly provoked a noisy celebration and, it could be said, is much redeveloped too, this imposed upon them by the passing of two members. Furthermore, the music they play, both at the Oval and currently on what is likely to be their final American tour, is somehow traditional too. Their best-known songs have joined the body of work that is the cornerstone of rock music, just as the sonatas and symphonies by the great composers are the cornerstone of its classical equivalent. Nine songs performed that night at the Oval were performed last week when the two surviving members of the group, along with six others, opened their ‘Song Is Over’ tour in Florida. 

It was and is, of course, The Who: Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon, Londoners all, and in 1971 they were at the peak of their powers. The previous month had seen the release of Who’s Next, regarded by many as their finest achievement, and it’s likely that the 40,000 who turned out that autumn day remains the largest crowd ever seen at the Oval, for sponsorship reasons now known as the Kia Oval. It’s official capacity, even today, is only 27,500. At the time it was the biggest crowd ever assembled to watch The Who in their home town. 

I was among them, covering the event for Melody Maker. In the 16 months since I’d joined the paper I’d done my best to ingratiate myself with The Who and their support team for the simple reason that I thought they were the best band in the world, and by the time of this concert I was sufficiently friendly with their acting manager Peter Rudge that he’d given me an on-stage pass so I could stand alongside the band, on John’s side, with my plus one which happened that day to be my sister. I watched and reviewed the show from this privileged position but, being so close, the music didn’t sound as clear as it would have done from out front. It never does. Still, it sounded a lot better than The Faces who preceded The Who on stage, this because The Who used a brand-new and very expensive PA system that wasn’t made available to the other acts on the bill. On hearing how The Who sounded, Rod Stewart left early, muttering indignantly to himself. 

My 'priority' pass for The Who's Oval show. 

 

I was aware that the concert was being recorded. The Pye mobile studio truck was parked at the rear of the stand where the temporary stage had been built, cables were everywhere and recording engineers were scurrying about, but I was told later – much later, in fact, not until I was involved in selecting tracks for the 4-CD Who box set 30 Years Of Maximum R&B in 1993 – that the tapes were unusable, evidently something to do with the positioning of microphones. Modern technology is a wonderful thing, however, and the tapes have been resurrected, so, for the past 48 hours I’ve been listening to The Who at the Oval as if I’d been one of those scurrying from the tube station to get close to the band. And it’s a damn near flawless performance, a perfect snapshot of The Who in their prime, spurred on by that reckless spirit of adventure that characterised them in this, their imperial phase. 

The Who had spent most of the previous month touring America, playing mostly arenas, so they were at Olympic fitness. Still, they rehearsed with their new PA and lighting rig at the Granada Cinema in Wandsworth during early September, concentrating on the newer songs from Who’s Next, and the set they played at the Oval was almost identical to those performed on the US tour, a judicious mix of old and new, the kind of set they would perform until the new became the old much later in their career. 

Because of the need to switch sound systems there was a long delay before The Who arrived on stage, and when they did they opened up with a spontaneous jam, probably to test the PA, its assumed title ‘So Glad To See Ya’, taken from Roger’s improvised lyric. Satisfied with the sound, they launched into ‘Summertime Blues’, a safe starter, to get themselves in the mood, John and Roger already displaying top form, Keith warming up and Pete a bit reckless, as he was wont to be. John’s song ‘My Wife’ followed, a steamroller, chockfull of power chords, Keith steady, John in good voice, Pete more disciplined, switching from block chords to lead runs as the song cruised towards its end; Roger, underused, hanging grimly on, keepin’ on movin’ as he sings when John steps back. “The Ox,” he announces at the close.

The tempo yielded for the more melodic ‘Love Ain’t For Keepin’’, another new song, shorter than most, with unforeseen harmonies in mid song, before a couple of trusted favourites ‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘Substitute’, the former’s quick solo a blistering assault, the latter a tight, brief showcase for The Who’s harmonic flair. Roger introduced ‘Bargain’, a relatively complex song performed with ease, before the more melodious ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, equally assured, arpeggios cleanly picked. 

‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, the fifth Who’s Next song of the night, followed, a lengthy, tight reading that was edited for their recent single, accompanied by the pre-recorded synthesiser track that reins the group in to a certain extent and heralds its dramatic climax. The semi-public Young Vic rehearsals aside, this would have been the first occasion on which fans could hear this latest, up-to-the-minute addition to The Who’s instrumental arsenal. The other, equally famous, synthesiser-based Who’s Next song, ‘Baba O’Riley’, would not be introduced into The Who’s set until later in the year.  

‘Baby Don’t You Do It’, a power-driven take on a Marvin Gaye Motown song, allows John and Keith to display their chops, punctuated by Pete’s improvised guitar licks. It was no secret that at this time of their evolution their guitarist smoothed his passage with gulps from a brandy bottle – as John would do later from ‘water’ bottles attached to his microphone stand – and it’s my contention that this enabled both to ride roughshod at times, freeing themselves to play as flexibly as they chose, to leap into the unknown, on numbers like ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’ and, later in this show, ‘Naked Eye’ and ‘Magic Bus’. Because today’s audiences invariably demand to hear only what they recognise, such spontaneity is rarely heard now. This indulgence might also explain Pete’s rather undisciplined comments during the show, with references to silly mid-on, his smart new white outfit and how he’d give his guitar away at the close, sounding a bit like intemperate rants.

Two selections from Tommy, ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘See Me Feel Me’/’Listening To You’, followed, both crowd pleasers, the latter especially electric as the Tommy hymn doubles back on itself, gaining momentum as it charges forward. At this point in the show the huge Klieg spotlights behind the back line were switched on, their beams illuminating the scene – and what a glorious sight it was from the stage: 40,000 delirious Who fans waving ecstatically as Roger sang about how listening to them inspires the music they hear. 

Seconds after it ended Pete yelled ‘My Generation’, and they launched into a brisk take on their rabble-rousing statement of independence, a brutal riposte to Tommy’s fanciful optimism. This segues into ‘Naked Eye’, heard no doubt for the first time by many present, a long, undulating, dramatic piece of highs and lows, and finally ‘Magic Bus’, another lengthy, bouncy crowd-pleaser, the group’s take on Bo Diddley, that ends with a traditional Who smash up. “Inevitably Townshend’s guitar – a brand new Gibson bought for the day – was sacrificed to the crowd,” I wrote in the following week’s Melody Maker. “He hammered it to pieces with the mic stand and took a flying leap into his stack. The wreckage was thrown to the crowd as Moon stood up and literally walked through his drum kit.”

The Melody Maker headline on my show review. 

It was a fitting climax to one of The Who’s greatest ever shows, now available for all to hear; shame movie cameras weren’t covering it too. 

Unusually, The Who Live At The Oval is released by Universal Music, The Who’s US label, and for this reason is a tad more expensive than their releases on Polydor. The package contains a 20-page booklet with top notch sleeve notes by Andy Neill, lots of pictures taken on the day and an explanation of how and why the recording was finally upgraded for public consumption. 

THE EVERLY BROTHERS, June 1970

Continuing in Everly Brothers mode, it just so happens that in the third week of June, 1970, my first week as a staff writer on Melody Maker, I interviewed Don and Phil at London’s Inn On The Park hotel at the southern end of Park Lane. 

        I went up to their suite and when Don answered my knock he proposed we do the interview in the bar downstairs where Phil would join us later. On the way down the elevator stopped at another floor and in walked Dustin Hoffman and an aide. The four of us didn’t speak but on our way to the bar I mentioned Hoffman to Don who had evidently failed to recognise the actor. “Was that really him?” he asked. When I nodded, he told me how much he liked The Graduate. 

        This was the first ever interview I did for MM and it goes without saying that I was a bit star struck at meeting The Everly Brothers, whose records I’d been buying since 1958. I still have the vinyl LP The Fabulous Style of The Everly Brothers from 1960 and a 4-track EP from 1958, both on the London American label with the inscription ‘A Cadence Recording’ on their sleeves. I decorated the inner sleeve of the LP with a cutting of their name, probably cut out from NME, and wrote my name on it too. I was 13 at the time. 

        I wasn’t given a by-line for the MM interview. Reading it back now it seems rather slight – but here it is, exactly as it was published in MM dated June 27, 1970. 

THE DUO WHO INFLUENCED THE BEATLES AND THOUSANDS OF OTHER GROUPS TALK TO MM

THE EVERLYS ROCK ON...

A lot of water has flown down the Thames since Don and Phil Everly stood side by side on stage strumming their guitars and singing songs like ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Poor Jenny’ and ‘Bird Dog’.

They were the American prototypes of our own teenybopper idols and their songs spread across the Atlantic, collecting golden records everywhere. Every single was not just a hit but an event.

Don and Phil harmonised their way through a dozen chart successes until their last really big one, ‘Cathy’s Clown’. Then what happened?

They volunteered to join the Army, had their hair cut and got married. Then there was the agonising time in 1962 when elder brother Don was ill – and a courageous Phil had to appear solo. Reports filtered through about the brothers splitting up – accompanied by the usual denials. “Everlys Mystery screamed the headlines.

From then on – silence. Silence to such an extent that many of today’s teenage pop fans could be excused for not knowing who the Everlys are – or were. 

Well, now seems a good time to break the silence. Don and Phil flew into England last week to film a sequence for the Petula Clark TV show which will be screened in December – and talked about their absence from the pop scene in recent years.

The brothers have definitely not split up. They are the best of friends – and they are both fit and well. Gone are the greasy quiffs of the ‘Bye Bye Love’ days, and the identical sharp suits.

“We are staying for just a week in England and it’s really great to be here – especially on election day,” Don told me in the bar of the West End hotel where they are staying.

“It’s more of a holiday than work as we are doing just one television show for ABC and no live shows anywhere at all.” 

Old Everly Brothers songs have recently been recorded by Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, and I asked Don how he felt about these releases.

“I have heard Dylan singing ‘Take A Message To Mary’ and I liked it,” he said. “I like Dylan and I think he is singing better all the time. The Nashville Skyline album was terrific. 

“I like Simon & Garfunkel’s version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ as well. Those two really write some marvellous songs of their own but they sound very much like us on ‘Bye Bye Love’. The first time I heard it I had to think whether it was us or someone else at first.

“We are using ‘Bye Bye Love’ as a signature tune for a new TV show ten-week series in America. It has taken over from the Johnny Cash Show.”

With the Everly Brothers being in at the start of rock and roll, the inevitable question of the current rock revival was hard to avoid. “I have always liked rock music and I never thought it left us,” said Don. “There has always been someone around keeping it going. I don’t think we will ever return to what was happening 15 years ago. There was a lot of good things around then but I don’t like to see music going backwards. I would much rather go forward.

“New band keep coming on to the scene and breaking up very quickly. I wish they would stay together longer because it is the longer established bands that are the best. I love listening to Hendrix, the Stones and the Beatles. I think it’s terrible that the Beatles are splitting up. Together they were just marvellous.”

There are no plans for new Everly Brothers singles in the near future – and Don is not worried about the prospect. 

“We have not really had time to go into the studio to record singles. Warners are releasing a live album soon called The Everly Brothers Show which is a great conglomeration of different things we do. It will be released in the States to coincide with the start of the TV series and it’s got lots of old hits on it in medleys. 

“We are concentrating strictly on television work and when we get back to the States we are doing a summer season at Las Vegas. Single records are not really the thing at the moment. Unless we really felt we had to do a single we would not bother to record one.

At this point Phil joined us in the bar, only to be told that he couldn’t get a cup of tea – in a luxury hotel at that.

He too thought that rock music had never really left us so it couldn’t be revived.

“People are always going on about a rock and roll revival. They’ve done it before and they are still doing it. As far as new bands go, I’m like Don and prefer the established groups. The Beatles, the Stones and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are all my favourites.”

Are the brothers worried about their lack of single sales in this country?

Don: “It’s always nice to see your records going up the chart after every release but things are much cooler now. The heat is off and I think I prefer it this way.”

Phil: “I don’t really think about it now and the lack of singles success doesn’t concern me. It seems the logical thing not to do so many singles.”

Both the boys agreed that they would like to do some live concert appearances in this country. “We have to plan ahead quite a bit and it’s very difficult,” said Don. “This TV show we are over here for was planned a long time ago.”

Talk of live shows turned to live groups – and both brothers were full of superlative for The Who, currently touring the States with amazing success.

Phil: “I think rock today is better than it was ten years ago. I don’t know what we’ll be doing in ten years’ time. Probably just about the same as we are now but a lot less of it. Maybe we’ll be going to rock revival concerts then.

“We have played at one New York folk festival and have been invited to some other big festivals but since Woodstock there has been nothing big. Promoters have a difficult time getting it all together.”

Don: “We are more active show-business wise nowadays and have got well past the teenage idol bit. It’s part of history and in New York now the original records of our old hits are fetching about 25 dollars. I heard that someone paid that for a single of ‘Bye Bye Love’ on the old Cadence label. I would pay that just to have it hanging on my wall at home.”

BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor

A picture speaks a thousand words. They are not smiling. Phil, on the left, looks apprehensive, his eyes focused on something in the distance that troubles him, an approaching threat. Don, on the right, looks resigned, as if whatever is upsetting his younger brother is to his mind inevitable. Their pompadour quiffs, of course, are immaculate. 

The picture on the cover of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor was taken by an unknown photographer in January of 1965, just as the duo’s career had reached a crossroads. Live, things were fine, even if Don and Phil weren’t getting along too well, not that they ever had, not really. Later that same year, during a tour of the Far East, they would perform eight sold-out shows at a 25,000-seater arena in Manila, the largest audience of their almost 60-year career. Their records, however, had stopped selling regardless of their quality, ingenuity or whatever musical direction they chose to follow. Trouble was indeed ahead.

Somewhat surprisingly in light of their fame, cultural importance and longevity, Blood Harmony is the first substantial, rigorously-researched and objective biography of The Everly Brothers I have read. There have been a handful of others but they were slight. This book is not, largely because, although clearly an admirer of their work, US roots music specialist Mazor doesn’t hold back on the many issues that impacted destructively on their lives and career: sibling rivalry, often intense, business wrangles with management, record labels and song publishers, drug and alcohol addiction, unstable marriages leading to onerous alimony obligations and, perhaps most importantly, that enduring but ultimately exasperating – to them anyway – image of two almost identical brothers, besuited and quiffed, eyeball to eyeball, strumming their matching black acoustic guitars with white pickguards, and singing songs in perfect harmony about teenagers falling in and out of love. 

        As the key bridge, both chronological and musical, between Elvis and The Beatles, Don and Phil Everly found themselves in a trap from which they could never escape. While Elvis, for better or worse, became a film star and Vegas icon, and The Beatles, with safety in numbers, matured every step of the way, The Everly Brothers suffered from an insurmountable image problem: their fans simply wouldn’t allow them to be anything more, or anything less, than the duo that recorded ‘Bye Bye Love’ in 1957, forever locked together, side by side singing that first major hit and all those that followed, a deluge of glorious songs that changed the face of pop music but resolutely prohibited them from ever transforming into anything beyond that illustrious beginning.  

        In a five-year span, between 1957 and 1962, the Everlys had 15 top ten hits in the US (and 12 in the UK), and lesser hits too numerous to mention, all of them hummed on the unconscious breath by everyone who took an interest in popular music during those years. (I still own an Everlys vinyl LP and EP on the London American label.) Furthermore, their sound, an innovative cross between country, rockabilly and R&B, sweetened or soured with keening balladry – Mazor is particularly good at tracing its roots – influenced just about every singing act that followed, from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel on downwards. What’s more, all who followed in that vein, right up into the 21st century, no matter how famous they became, tipped their hat to them – not that it did Don and Phil much good in the long term.

        In many ways, Blood Harmony is a sad book. The Everly Brothers became pop stars in an era when magazines required them not only to look photogenic but to offer little else but cheerful, fairly anodyne, quotes about themselves. They became adept at maintaining a professional showbiz façade that was unusually successful in hiding the reality of their lives, this despite occasional attempts on their part – most especially by the more outspoken Don – to offer glimpses into it. 

        The veneer began early, with PR suggestions that they were Kentucky born and bred. They weren’t: although Don was born in the Bluegrass State, Phil was born in Chicago where the brothers were raised before the family moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, then Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a musical household, earning its living on stage and local radio as best it could through performing close-harmony country music accompanied for the most part by Ike, their guitar-playing dad. His two sons were apprenticed at an early age and knew nothing else; alienated from schoolfriends and accustomed to a life they could share only with others in the same trade from similar backgrounds. 

        Landing in Nashville in 1954, they tried at first to sell themselves as songwriters but once they were introduced – by the music publisher who became their manager – to the crack songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant they entered their imperial phase. Though vastly more talented, during this early stage of their career they found themselves bracketed alongside the vacuous teen idols promoted by a record industry staffed by middle-aged men alienated by rock and roll and bent on suppressing it. This would have long-term negative consequences. 

        There is a lazy assumption that Don was the more spirited, like John in The Beatles, and that Phil was the traditionalist, like Paul. While there’s a scintilla of truth in this, Mazor delves much deeper into the contrasting personalities of the brothers, their likes and dislikes from food, cars and interior decoration to politics, music and where it could be performed: Don liked folksy clubs, Phil preferred Vegas. Both, however, pursued girls enthusiastically but if Phil suffered an inferiority complex through being two years younger, Don often found his senior role a burden. Fights, some physical, were commonplace. With little in common, they didn’t socialise apart from when they were touring which, perhaps regrettably, was most of the time.

        Blood Harmony follows their serpentine career closely and in linear fashion, from the 1950s package show tours with fellow travellers like Buddy Holly, who became a close friend, Paul Anka, Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino (though not Elvis), to their final show together at the Regent Theatre in Ipswich in November, 2005. The decade long interregnum between July 1973, when they dramatically severed their relationship on stage at Knott’s Berry Farm in California, only to re-emerge triumphantly at London’s Royal Albert Hall ten years later, is covered in two separate chapters, each dealing with a single brother. Thereafter, though shaky, the partnership continues until that final show, and it is pleasing to note that in their final years fraternal harmony was restored. Phil died in 2014. Don was too broken-hearted to attend his funeral. He died in 2021, outliving his younger brother by seven years. 

        Along the way, Barry Mazor delivers all manner of fascinating observations. Among the many are how session guitarist Ray Edenton replaced the wound G-string on his guitar with one an octave higher to play alongside Don and produce the distinctive opening strum on ‘Bye Bye Love’; how the Crickets became the Everly’s backing band after the death of Holly; the input of so many noted musicians, Chet Atkins, James Burton, Jim Gordon, Warren Zevon, Albert Lee and many more; how the drug Ritalin affected Don and how he was weaned off it; how the draft impacted on them (the photo of them shorn for service in the US Marines still has the power to shock); how in the UK they were loved beyond measure; the countless awards bestowed on them but how, apart, they were frustratingly unable to create the magic they could together. Throughout, Mazor analyses their music in depth with great insight. 

        Blood Harmony is 412 pages long, with a 16-page b&w photo section, copious reference notes and an index. Published by Da Capo, now an imprint of Hachette, it costs £22.66 on Amazon; RRP is the US $32. Anyone who, like me, loved the music of The Everly Brothers, needs to read this definitive biography.