THE WHO – Jacksonville, 1976, Playing For The People Who Weren’t There

Elsewhere on Just Backdated I rhapsodise about a Who concert in Jacksonville on August 7, 1976, which just happened to be the last time I saw them perform with Keith on drums, not that I knew that at the time.

         This post has been read by many fans, one of whom Mark Starcke, has sent me a substantial cache of photos taken at this show, 167 to be precise, perhaps the largest number of live Who pics ever taken by a single photographer at any one Who show ever. Many of them are fantastic and truly capture the excitement of The Who at this stage in their career.

         Sometimes words can’t quite describe the power and exuberance of The Who in full flight, the way the music flowed with their athleticism, the excitement of seeing Pete spinning his arm around and leaping around in time to the music while Roger threw his microphone into the air and Keith knocked ten tons of shit out of his kit while John just stood there holding it all together with his immaculate bass lines. It’s hard to get that across to those who weren’t there, who think they were just another rock band going through the motions.

         These 16 selections from Mark’s pictures speak for themselves really. This is what I saw at Jacksonville that night, partly from close to the front, partly from the stage itself, on John’s side of course as it didn’t do to get in the way of Bob Pridden, especially when Pete was yelling at him.

         What a fucking lucky bastard I was, and so were all those who were there that night. Pity the poor sods that weren’t there but then again, maybe if it wasn’t for them this night wouldn’t have been as special as it was. 

BARRY MANILOW MARRIES HIS MANAGER – Not Such A Shock To Me

I wish to extend my belated congratulations to Barry Manilow with regard to his marriage to his long-standing manager Garry Keif. According to reports the ceremony took place in 2014 in front of about 50 friends, none whom saw any reason to discuss it publicly. Good for them. Quite how the details have emerged over the past 24 hours I don’t know.

         Barry Manilow’s music is not to my taste but I interviewed him once, for Melody Maker, in 1975 at a hotel somewhere in the Midwest and he was very charming, smartly dressed in a blue and white check pullover and flared tan slacks, his hair immaculately coiffured. I saw him perform too and it was evident that he was a pianist of great prowess, though the schmaltzy hit songs he performed didn’t really reflect this. I think that, secretly, he’d have preferred to lead a jazz trio in which he could improvise and stretch out. ‘Mandy’ didn’t really offer him the chance.

         But I have a personal reason for celebrating the fact that Manilow has now evidently ‘come out’ as a gay man. Urged to do so by the Omnibus Press sales department, in 2000 I commissioned a biography of Manilow whose Chicago-based author Patricia Butler gathered evidence which pointed to his being gay and wrote her book about him accordingly. An alarm bell sounded in my head and I had the book read for libel, an expensive procedure that resulted in the lawyer concerned advising me to remove all mention of Manilow’s sexuality.

         I protested. Not only was it fairly well known within the music industry that Manilow was gay but my author had done her research well and come up with on-the-record quotes from friends and professional colleagues that confirmed Manilow was a gay man. There was also plenty of circumstantial evidence, including an earlier reference to his being gay in People magazine. The lawyer explained to me that Manilow’s fan base consisted primarily of single ladies of a certain age who believed he was ‘available’, that this was part of his attraction as a singer and that the book could therefore be accused of implying that Manilow was being ‘deceitful’, and that this – not the actual allegation that he was gay – was potentially libellous.

         The author was far from pleased that her book might be thus censored, and I felt bound to support her. I took the issue to a higher authority and we decided to publish and be damned. As I thought, Manilow didn’t sue us, no doubt because to do so would draw attention to his sexuality and also help promote the book. He isn’t stupid. However, the book was roundly condemned on line within the Manilow fan community, all of whose members refused to believe that their idol was anything other than a heterosexual man who had simply yet to meet ‘Mrs Right’.

         In the event the book wasn’t particularly successful by our standards, probably the result of the fans’ disapprobation. It’s now out of print as a hard copy but used editions can be bought cheaply on Amazon and it is still available in a digital format.

         Either way, I wish Barry and Garry all the best for the future. 

BARON WOLLMAN – The Rolling Stone Years

To the Proud Gallery in Kings Road for an exhibition of photographs by my friend Baron Wolman, the original staff photographer on Rolling Stone magazine when it was launched in 1967. Baron’s last London show – in October 2012 – concentrated on his pictures of groupies, all shot for an RS special in 1968. This time around, though, it’s a retrospective of his work with rock’n’roll stars, and many of the photographs in this show appeared in Baron’s book The Rolling Stone Years that Omnibus Press published in 2012.

          Baron was, as he cheerfully admits, in the right place at the right time, and aside from his technical abilities behind a camera, his great skill was being able to put his subjects at ease so his photographs look natural, how these stars of the stage really are. So on the walls of the Proud Gallery we have Jerry Garcia, holding up his right hand to reveal a missing middle finger; Janis Joplin in all her finery; Johnny Cash, looking sombre in a tux; Mick Jagger, in make-up on the set of Performance, holding a box camera; Pete Townshend in a glittery coat, arms out stretched, Gibson ES guitar dangling from his shoulders, and looking intense while recording Tommy in London; Jimmy Page’s eight-strong guitar army at the ready before a Day On The Green concert in San Francisco; Howlin’ Wolf, bug eyed and ass atremble on stage in Ann Arbor; and, perhaps best of off, Jimi Hendrix in action at Winterland in 1968, guitar screaming, his face awash with emotion.

         

“Jimi Hendrix was one of my absolute favorite photographic subjects,” writes Baron in the intro to his Rolling Stone Years book. “He dressed well all the time. Even when he was at rest, between his clothes and his looks, he was photogenic. When Jimi was on a stage he was such an incredible performer. The genius of his musicianship aside, he just looked so good on the stage – his facial expressions, the way he would cross his arms to play, he’d play behind his back, he’d play with his teeth, he’d make love to his guitar. For a photographer, shooting Jimi at work was like hitting the mother lode... or, as they say, shooting fish in a bowl. I look at the contact sheets of Hendrix and on a contact sheet of 36 exposures they’ll be 20 great shots minimum. Guess that says something about him or me, or a little bit of both.”

          Baron’s first live live concert assignment for Rolling Stone was shooting The Who at the Cow Palace on November 18, 1967. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” he recalls. “I’d not shot live music before, I was a concert virgin. I was sent out to shoot The Who and it felt like I was being sent into battle – out to the front lines. When I got to the Cow Palace I didn’t quite know what to do, I just started walking around backstage. I know I had a press pass because I could go wherever I wanted to go. I just wasn’t sure where to go!

          “I didn’t take any pictures before the show because I didn’t know what backstage was, what it was all about, didn’t even know I could go there. I thought, OK, these guys are going to perform and I’m going to take pictures of them performing; backstage was the place you waited for the show to begin. I had no idea what to expect and when they finally made it to the stage I was in for a big surprise.

          “I didn’t go to Monterey Pop. Had I gone and seen them before then everything would have been clear, but I hadn’t so therefore I knew nothing, which is too bad, I would have known what was coming. As it is I was thinking, ‘What’s this guy Townshend doing? He’s breaking his fucking guitar, why is he doing this? That’s an expensive guitar.’ I had no idea this was part of the act. Then I saw him do the windmill or whatever he calls it. ‘That’s cool,’ I thought. I tried to photograph everything that was going on but it was coming at me fast and furious. I didn’t know who Keith Moon was at the time or I would have taken more pictures of him; John Entwistle had this cool looking bass so I thought that’s a good photo and took too many of him. I was so damn naïve; all I was doing was looking for a good picture. Toward the end of the set the smoke covers the stage and the band leaves so I ran up on stage and there’s a smoke bomb. When Townshend destroyed his guitar I was stunned, nearly traumatized. It would be like me pounding my Nikons and my Leica against the concrete, totally beyond my nature or comprehension. It wasn’t just that he broke the neck, he completely destroyed the thing (at least he did that night). It shocked me to the point of being afraid that something bad was going to happen.

         
“This iconic photo [Pete with his arms outstretched] was shot during the same ’67 tour. Pete would probably have recognized me and given me that picture. In his signature spread eagle photograph he looked straight down at me, ‘Here you go, this is for you, pal.’ Either way I like to think of it as a gift from Pete to me.”

LIVE TOMMY, 2013

Before delivering the next generation of Charlesworths to their destinations in London today I threw into the car the upgraded 2013 Tommy package that included the live ‘bootleg’ Tommy CD, which was apparently recorded at Ottawa on October 15, 1969, a show I have referred to before in my writings about The Who as a result of having picked up a truly magic bootleg of this show at a Who fan convention in the early nineties.

So on the way back from Primrose Hill, the first offspring having been dropped off in Marylebone Road and the second delivered to where she needed to be a bit further north, I shoved the CD into the car stereo system, cranked it up and headed back through Regents Park towards Westway and all points west in the direction of home again.

It sounded terrific on the car stereo, nothing like this to liven up a boring drive. For the most part this live version of Tommy is fantastic, the usual marathon performance, all the songs segued together so closely the audience barely have time to catch their breath between them all. The customary self-depreciating introduction from Pete is followed by a stunning ‘Overture’, lovely guitar cascades leading into ‘It’s A Boy’ and everything you’d expect from The Who at their peak in 1969. The instrumental ‘Sparks’, with its layered dynamics, sudden octave drops and multiple rising crescendos, is heart-stopping, ditto a fierce ‘Pinball’, a flawless ‘Go To The Mirror’ with its ‘See Me/Listening’ preview, and Pete’s seat-of-the-pants jamming after ’Listening To You’ at the very end.

But, but, but… and I think I have complained about this before on Facebook but not on Just Backdated… for reasons unexplained, when we get to ‘I’m Free’, it’s obvious to anyone with ears, let alone any knowledge of The Who, that this and much of what follows (‘Tommy’s Holiday Camp’, ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ but not the coda of ’See Me Feel Me’) is from a different concert, in fact – as I realised later after a discussion with Andy Neill – Swansea in 1976.

I’d hit the A3 past Surbiton when it all suddenly went wrong, ‘I’m Free’ crashing out of the speakers and sounding so utterly and so obviously that it had been recorded at a different show as to really piss me off. In his usual warm introduction before 'Overture' Pete had explained that the show was recorded simply, with just two strategically positioned mikes, and this is what we hear until this point. The Swansea show, however, was recorded on Ronnie Lane’s 16-track mobile, so the whole sound from this point on is suddenly very different, much fuller, changed in every way in fact. Less obvious but still discernible, especially to those who know their Who, is that the group played differently in 1976 than they did in 1969. Pete is using a Les Paul guitar, which has a sharper tone than the SGs he used on the early Tommy shows, and he improvised more, probably the result of having played Tommy, or at least selections from it, countless times since 1969. Roger’s voice has deepened, improved even, and Keith is more abandoned, hitting his cymbals more than he did in 1969, perhaps to compensate for his increasing lack of discipline across the skins. Only John, eternally ill-disposed to change, sounds the same.

Strangely, the 1969 Ottawa show cuts back into the 1976 Swansea show during the intro to ‘See Me, Feel Me’ – you can hear the bad join at 1:06 – but what follows is taken not from the end of the full-length Tommy they played at Ottawa but from the reprise of Tommy excerpts within the extended ‘My Generation’ jam later in the show, as evidenced by their singing the two ‘Listening To You’ verses only once (as opposed to four times at Tanglewood, Leeds, Hull, etc, interspersed with solos), Pete’s lengthy improvisation at the end (as opposed to ending a full-length Tommy recital with the ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ riff, the 1969/70 norm) and the fact that Pete, Roger and Keith acknowledge the applause from the crowd at the close, thus indicating the entire concert is over. So it’s not really a complete 1969 performance of Tommy as advertised on the package after all.

Now I’m not suggesting the Tommy songs from Swansea are below par – on the contrary, like the rest from Ottawa, they’re fabulous, especially the climax to the ‘My Generation’ jam – but it irks me that so little attention has been paid to detail and continuity; not only has fans’ intelligence been underestimated but there’s an attempt – and a poor one at that – to mislead them as well. It is especially hard to swallow when the bells and whistles version of Tommy 2013 costs as much as it does and it is incorrectly packaged. When it was over, after filling up with gas at Ripley, I put on the original Tommy CD, and cranked up ‘Underture’ for the remainder of the journey home. I love this track, and it sort of restored my faith in my all time favourite rock band but I was still pissed off that this live Tommy had been unnecessarily tainted in the way it had.

LITTLE WILLOW

Mention of Maureen Starkey in yesterday’s post reminds me of the only time I met her, at a party at a house belonging to Isaac Tigrett in, I think, 1989. The party had been arranged to welcome to the UK my Russian friend Artemy Troitsky who two years earlier had sent me the manuscript of a book we called Back In The USSR, a history of rock music in the Soviet Union, and somehow or other he’d become acquainted with Isaac. The story behind this book – the manuscript was smuggled out of Russia to me by the Guardian’s then Moscow correspondent Martin Walker in his ‘diplomatic’ bag – deserves a post in itself but that will have to wait for now.

Artemy visited the UK for the first time to promote his book in 1987, the year it was published, and endeared himself to, among others, Paul McCartney, Richard Branson, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and U2. On this subsequent visit he was accompanied by his first wife, Svetlana, and the three of us went to Isaac’s welcoming party together. It was held in his small but elegant house in Mayfair, behind Mount Street near Berkeley Square, and was attended by several music industry types, the owner of Tower Records as I recall, Chrissie Hynde and, of course, Isaac himself, a generously built American gentleman with a flowing beard who was dressed in a kaftan and reminded me a bit of the Maharishi Yogi.

At some stage during the party I found myself conversing with Isaac about rock memorabilia. It was no secret that he was one of the biggest collectors in the world and that parts of his collection, mainly gold albums and guitars that had been used by star players, was exhibited in the Hard Rock restaurants, of which he was the founder, across the globe. I told him about my postcard from John Lennon and he smiled benignly.

“Would you like me to show you my favourite piece of Beatles memorabilia?” he asked.

“Of course.”

To which he moved across the crowded room and returned with Maureen. “My wife, the former Mrs Ringo Starr,” he said, introducing her to me. “Their children are somewhere around here too.”

         

THE BEATLES – Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy

Cynthia Lennon reached the age of 75, and in writing about her leaving us yesterday I remarked that she was the latest in a long line of deaths of those closely associated with The Beatles, reminding myself of how so many Beatle people are no more and how so many of them left us tragically early. John heads the list, of course, callously murdered in 1980, with George following, a victim of cancer in 2001, but there are many others, both from The Beatles’ inner circle and from its outer fringes, who died too young, an unusually large number in fact.

The first, tragically in view of his potential as a painter, was John’s friend Stuart Sutcliffe who died from a cerebral haemorrhage in Hamburg in 1962. His value to The Beatles as a musician may have been questionable but his influence on the way they presented themselves is incalculable.

Then there was their manager Brian Epstein who in 1967 succumbed to what is believed to have been an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, and whose death seems to have presaged the slow and agonising separation of the group. Even more mysterious was the suicide by hanging a year later of Epstein and The Beatles’ lawyer David Jacobs who was at the heart of the Seltaeb fiasco in which countless millions were squandered over The Beatles’ merchandising rights.

Their roadie and general assistant Mal Evans was next to fall, killed by a policeman in a bizarre shoot-out in Los Angeles in 1976. Two other pillars of The Beatles’ support mechanism, Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall, died in 1997 and 2008 respectively, both from cancer. Brian’s brother Clive, who had inherited Brain’s interests in The Beatles but all too quickly divested them, died in 1988, two years after their music publisher Dick James, the initiator of Northern Songs, succumbed to a heart attack. Allen Klein, who took over the helm of the good ship Apple for a while but then fell out with everyone, died in 2009.

Within The Beatles’ own families there was John’s mother Julia, the victim of a road accident in 1958, two years after Paul’s mother Mary died from cancer. The same illness took Linda McCartney, Paul’s first wife, in 1998, and Maureen Starkey, Ringo’s ex-wife who went on to marry Hard Rock Café founder Isaac Tigrett, died from leukaemia in 1994.

On the outer fringes of The Beatles’ circle we have mourned Rory Storm (1972), Pete Ham (1975) and Tommy Evans (1983) of Badfinger, their childhood friend Ivan Vaughan (1993) and Dezo Hoffman (1986), the photographer who in 1963 created the lasting image of the Fab Four in their matching grey suits with collarless jackets. John’s great friend and ally Harry Nilsson died in 1994.

There may be others that I’ve overlooked but all these played a role, some great and some less so, in creating the magic of The Beatles, and as yet another of this extended family – Cynthia – goes to her rest I mourn them all and give thanks for what they did.

         

CYNTHIA LENNON RIP

Few lives can have been buffeted by the winds of fortune as much as that lived by Cynthia Lennon who died yesterday from cancer at her home in Spain, the latest in a long line of deaths of those closely associated with The Beatles. I met her once, quite briefly, at the opening of her restaurant – Lennon’s – in St Martin’s Lane in the late eighties, and it always seemed to me that no matter how much she tried she could never escape the shadow of the man she married in August 1962 and whose son Julian was born to her the following April. Sometime in the eighties she stopped trying, changing her surname back to Lennon by deed poll.

         Cynthia was, it seems, a nice girl, well brought up, well-mannered and well spoken, but ill-suited for marriage to a man like John. I can’t help but think she’d have been happier married to a dependable bloke of conservative outlook, perhaps a clerk in the wages department at Liverpool Council or the assistant manager of a local branch of Barclays on the Wirral.

         In the event she chose John, or John chose her, and life became a roller-coaster. To have been married to a Beatle in the sixties would have placed her in the eye of a cyclone from which there was never any hope of escape, simultaneously euphoric and horrifying, and for her the ordeal was probably far more intense than for the other Beatle WAGS; hidden away, virtually a single mother, married to the most extreme Beatle, the most curious, the least conventional, the leader of the gang, and too often uncertain of his whereabouts, let alone what was going on inside his mind.

         There is a curious symmetry about how the four Beatles chose as their partners English girls of solid backgrounds – John with Cynthia, Paul with Jane, Ringo with Maureen, George with Pattie – but gradually exchanged them for American women – John with Yoko (Japanese by birth, Yoko became a US citizen through her 1963 marriage to Tony Cox), Paul with Linda, George with Olivia and, finally, Ringo with Barbara.

         The newspaper coverage of Cynthia’s passing has granted the right wing, middle-brow media yet another opportunity to condemn John, a man whose philosophy was and will always be at odds with their political leanings and puritanical social agenda. It is regrettable that Beatles biographer Hunter Davis has been quoted as saying: “John treated her appallingly. He slept with Yoko in their marital home and, as we discovered later, he also physically attacked her, but she was loyal to him.” As far as I can establish there is only one confirmed incident of John abusing Cynthia physically, at an art school dance very early on in their relationship when he accused her of flirting with another man. I’m not trying to excuse John here, but let’s not blow this out of proportion by suggesting it was a recurrent theme of their relationship. Amusingly, the Daily Mail captioned one of their photographs: “The couple… at home with Julian in Surrey in 1965 before drugs began to have a destructive effect on the musician.” I always thought drugs had a creatively liberating effect on John, altogether positive, and - heroin aside - quite the opposite of ‘destructive’ in every way.

         Anyway, I’m sorry about Cynthia. It can’t have been easy. She was, by all accounts, a wonderful mother to Julian. She was certainly John’s muse during the first phase of The Beatles’ career and I was gladdened to read on the internet a warm tribute from Yoko. She suffered for someone else’s art. 

JONI - Get Well Soon

I switched on my computer in the office this morning to learn that HMV have just reordered 400 copies of Both Sides Now: Conversations With Joni Mitchell, published by Omnibus Press last year, an extract from which I posted here in December. It didn’t take me long to find out why: overnight news reports that Joni had been rushed to hospital with an as yet undiagnosed condition.

         Evidently Joni is being treated in intensive care in hospital in Los Angeles.

         The most recent report on her official website jonimitchell.com states: “Joni has been hospitalised. We are awaiting official word on her condition and will post it here as soon as we know.”

         An earlier report stated: “Joni was found unconscious in her home this afternoon. She regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to an LA area hospital. She is currently in intensive care undergoing tests and is awake and in good spirits. More updates to come as we hear them. Light a candle and sing a song, let’s all send good wishes her way.”

         Earlier the celebrity gossip site TMZ said Mitchell, 71, was found by paramedics around 2.30pm on Tuesday after an emergency call from her house.

         It’s no secret that Joni was a heavy smoker for most of her life, having puffed away since she was in her early teens, but as a fan since I first heard, and tried to play, ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ back in 1970, I would urge all Just Backdated readers do as her website suggests.

         Get well soon, Joni.