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13.2.16

THE WHO – More Track Singles

Last year I posted – in dribs and drabs – the text that I had written about nine of the 15 Who singles included in the Track Singles Box Set that Universal released in September, leaving five unaccounted for. (The sixth was the withdrawn ‘See Me Feel Me’/’Overture’ which was subsequently included on the Tommy EP.)

Being as how the box set has probably sold out its limited run by now, it seems only sensible for me to post the remaining entries, the Tommy ones today and the others, all Lifehouse songs that didn’t make it on to Who’s Next, in a day or two.

A: Pinball Wizard

Produced by Kit Lambert.

B: Dogs Part Two

Produced by Kit Lambert.

Originally released as Track 604 027 on 7 March, 1969, it reached Number 4 in the British charts.

With some justification Pete Townshend has often been cited as the greatest rhythm guitarist in rock, and no better evidence survives than the furious acoustic strumming that underpins ‘Pinball Wizard’, the best known song from Tommy and another serious contender for the finest Who song of all time. Recorded towards the end of the Tommy sessions, at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London, on February 7, 1969, ‘Pinball’ is a rock tour de force, brimful of energy, power chords, great lyrics and tight ensemble playing from the opening chord descent to the upward key change near the end. The concept of a deaf, dumb and blind pinball champion might stretch the imagination but anything can be forgiven in the context of this song.

It is difficult now to imagine Tommy without ‘Pinball’ and we have the last minute intervention of Nik Cohn, one of the UK’s most perceptive rock critics in the sixties and a personal friend of Pete and Kit Lambert, to thank for its inclusion. Evidently Pete sought Cohn’s opinion of Tommy as a work in progress and the writer suggested livening it up somehow: because Cohn’s girlfriend at the time really was a pinball wizard(ess), Pete took the hint. By 1969, Cohn was writing rock reviews for the New York Times and there seems little doubt that he was strong-armed into giving Tommy a rave review on the strength of the pinball connection.

Be that as it may, nothing takes away the sheer delight of this number, one of only two (the other was ‘See Me, Feel Me’) from Tommy to outlast the rest of the opera and remain as a highlight in The Who’s live sets.

Rod Stewart sang a heavily orchestrated version in Lou Reizner’s all-star adaptation of Tommy in 1972, while Elton John sang it during a memorable set piece in Ken Russell’s 1975 Tommy movie (his version reached Number 7 in the UK). Curiously, in the UK, it was also covered by The New Seekers in a medley with ‘See Me Feel Me’, whose version reached Number 16 in 1973. None of these covers come close to matching The Who’s version however: Pete strumming that inimitable intro, playing the guitar like he was ringing a bell, punctuated by the thunderous sound of his powerful guitar stabs (that John reproduced live by hammering down on his bottom bass string).

Keith leads ‘Dogs Pt 2’, a powerful instrumental jam recorded five days after ‘Pinball’ at IBC, in the same vein as he leads ‘The Ox’ from their debut album, though this was probably unrehearsed. Featuring solos from Pete, John and Keith (in that order), it’s a frenzied, garage band style rave-up and, along with ‘Cobwebs And Strange’ from A Quick One, the nearest thing to a Keith Moon drum solo in the entire Who catalogue. Moon was never one for drum solos – “They’re boring,” he’d say with his usual pinpoint accuracy – but in many respects his work with The Who, at least on stage, was one long drum solo.

As the B-side of ‘Pinball Wizard’, a Top 10 single in both the UK and the US, ‘Dogs Pt 2’ would have earned its composers a tidy sum in royalties: no doubt Keith squandered his on wine and women but it was probably sufficient to keep Towser and Jason, Pete and John’s respective pet dogs, in Chow for the rest of their days.

A See Me, Feel Me

B Overture

Track single 2094 004 – (Released October 1970 then withdrawn).

This single was withdrawn but the two tracks appeared on the Tommy EP below.

TOMMY (EP)

A: Overture

Produced by Kit Lambert.

A: Christmas

Produced by Kit Lambert.

B: I’m Free

Produced by Kit Lambert.

B: See Me, Feel Me

Produced by Kit Lambert.

Originally released as Track 2252 001 on 6 November 1970, it failed to register in any British chart.

The Track Records marketing department was never slow to extract maximum mileage from the gems in their catalogue. As well as this 33 rpm EP of four songs from Tommy, they released a series of earlier Who (and Hendrix) albums in their budget Backtrack series and the double Tommy album as two individual LPs without the fancy packaging, ostensibly to make it more affordable.

Even rock operas need overtures and like the overtures that preface operas by Mozart, Verdi and Rossini this one contains a well arranged mix of instrumental readings of the songs that will follow, most of them linked together by the rumbling, bass-heavy ‘Go To The Mirror’ riff. The guitar parts are mostly played on Pete’s acoustic Gibson J200, which sets the mood for the entire work, but John’s French horn adds interesting melodic touches and, as ever, the choral work and drums are quite superb. Indeed, in many respects Keith Moon’s work on Tommy represents his greatest contribution to The Who’s catalogue, the opportunity that enabled him to become an entire orchestra within himself, most notably on the lengthy and breath-taking instrumental track ‘Underture’. Nevertheless, the best moment in ‘Overture’ comes towards the end when an organ arrives to pound out the block chords of ‘Listening To You’ from the ‘See Me, Feel Me’ excerpt. At the close, after a ‘Pinball’ fanfare, Pete is left strumming alone for the segue into ‘It’s A Boy’.

‘Christmas’, with its nagging, slightly off-key background vocal, is upbeat and slightly unnerving, and seems designed to establish Tommy Walker’s isolation from other children. The recurrent ‘See Me Fee Me’ motif is introduced during a central refrain before the song resumes.

A memorable six-chord riff introduces ‘I’m Free’, one of the album’s more straightforward rock songs in which Tommy throws off the shackles of his handicaps, and urges his followers – those attracted by his prowess at pinball – to follow him. Tinkly piano, a great acoustic solo and a nice re-use of the by now familiar ‘Pinball’ intro riff all reinforce a song that, set apart from Tommy, became a US single in its own right.

Strictly speaking, ‘See Me, Feel Me’ is the coda to ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, the closing song on Tommy and finale to the entire piece. A circular, looping prayer for unification with churning major chords, it is perhaps the simplest yet most effective pieces of music that Pete has ever written. ‘See Me, Feel Me’ is the most obvious hymn to Meher Baba – the Indian spiritual master to whom Pete became devoted – in The Who’s catalogue, although there are other less obvious examples in the Lifehouse cycle of songs that became Who’s Next and also in Quadrophenia. ‘Listening to you...’ is crystal clear homage and when played live it appeared for all the world as if The Who were paying a remarkable tribute to the audience to whom they were singing. In this respect, it couldn’t fail to lift the spirits – just as all hymns are designed to do.

10.2.16

PALAZZO DARIO – The Palace That Tommy Bought

A family trip to Venice affords the opportunity to explore one of the more arcane tributaries of Who folklore, the Palazzo Dario that their co-manager Kit Lambert, flush with the revenues from Tommy, acquired towards the end of 1971. Located next to the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery near the mouth of the Grand Canal, Kit paid £115,000 and an unknown sum in bribes to officials so that he could move in during April of 1972. Part of its attraction for Kit was its reputation as a house of ill omen – a series of previous owners had met (and would meet) with tragic ends – of which more later.
Right now (see below) the Palace is covered in scaffolding, its current owner having evidently decided to spruce it up. This was unfortunate as it spoilt the view from my water taxi as we sailed along the Grand Canal last Saturday. The scaffolding is covered in netting and there is a large poster stretched across the front of the building, presumably advertising the name of the architect and construction company engaged in its rehabilitation.

“The characteristic façade is covered with fine ornaments, marble of various colours, discs and interwoven roses,” according to one reference book I found in the apartment where we stayed. Another stated: “[It is] jewel-like in its combination of surface richness and small size… it has four storeys and two piani nobli [floors with just one huge room], and a generous water storey.”

The Palazzo Dario, or Ca’ Dario as it is known locally, was built in 1487 by Giovanni Dario who in order to make room for it arranged the demolition of an earlier Gothic house on the same site. Giovanni was a Venetian diplomat and a former envoy to the Turkish court and on his death in 1494 it was inherited by his daughter Marietta who just happened to be married to the son of the owner of the neighbouring Palazzo Barbaro, and the two adjoining palaces therefore remained in the possession of the Barbaro family for over three centuries.

This was the oldest picture I could find. Note (below) the different chimneys and changes to the facade, presumably done towards the end of the 19th Century.

The Palazzo Barbaro is on the left

Between 1838 and 1842 Ca’ Dario was occupied by Rawdon Brown, a British student of Venetian history, and thereafter it has had several owners. At the end of the 19^th Century the proprietor was the Countess de la Baume-Pluvinel, a French aristocrat and author, who undertook a good deal of restoration, including a new staircase, chimneys and replacing the marble on the front. In 1908, the impressionist Claude Monet was sufficiently impressed with its fancy façade to paint it from the other side of the Grand Canal.

Monet's view of Ca' Dario

It is the series of later owners who contributed to Ca’ Dario’s macabre standing: the partner of Charles Briggs, a rich American, committed suicide in Mexico City; Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze was assassinated there (shot several times in the head by a disloyal friend in 1970); businessman Fabrizio Ferrari went bankrupt; and industrialist Raul Gardini shot himself at another of his homes in Milan after being involved in a political/financial scandal. Kit arrived between Lanze and Ferrari, owning Ca’ Dario for seven years until he sold it in 1979 for £360,000 plus, controversially, £34,000 for its contents. His tidy profit was scooped up by his creditors as he too was bankrupt by this time, thus continuing the tradition of misfortune among the owners of Ca’ Dario. It was then purchased by the opera singer Mario Del Monaco but in keeping with morbid custom he died from a heart attack three years later at the age of 67.

In Andrew Motion’s book The Lamberts, his study of three generations of Kit’s family, Pete Townshend says the members of The Who were dismayed by the number of sycophants that stayed there at Kit’s expense. “He desperately wanted us to go [and stay there], but we weren’t interested, or too busy,” says Pete. In the event his principal visitors were his old Oxford college friends Daria Chorley (whose Christian name added a further incentive to buy it) and Robert and Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall. When Kit was detained elsewhere his assistant Anya Forbes, once married to Byrd Chris Hillman, found herself looking after Ca’ Dario for months on end.

Today the building is privately owned but occasionally used as an extension of the neighbouring Guggenheim Gallery for large art exhibitions. On Saturday I wandered around the back and at the ‘land’ side rear gate pressed the buzzer but no one answered. Even if they had I doubt I’d have been invited inside.

Two views of the rear of Ca' Dario

It’s not hard to understand why this strange and wonderful city appealed so deeply to a man of Kit Lambert’s sensibility; the ornate splendour of its architecture, the intrigue of the masks and old-fashioned costumes worn during carnival, the fine wining and dining, the romance of the canals, the elegance of the strong and handsome gondoliers who ply their trade amongst the waterways in their traditional striped tops and straw hats – so much more evocative than humble London cabbies.

Like Kit, the city of Venice is steeped in art and culture, so it wasn’t hard to imagine the man I once knew clambering out of a gondola to enter his palace from the front or stumbling over the bridges and through the narrow alleyways towards the rear, fumbling drunkenly with his keys in the lock on the gate and making his way unsteadily down the narrow passage that separates Palazzo Dario from Palazzo Barbaro next door.

Forty years later I took great pleasure in following in his footsteps, taking a few photographs and playing both ‘The Overture’ and ‘Underture’ from Tommy on my iPod as I gazed up at the rear of Ca’ Dario and imagined Kit in his pomp, the proprietor of a genuine palace no less.

My daughter Olivia took this picture of me (making the ‘Lucky Who’ sign) by the back gate. Unfortunately it’s hard to make out Ca DARIO on the cross beam as it’s very faded. The rest of the pictures were either taken by me or scanned from the reference books I found.

Information for this post was obtained from several guidebooks and histories of Venice, the internet and Andrew Motion’s indispensable book The Lamberts: George, Constant & Kit (Chatto & Windus, 1986).

4.2.16

THE BEATLES - Tribute Band in St Ives

I have neglected the blog in the past week because my life has taken on a different pattern, and I need a bit of time to adjust. Tomorrow we are off to Venice for a few days to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, and because this is a mini-holiday I got to thinking about one of my earliest posts, one I did before Just Backdated was launched and I used to post things on Facebook. This is from September 2013, when Lisa and I were spending a week in St Ives in Corwall and we stumbled on a Beatles tribute band…

Across the harbour, as we neared the pub, it sounded like ‘The Night Before’, the song from Help!, not the most obvious choice for a covers band, but when we got closer they were playing ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ from the first album, and then ‘We Can Work It Out’. When that switched to ‘You Can’t Do That’ Lisa and I had to go inside, and sure enough, on a Tuesday night in late September, a local Beatles act called Not The Beatles was going through the routine – Beatlemania era songs followed by Sgt Pepper era followed by White album/Abbey Road era, complete with appropriate gear, costumes and between song patter – in the Lifeboat pub on the shorefront in St Ives. They weren’t the best tribute band I’d ever seen but that didn’t matter as much as what they played and the good humour with which the songs were delivered. The pub was heaving full, all ages, from teens to grannies, and everyone stood to watch, having the time of their lives, and I guessed that although the time of many of those lives would have been the sixties, a good proportion had been born after John died, and less than half could remember the time when The Beatles ruled the world.

In amongst the crowd, all sweaty and mad for it, we watched and listened. They reeled off all the songs you would expect, the well known (‘Paperback’, ‘Tripper’, ‘Submarine’) and some you wouldn’t have (‘I Need You’, ‘Hide Your Love Away’, ‘I Should Have Known Better’) and everyone in this pub sang along, word perfect, to every single song, at the tops of their voices. During ‘Submarine’, sung of course by Ringo, four or five girls at the front, in their twenties, held hands and formed a line, clearing the floor as they line-danced back and forth towards and away from the group. Paul, violin bass to hand, grinned while John with his black Rikki leered, just as you would expect him to do.

After 20 minutes or so we left to get some air and I had a pint of Guinness in another pub down the road, still overlooking the harbour, and then we walked back to where they were playing. This time it was ‘Lucy’, followed by ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Get Back’ and then my favourite, ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, which was received like the number one hit it ought to have been, and after ‘Obla Di’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ came ‘Yesterday’, community-sung like a hymn to which everyone seemed to know all the words like they’d sang it in school, and then we left the pub again and sat on a bench overlooking the water and listened as they headed up the home straight, ‘All My Loving’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Jude’ and, as I predicted, ‘Twist And Shout’. We’d caught maybe half the entire set, probably missing the early stuff, ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Hold Your Hand’ and some mid-period, which was a shame but then again we’d no idea we’d stumble on the Fabs in the first place.

If ever proof was needed that The Beatles are universally adored, here it was: big bald men with tattoos, younger lads with their girls in low-neck dresses, white-haired men with their wives of 30 years or more, older ladies for whom these songs brought back a time when they would have screamed their heads off at them, likely lads and sexy girls on the pull, tipsy holidaymakers up for it, middle-aged couples enjoying the moment, even the odd dog, and me and Lisa, perhaps more critical than most – “That guitar tone isn’t right,” I said at one point. “Shut up,” said Lisa, grinning – and all of us in rapture to what surely has now become the national songbook, the Beatles’ songbook, loved now and forever by everyone of all ages from the tip of Cornwall to everywhere else.

Shake it up baby now...