Pete Townshend: Who I Am. Pete Townshend

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      The Who headed back to the States in June, flying out on the 13th, the day after Karen’s birthday, to play at Ann Arbor, Michigan, our first show outside New York. We then moved on to play four shows in two days at Bill Graham’s Fillmore in San Francisco. Cannonball Adderley was on the bill with his brother Nat, and I couldn’t wait to tell them how much I loved ‘Tengo Tango’.

      Bill Graham told us firmly we had to play two one-hour sets with no repeats. We had rarely played more than fifty minutes, and most of that was filled by me, making my guitar howl. Suddenly I started to see the sense of Eric Clapton’s extended soloing. We rehearsed and brought in new material, and the attentiveness of the Fillmore audience and excellence of the PA system more than made up for the extra work. It made us feel for the first time that we were playing real music.

      The atmosphere in Haight-Ashbury was peace and love, the streets full of young people tripping. The ones to watch out for were the many Vietnam veterans, attracted by the promise of easy sex. They were often badly damaged by their wartime experiences, and despite the mellowing drugs they took they could be pretty hostile. One man grabbed Karen’s arm as he passed and wouldn’t release it, gazing at her like he’d found his Holy Mother. I caught his attention by knocking his arm away; for a second his face hardened, then he broke into a grin and walked away.

      It was at the Monterey Pop Festival, on 18 June 1967, that Jimi and I met our battleground. Essentially it was a debate about who was on first, but not quite for the reason one would assume. When Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ former publicist who was acting for the festival, told me we were to appear immediately after Jimi, two thoughts ran through my head. The first was that it seemed wrong that we should appear higher on the bill. Musically speaking, Jimi had quickly surpassed The Who; even then he was far more significant artistically than I felt we would ever be.

      I also worried that if Jimi went on before us he might smash his guitar, or set it on fire, or pull off some other stunt that would leave our band looking pathetic. We didn’t even have our Sound City and Marshall stacks because our managers had persuaded us to travel light and cheap. Jimi had imported his, and I knew his sound would be superior.

      Derek Taylor suggested I speak to Jimi. I tried, but he was already high. He wouldn’t take the question of who would perform first seriously, flamming around on his guitar instead. Although I don’t remember being angry, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have been disrespectful, I knew I had to press Jimi to engage me. At this point John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas intervened, thinking we weren’t being ‘peace and love’ enough. He suggested tossing a coin, and whoever lost the toss would go on last. Jimi lost.

      After being introduced by Eric Burdon, The Who blasted through a clumsy set, ending by smashing our gear. The sound technicians tried to intervene as we went into our finale, which only added to the sense of disarray. The crowd cheered, but many seemed a bit bewildered. Ravi Shankar was apparently very upset to see me break my guitar. I towelled myself off and ran out front to catch Jimi’s set.

      It was strange seeing Jimi in a big music festival setting after only having seen him in small London clubs. Many of Jimi’s stage moves were hard to read from where I was sitting. In the huge space Jimi’s sound wasn’t so great after all, and I started to think maybe The Who wouldn’t compare too badly. Then he turned up his guitar and really started to let loose: Jimi the magician had made his appearance. What was so great about him was that no matter how much gear he smashed, Jimi never looked angry; he always smiled beatifically, which made everything he did seem OK.

      The crowd, softened up by The Who’s antics, responded heartily this time. When Jimi set his guitar on fire, Mama Cass, who was sitting next to me, turned and said, ‘Hey, destroying guitars is your thing!’

      I shouted back over the cheering, ‘It used to be. It belongs to Jimi now.’ And I meant every word.

      When Karen, Keith Altham (our publicist) and I all gathered at San Francisco airport to fly home, it turned out that Keith had also been working with Jimi, who was allegedly also paying his fees. I made it clear to Keith that I felt he had been duplicitous by not telling us he would be acting for both The Who and Jimi at Monterey. He denied any wrongdoing, and defends himself to this day.

      Jimi got wind of our little spat in the airport lobby and started giving me the evil eye. I walked over to him and explained that there was no personal issue involved. He just rolled his head around – he seemed pretty high. Wanting to keep the peace, I said I had watched his performance and loved it, and when we got home would he let me have a piece of the guitar he had broken? He leaned back and looked at me sarcastically: ‘What? And do you want me to autograph it for you?’

      Karen pulled me away, fearing I would blow up, but the truth is I was just taken aback. Contrary to what I’d been told, Jimi must have been as ruffled as I was by the reverse jockeying for position before the concert.

      As Karen and I boarded the plane in San Francisco, Keith, John and Roger seemed unfazed by what had passed between Jimi and me. We settled into our TWA first-class seats, which in those days faced each other over a table. Keith and John produced large purple pills we’d all been given by Owsley Stanley, the first underground chemist to mass-produce LSD, and Keith popped one. These pills, known as ‘Purple Owsleys’, had been widely used at the festival.

      As the plane took off, Karen and I split half a pill. John wisely demurred. Within an hour my life had been turned upside down.

¹ This was used as the basis for ‘I Love My Dog’, released in autumn 1966 by Cat Stevens, and an immediate hit. Cat (born Steven Georgiou, later renamed Yusuf Islam) now pays back-royalties to Lateef. I remember him fondly – I spoke to him once in Brewer Street when he was a teenager. His family owned a restaurant around the corner from my Wardour Street flat. He was three years younger than me, but that would have been quite a gap between such young men. He had caught me in my big, blue Lincoln, seemed to know of me and where I lived, and fired a number of questions at me about songwriting and guitars.

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      The Owsley LSD trip on the aeroplane was the most disturbing experience I had ever had. The drug worked very quickly, and although Karen and I only took half as much as Keith, the effect was frightening. Seasoned trippers have teased me since about how stupid we were, but Karen and I felt that Keith couldn’t be allowed to trip alone, and that we’d all be able to help each other. In fact Keith seemed to operate in total defiance of the drug’s effects, only occasionally asking how much we had taken to check if he was getting it worse – or bigger and better – than we were.

      At one point I tried to console Karen, who was terrified, telling her I loved her. ‘Ah!’ Keith sneered, and John cynically joined in. Roger, sitting across the aisle, may have found the whole thing amusing, but I was reassured by his smile. After thirty minutes the air hostess, whose turned-up nose had made her look a little porcine, transmogrified into a real pig, scurrying up and down the aisle, snorting. The air was full of faint music, and I wondered if I was experiencing my childhood musical visitations again, but I finally traced the sound to the armrest of my seat. After putting on a headset I felt I could hear every outlet on the plane at the same time: rock, jazz, classical, comedy, Broadway tunes and C&W competed for dominance over my brain.

      I was on the verge of really losing my mind when I floated up to the ceiling, staying inside the airframe, and watched as everything changed in scale. Karen and Pete sat below me, clutching onto each other; she was slapping his face gently, figuring he had fallen asleep. From my new vantage point the LSD trip СКАЧАТЬ