Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil Strauss

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      TOWNSHEND: Looking back at the Who’s career, as wonderful as I’m sure this concert is going to be, all it’s really gonna do is make us remember, those of us that were there, the better concerts that we did.

       When was the last time you actually sang with an orchestra?

      TOWNSHEND: In public, I don’t know. I think the last time I attempted to do it was an orchestral version of Tommy where I was the narrator. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I got drunk, and about halfway through I stopped and walked off.

       What made you hate it so much?

      TOWNSHEND: It just seemed like I’d spent my whole life trying to evolve rock and roll—in a way, advance it within its own terms—and somehow it was being co-opted and swamped by a much greater tradition, which was the tradition of the orchestra, classical music, and traditional opera. We had our own version of pomp and circumstance, and that was smashing a few guitars.

       How did the band react when you first decided to start writing songs instead of doing covers?

      TOWNSHEND: Well it was actually a reaction of relief. We went to Fontana [Records] with a very, very good version of a Slim Harpo song called “Got Love if You Want It” and a really good Bo Diddley song called “Here ’Tis,” both of which I think would have been ballroom hits for the R&B crowd. And we were told that they wouldn’t do. We had to have original material. This was kind of the Beatles fad era when everybody was expected to write their own material.

      I’d written a couple of fairly sophomoric songs for the band to play really just for fun, and everybody was very encouraging about that, Roger included. But by the time it was released a bit later, Roger really felt that his power base in the band was being threatened somewhat by me writing, so we co-wrote “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” together. And he remembers contributing quite a lot and I remember him contributing very little. But we did it together in a sense to find out whether we could co-write, and I actually felt that we couldn’t. So I just stuck to my guns and proceeded to be the writer and the power base did shift.

       What are some of the qualities you liked about Roger back then?

      TOWNSHEND: When I look back to the very early years, a lot of the things that I used to regard as Roger’s negative points, I now view them in a kind of very positive way. Like he used to be quite dominating and threatening. I used to drink a bottle of whiskey and smoke forty joints at night listening to Jimmy Reed, and if he hadn’t come around and gotten me out of bed, I wouldn’t have done a gig or done anything. I think that in the early days, we needed that kind of discipline. He was a working man. He used to get up at 6:30 in the morning and go and do a job every day, and then at the end of the day, he’d come around and pick me up, pick Keith up, pick John [Entwistle, bassist] up and take us to the show.

       When I talked to Roger, he said, “I don’t know where I stand with Pete,” which seemed like a strange comment.

      TOWNSHEND: You know, I just hope nobody knows where they stand with me. That’s the way I like it.

       Undiscouraged, Daltrey toured later that year playing Who songs with Simon Townshend—Pete’s brother—on guitar instead. After two more years, Pete Townshend relented and began touring with Daltrey again, eventually releasing the first new Who studio album in twenty-four years.

       I asked your brother this same question: If your band was playing in the sixties, do you think you could compete with the Beatles?

      LIAM GALLAGHER: I think we’d be the Beatles.

       Then what would the Beatles be?

      GALLAGHER: They’d be the Beatles, too. And if the Beatles were here now, they’d be Oasis.

      [Continued . . .]

      

      In the Los Angeles studio of producer Don Was, Ringo Starr didn’t sit down for an interview; he braced himself for one. Though he was affable and open, he also seemed tense, like a dog expecting at any minute to get hit by a stick. That stick is the Beatles. Everywhere Starr had gone that day, people treated him more like a museum piece in a Beatles exhibit than like a person. Modest by nature, he tended to brush off the attention and avoid the word Beatles, referring to the group simply as “we” whenever possible.

      Add to this Starr’s desire to be taken as seriously as John Lennon but his inability to articulate and conceptualize as well, and you have an interview that, at every turn, grew increasingly awkward—especially when Starr was asked about his habit of flashing peace signs on both hands and saying, “Peace and love,” repeatedly.

       What made you start using the “peace and love” catchphrase you always say?

      RINGO STARR: Every record has some peace and love song on it.

       I’m talking more about the way you say it.

      STARR: Yeah, I say, “Peace and love. Hey, peace and love.” Well, I think it certainly came from the sixties and, you know, we³¹ were peace and love. You’ll find photos of us and it just became more and more, and I had this dream that one day everyone on the planet will go, “Peace and love,” and there will be a psychic shift.

      For my birthday last year in Chicago, I had the twelve noon peace-and-love second. I told people, “Just stop wherever you are at noon and say, ‘Peace and love.’ ” And, you know, that’s a great vibe to put out. Really.

       Do you know what a meme is? It’s an idea that spreads virally. Is that the point?

      STARR: Well, I didn’t invent it, but I’m trying to spread it, like Maharishi and TM [transcendental meditation]. But I’ve been put down so badly for peace and loving. (Harshly:) “Oh, he’s peace and loving, you know what I mean.” Hey, I’m only saying “peace and love.” What’s there to be angry about?

       You’ve gotten shit for it?

      STARR: Yeah! People are like, “That’s all he does now.”

       Well, you do say it a lot.

      STARR: Yeah, some people can’t take it.

       It’s better than saying “war and hate” all the time.

      STARR: There’s a lot of that out there. And we have a track about that. Let’s get back to the record.

       Okay. The last thing I was going to ask about, and this is such an asshole journalist question . . .

      STARR: I hope you write it like that (laughs).

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