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© Matt Kent CONTENTS
4. A TEENAGE KIND OF VENGEANCE
10. GOD CHECKS IN TO A HOLIDAY INN
12. TOMMY: THE MYTHS, THE MUSIC, THE MUD
ACT TWO: A REALLY DESPERATE MAN
17. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR
ACT THREE: PLAYING TO THE GODS
28. LETTER TO MY EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SELF
APPENDIX: A FAN LETTER FROM 1967
You didn’t hear it. You didn’t see it. You won’t say nothing to no one. Never tell a soul What you know is the truth
‘1921’ (1969)
Don’t cry Don’t raise your eye It’s only teenage wasteland
‘Baba O’Riley’ (1971)
And I’m sure – I’ll never know war
‘I’ve Known No War’ (1983) It’s extraordinary, magical, surreal, watching them all dance to my feedback guitar solos; in the audience my art-school chums stand straight-backed among the slouching West and North London Mods, that army of teenagers who have arrived astride their fabulous scooters in short hair and good shoes, hopped up on pills. I can’t speak for what’s in the heads of my fellow bandmates, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon or John Entwistle. Usually I’d be feeling like a loner, even in the middle of the band, but tonight, in June 1964, at The Who’s first show at the Railway Hotel in Harrow, West London, I am invincible. We’re playing R&B: ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘I’m a Man’, ‘Road Runner’ and other heavy classics. I scrape the howling Rickenbacker guitar up and down my microphone stand, then flip the special switch I recently fitted so the guitar sputters and sprays the front row with bullets of sound. I violently thrust my guitar into the air – and feel a terrible shudder as the sound goes from a roar to a rattling growl; I look up to see my guitar’s broken head as I pull it away from the hole I’ve punched in
