later session in 1968. Eddie Kramer had engineered all of Jimi’s records, but the sessions for Electric Ladyland were the first in New York, and it was there that Jimi and Eddie began to connect in that indefinable audio ether, where Jimi’s shamanic powers would finally be allowed to express themselves on vinyl.
While I felt a bit stranded by Jimi’s psychedelic genius, I felt equally out of the loop when drugs became a political issue for those of us in the music business – Paul McCartney had gone on TV saying marijuana should be legalised, for example. It might appear that I felt threatened by talented people, or those brave enough to live a wilder life, and there’s some truth in that, but mostly I felt out of synch, a few steps behind. This feeling had been instilled in me as a young teenager when I was usually surrounded by older, more experienced young men. However, my awe of my elders was tested when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were busted for drugs.
At that time it really did appear as though the Establishment was looking to make an example of Keith Richards by sending him to prison, and in what was possibly Keith Moon’s only act of political solidarity he and his girlfriend Kim stood outside the court with banners appealing for some balance. All this impressed me. Psychedelia, drugs, politics and spiritual stuff were getting knitted together all of a sudden, and I did my best to keep up.
By the time Jimi Hendrix was doing his first London shows in January and February 1967, the couple of acid trips I’d done had definitely changed the way I perceived things. Trees bare of their leaves in winter, for example, began to look like those medical student mock-ups of the vein and artery network inside the human lung; in effect I suddenly saw trees for what they really are: planetary breathing machines. I wasn’t a tripped-out freak, but the way I looked at things was evolving.
Around this time, Karen and I went to see some new friends, the illustrator Mike McInnerney and his wife Katie, whom I’d met at a Pink Floyd show. Their flat was on Shaftesbury Avenue. At the time Mike was painting the banner for The Flying Dragon, a clothes shop intended to rival Granny Takes a Trip. I waffled on to Mike about some of my revelations at the feet of Ron and Ralph of the Blues Magoos, who had introduced me to George Adamski’s extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. Mike tossed me a book called The God Man, written by an eminent British journalist of the Thirties called Charles Purdom.
I opened the book and saw a photograph of a strange-looking, charismatic fellow with a large, rather flattened nose, flowing dark hair and a generous moustache. He was an Indian teacher, Meher Baba, which means ‘Compassionate Father’. I read a few lines, and found that everything Meher Baba said fitted perfectly with my view of the cosmos. He was still alive at that time, and Mike told me that a group of his friends hoped to go to India soon to meet him.
On Karen’s bedroom wall were three Victorian black-and-white postcard photographs of scantily dressed actresses. One was the infamous Lily Langtry, mistress of Prince Edward, later King Edward VII, and one sunny afternoon while Karen was at work I scribbled out a lyric inspired by the images and made a demo of ‘Pictures of Lily’. My song was intended to be an ironic comment on the sexual shallows of show business, especially pop, a world of postcard images for boys and girls to fantasise over. ‘Pictures of Lily’ ended up, famously, being about a boy saved from burgeoning adolescent sexual frustration when his father presented him with dirty postcards over which he could masturbate.
‘Pictures of Lily’ was ready to go, but I didn’t have much else completed. Kit had heard the demo of ‘Glittering Girl’, and felt it might make a single. I also had a clutch of lyrics about frustrated romance. I have always said I never wrote love songs, but the truth is I rarely wrote good ones.
While I was working on the demo, a jazz critic for Playboy called to ask if he could bring Keith Jarrett over to use my piano for a few hours. I refused. Strange to think I turned down the chance of one of the greatest private concerts in my life, but I was fairly sure I had a hit in hand and didn’t want the distraction. Keith Jarrett then got on the phone and asked me a few questions about my demo recording method. I told him I was playing all the parts myself, and he seemed inspired to do something similar. On Restoration Ruin, the album he produced the following year, which I eagerly sought out, he sang, played guitar, harmonica, sax, piano, organ, flute, bass, drums and percussion with great facility. Of course it’s Keith Jarrett’s freewheeling piano play that has made him so beloved; like Jimi, Keith is clearly transported by what flows from his fingers.
Jimi Hendrix’s appearance in my world sharpened my musical need to establish some rightful territory. In some ways Jimi’s performances did borrow from mine – the feedback, the distortion, the guitar theatrics – but his artistic genius lay in how he created a sound all his own: Psychedelic Soul, or what I’ll call ‘Blues Impressionism’. Eric was doing a similar thing with Cream and, in 1967, Stevie Winwood’s band Traffic would release Mr Fantasy, posing another staggering challenge. The musicians around me were truly lifting off in a colourful, ascendant spacecraft, fuelled by Jimi, Eric and Stevie’s new musical creations – and yet Jimi, Eric and Stevie’s psychedelic songs were still deeply rooted in their blues and R&B upbringing.
For six years on our pub and club circuit we had first supported, and later played alongside, some extraordinarily talented bands. Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers were so authentic an R&B band that it was hard to believe they weren’t American. The Hollies, Searchers, Kinks and Pirates changed the face of British pop, not to mention The Beatles or Stones. The 1964 Searchers’ hit ‘Needles and Pins’ created the jangling guitar sound later picked up by The Byrds. The Kinks had brought Eastern sounds to British pop as early as 1965 with the hypnotically beautiful ‘See My Friend’. And there were dozens of other transformative influences all around us.
Like many songwriters I also listened to jazz for inspiration and ideas. A short Cannonball Adderley track called ‘Tengo Tango’ drove me wild, it was so tight, so rocking; Herbie Mann’s version of ‘Right Now’ was a classic of soft jazz; and flautist Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds, featuring the hypnotic track ‘Plum Blossom’, played on an ocarina flute, was very important to me.1
What had happened to The Who’s blues roots? Had we ever really had any? Did John and Keith feel a strong connection to blues and jazz? Was Roger only interested in the kind of hard R&B that provided a foil for his own masculine angst? Though we enjoyed our recording sessions, The Who seemed to be turning to solipsism for inspiration. My songs were pop curios about subjects as wide-ranging as soft pornography and masturbation, gender-identity crises, the way we misunderstood the isolating factors of mental illness, and – by now well-established – teenage-identity crises and low self-esteem issues.
I couldn’t see how to write about LSD, purple skies and free love. Despite my admiration of extemporised jazz I had no idea how to bring it into The Who’s music. I couldn’t see how The Who would ever become a band admired for their musicianship and ideology as well as their clothes, ideas, gimmicks, Pop Art transferences and aggression.
Why did that even matter? Wasn’t it enough that I had helped discover guitar feedback? I had certainly invented the power chord. With Ray Davies I had introduced the suspended chord into UK pop. But none of this felt like enough. Something dangerous and new was happening in music, and I wanted to be part of it.
While Jimi Hendrix conquered London, The Who’s first performance in the USA was almost an accidental event. Frank Barsalona ran Premier Talent, an agency in New York. He heard about The Who through someone in Brian Epstein’s camp, and was persuaded to put us on the bill of an annual New York package with the famous Murray the K, the first American DJ to get really close to The Beatles. Murray had also been tipped off about Eric’s new band Cream. The shows were planned to take place over a two-week period, during which we were expected to perform six shows a day, so we anticipated an intense period of work.
Flying into New York was a first for my bandmates. Having made two trips there on my own in connection with what became the Allen Klein takeover bid, I felt fairly at ease in the city. Keith and John were so excited they could barely contain themselves, and immediately started living in high style at the Drake Hotel, Keith ordering vintage champagne