FROM WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN: THE WHO FROM
LIFEHOUSE TO QUADROPHENIA
Behind the Scenes at the Beginning of the Quadrophenia Sessions
The Who finally began their Quadrophenia
sessions at Ramport on May 21, about nine months after Townshend had
first discussed the opera in the press. Work was certainly serious by
June 3, when they transferred material from eight-track to 16-track.
Though Daltrey had said in the April 26 Rolling Stone that they would have
a new LP out by June, that was now an impossibility. The recording
console still wasn't ready; the producer would pretty much fade out of
the project; and they were using an engineer with whom they'd never
before worked. Yet within only a couple of months or so, they had the
basis of a classic double album.
As much as The Who yearned to work in their own
state-of-the-art studio, when they assembled at Ramport, they weren't
even able to do 16-track recording without some jiggling. They'd
enlisted Ronnie Lane's mobile, according to Nevison, as "the studio
part [for Ramport] was together, but I don't think all the modules were
there on the console. They were at least a month away from getting that
board ready; it was enormous. At that point, [the mobile] was only
eight-track. Ronnie didn't pay for 16, and I had a lot of problems
going 16, because [the Airstream trailer with the mobile was] like a
tube. In those days, the tape machines were enormous. There wasn't room
enough, without putting the tape machines right in the middle of the
room, to go up to 16 tracks. So we had to put eight tracks down at the
bottom, and eight tracks up top. I got into all sorts of problems with
hum, 'cause it was right next to the motor. We finally got it all
sorted out. In fact, it was the very first eight-up, eight-down Studer
A80 [a two-inch, 16-track tape deck configured so that eight tracks
were above the deck and eight below it] in history.
"We cut the first half a dozen Quadrophenia tracks – maybe just
four, I don't remember – with the eight tracks. The very first backing
track we cut was 'I've Had Enough,' I remember that. I don't believe he
had a demo; I think he just showed them the song, and they rehearsed it
a bit and found parts, Pete suggested things or whatever. Then, over
the course of a weekend, I converted it to 16, and we recorded the rest
of the Quadrophenia's backing
tracks on 16-track. And I did eight-to-16 copies on the first few
backing tracks, so it ended up being 16-track. But I was only hired to
actually record the initial [sessions], and they liked what I did. So
when we were finished with the backing tracks and the studio was ready,
I was on board as the guy; they kept me on. I was just in the right
place at the right time."
Despite the delay in getting fully up and running,
Ramport did prove up to snuff, something overlooked by accounts
emphasizing the construction snags and the storm which flooded the
studio during one particularly crucial track (more of which in a bit).
"Ultimately, I think Ramport was a huge success," feels John Alcock.
"It had a great feel, sounded good, and I later produced several albums
there, including both Thin Lizzy albums with which I was involved. It
was one of the 'hot' studios in London for a while, and I was sad to
hear it was eventually sold. As with many good studios in the 70s, the
success was based more on serendipity than technical specifications -
it just felt and sounded like a great place to record rock bands."
As the engineer for most of Quadrophenia's tracks, Nevison got
a close-up view of how songs were changed from Townshend's home
recordings. "They weren't demos," he remarks. "These were masters. The
demo aspect about them was the fact that he played drums and bass. The
arrangements were set. The tempos were set. He'd be very careful to
just do basic bass and drum parts. But he was very careful not to do
what Keith or John would do. 'Cause he didn't want them to follow what he wanted
them to do. He wanted Keith and John to do their own thing. He'd leave
enough room for Keith to do his thing, and John to do his thing. Pete
was very precise; he had it ready to go. And, you know, it went very
easily. It was very surpris[ing]. It was very smooth. He knows exactly
what he wants." As Daltrey now had a studio of his own, he was able to
work on his vocals there before recording with the group, which was a
big help in devising some of his acrobatic phrasing.
Quadrophenia,
even more so than Who's Next,
made heavy use of Townshend's synthesizer. However, as Nevison points
out, his synth parts were not recorded in the studio. "The ARP 2500,
which he used exclusively during the Quadrophenia
sessions, was a modular synthesizer," he explains. "He never brought
that down to the studio. He kept that at home. You couldn't move that
around. You couldn't keep sounds on it. You'd spend an hour getting a
sound, then you'd play it, and then you'd have to take out all these
patch cords and patch up for a different sound. You'd never get the
sound exactly the same; you couldn't click a button and keep it. It
used to go out of tune all the time., so you'd have to tune up all the
oscillators. It was an enormous pain in the ass.
"So Pete would work at night feverishly recording
these things on his 16-track. There was no way that we could spend as
much time as he needed for the synthesizer parts, so on these
synthesizer tracks, Keith would play to a click [track], and we'd
record the drums and bass and guitar. Three of them would play – well,
four of 'em, you know, Roger would sing. And we'd just keep going over
it until we got it right. That was mainly because Pete wanted to use
the hours and hours and hours of synthesizer stuff that he'd put in on
these demos. The straight-on rock and roll ones, like '5:15,' we just
cut without a click" – just possibly accounting for why no demo of
'5:15' has ever emerged.
Townshend may have been very much the auteur of
Quadrophenia – in fact, it is the only Who album on which he wrote all
of the material – but the tracks and material did leave a lot of room
for the rhythm section to shine as instrumentalists. Entwistle in
particular played not only some of the best bass of his career, but
some of the best electric bass by anyone, his nimble and pungent runs
combining grace and throbbing power. The songs, and perhaps the
production, lent themselves far more to Moon's unpredictable torrent
than Who's Next had, especially on the more uptempo numbers, such as
'Bell Boy' and 'I've Had Enough.'
"Keith had so many drums, I couldn't get microphones
everywhere," remarks Nevison. "He had two hi-hats, he had like eight
tom-toms, he had I don't know how many cymbals, and a gong. And two
kick drums, and oh my god ... so that was a challenge. The rest of it
was very easy. Recording John's bass, I used mostly the amp. His amp
sounded great. He had a great feel and a great sound. And Pete, same
thing with the guitars. They weren't real, real picky about their
sounds either. I mean, they were picky, but they weren't like up your
ass about it."
While Entwistle had played horns on Who records
since 1966, his brass had been relatively underutilized on the group's
early 70s recordings, despite having been key ingredients of hits such
as 'I'm a Boy' and 'Pictures of Lily,' as well Tommy's 'Overture.' He reasserts
himself in this department on several Quadrophenia
tracks with tasteful versatility, whether it's the forlorn windblown
call of 'I've Had Enough" or the chunky, almost jazzy riffs on '5:15.'
The interplay of his horns with Townshend's synthesizers remains an
underrated asset to the diversity and depth of Quadrophenia's sonic textures.
"When you think of Quadrophenia,
you don't think of synthesizers so much," feels Nevison. "You think of
strings and you think of horns. [Townshend] used synth horns, and of
course, Entwistle used his real horns. All the different themes that
Pete had for Quadrophenia
were perfect for that. It was a nice blend." The horn parts (50 in all,
Pete told NME) were, like
Townshend's synthesizer contributions, not recorded at Ramport, as "I
never recorded any of the Entwistle horns. He did them in his studio.
He would take the tapes home at night, and Pete would take the tapes
home at night; they'd all record stuff at their own studios. John had
his own studio in his house, and he had his own engineer." (John Alcock
confirms that at the time he met Entwistle, the bassist "had a simple
studio setup in his house," and thinks it was set up for him by Who
soundman Bobby Pridden and Who roadie Cy Langston.)
The Who also got a little outside help from Chris
Stainton, who played piano on 'The Dirty Jobs,' '5:15,' and 'Drowned.'
Ordinarily Nicky Hopkins would have been the first keyboardist they'd
called. But Hopkins was unavailable, and Stainton had gotten to know
the band while playing with Joe Cocker, who supported The Who on a few
shows in Chicago in May 1969. "Pete had watched the Joe Cocker set and
seemed to be very impressed by the piano riffs I was playing in
'Hitchcock Railway,' which I lifted from Jose Feliciano's version,"
says Stainton. "He never forgot it and years later asked me to play in
that style on the Quadrophenia
album."
Townshend happily owned up to the influence in
public, telling Sounds, "We
were just doing 'Drowned,' which was using a Chris Stainton riff, which
I pinched from 'Hitchcock Railway,' and we met a friend of his. I said
it would be really nice if he came down, and the next day he came down
and we did that number, and he enjoyed himself so much that we used him
on a couple of other pieces."
If Townshend was hoping for the same kind of input
from Lambert as Kit had given to Tommy,
however, he would be disappointed. In Nevison's estimation, "Kit had
very little to do with Quadrophenia. He was there at some point, but he
was just there as the manager. Pete really ran the show. Everything
started when Pete got there, and everything finished when Pete left."
According to Richard Barnes in The
Who, The Mods, and The Quadrophenia Connection, "Pete would say
[Lambert's] contribution seemed to be to turn up with some flash chef
and food while we were recording, and expensive champagne." Though
Lambert is credited for preproduction and (with Chris Stamp and Track
Records co-founder Pete Kameron) as a co-executive producer on Quadrophenia, really The Who were
pretty much on their own at Ramport, despite what Townshend might have
hoped for at the outset of the recording.
As for Lambert, feels Barnes, "unfortunately he was
no longer that kind of support that Pete needed." And Barnes does feel Lambert could have been
of use, had he been in the right frame of mind. "The thing about Quadrophenia, it doesn't have a
great plot," he adds. "It's a bit thin. It's about a mod who sort of
thinks, 'Oh fuck, it wasn't what I thought.' It's a bit subtle, really,
for rock. There's no one stabbed, no murders, no love. And – this you
can't emphasize more than anything – he didn't have Kit Lambert to come
in and say, 'Oh, what about introducing' ... To come in and sort of
say, 'Well, it's getting a bit lost here, Pete. Why don't you reprise
this bit,' or whatever? 'Cause Kit Lambert's got a great understanding
of film scripts, plotting, film structure, opera structure, 'cause his
dad was in opera. I think it's flawed, Quadrophenia, as a work, because of
that. 'Cause it gets lost in the middle. It's all muddy, and the songs
all sound the same.
"They were in many ways trying to edge out Lambert,
but I do think Pete missed someone to help him with plotting. Like if
you're going to introduce a character and he does something, you've got
to have a resolution later on. Pete says one of the first things that
turned Tommy from being some
kind of rambling rock opera was Lambert insisting on reprising things.
It was Lambert that came up with this sort of structure. It changes the
whole story. This is where someone like the pre-Tommy, [pre-] out of his head Kit
Lambert would have pulled it together in the middle and said 'no no no,
it's getting a bit heavy here, put in a ballad or something,' or
whatever. 'Cause it gets very turgid. The middle five tracks all sound
a bit similar, with manic Moon drumming and that."
Even more seriously, Daltrey had become dissatisfied
with Lambert and Stamp's handling of the band's finances. When a check
from Lambert to cover some of Ramport Studio's construction expenses
was invalidated, and Townshend found that much of his publishing money
was unaccounted for, the path to a break became inevitable. Bill
Curbishley and Peter Rudge began to assume more of the band's
management, which itself led to some confusion. "Whenever there's four
managers, there's always gonna be a little push and shove, and the guys
that were on the road with the show are the ones that end up with the
best loyalties to the band," feels Donald K. Donald, promoter of the
notorious 1973 Montreal show that found The Who thrown in jail after
celebrating too hard at the after-gig hotel party. "There was probably
no need for a band to have four managers. I think it probably caused
some complications, because there was always little issues back and
forth. You'd get a comment from one manager about the other manager and
whatnot."
Feels Keith Altham, "Kit was getting less and less
reliable, and less and less likely to be there when he was needed. He
was having his problem with drink and drugs, and it kind of did what
it's done dozens of people in the music business – removes them from
reality. Although he loved the band and he loved Pete, he just didn't
have a grip on what his job was, or what it had been. Pete couldn't
rely on him anymore, and the band couldn't rely on him anymore. I think
that it was inevitable that somebody would step into the breach and
handle the day-to-day running of the band, because it wasn't being
picked up."
