Who I Am: A Memoir (31 page)

Doug Morris, head of ATCO records, came to see me in London with a deal for three solo albums over five years, also for very good money.

‘Can you deal with both these contracts, Pete?’ Doug was asking the obvious question. The fabulous money aside, I was committed to seven albums over seven years. To do that I needed to write more songs per year than I’d ever managed before.

‘Yeah,’ I told Doug carelessly. ‘I can deal with it. I’m on a roll.’

My best friend Barney and his girlfriend Jan got thrown out of their flat in Richmond, so I allowed them to move into the top floor of my old office near my Twickenham home. Barney soon wanted to buy the entire house. I made Barney an offer I knew he couldn’t refuse: if he accompanied me on the next batch of Who tours of the States I would let him have the house for nothing.

‘What would I be doing?’ he asked.

‘I want you to be my friend, and tell me when I’m out of order.’

‘I am your friend, and you’re always out of order. I tell you, and you never listen.’

‘I will listen,’ I promised.

‘Fucking liar.’

‘I’m not a liar.’

‘See,’ said Barney triumphantly. ‘You never listen.’

I was preparing to travel to New York with Barney, Mike and Sue, and Jackie. I also gave Rabbit a ticket to thank him for his amazing work on
Empty Glass
. Karen and the kids had simply faded into the background of my consciousness. It was the only way I could handle what I was doing. When I arrived at Heathrow Airport, slightly hung over, only Sue, Jackie and Rabbit were there waiting for me.

Sue handed me an envelope: ‘Dear Pete, Thanks for the offer of a trip to New York, but I don’t think things are going to work out for Sue and me. Please look after my family. Love, Mike.’

As Concorde took off, Jackie gripped my hand. When we were in the air she asked me to tell her some jokes to keep her distracted. I was in the middle of the one about the hippopotami in the swamp (my father’s favourite) when she looked back to the rows of seats behind us. She suddenly gripped my arm.

‘Oh my God!’ She put her hand to her mouth, as though about to retch. ‘Mum and Rabbit are snogging!’

I couldn’t tell this story if not for the fact that from that day forward Sue and Rabbit remained together as a couple until Sue’s death in 2007. Mike arranged to leave home when Sue returned. Unfortunately, Jackie’s sister Cathy always associated my appearance with the collapse of her parents’ marriage.

From the second night in New York, Sue and Rabbit started sharing a room. Jackie, all alone, came to stay with me. We felt thrown together; maybe we had cooked it all up. It didn’t matter. I felt that God himself had sent me a very real angel to help me, to make me feel whole.

Jackie, who raised my pulse rate every time I set eyes on her, soon started telling me she was falling in love with me. I started telling her I loved her too. I suggested that she and her mother stay with the tour, and they both jumped at the chance. It was paradise; I had never been so happy. I woke up to this dazzling young woman who launched me into the light of each new day with a stupid grin on my face.

The third date of the tour was at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati on 3 December 1979, where we played our usual show. On stage with the band I was often quite delirious with enjoyment, which was completely new for me. I had never enjoyed performing as much as I did on this tour.

I was drinking a lot, that’s true, even on stage, and smoking, that too is true, and of course I danced. Maybe I did dance like a fool. Who gives a shit? I was inspired. I often made disastrous musical mistakes on stage, but I was stretching the boundaries and taking huge chances with extemporisations. Kenney struggled to keep up sometimes, but always gave me a solid rock bed. Rabbit was always right with me, often taking the lead. John did what he always did. Unflappable, he was always totally in tune with whatever I did. I often played astonishingly outlandish passages, and sometimes when I ad-libbed on stage I cooked up lyrics that I wrote down later and used for new songs.

All this freewheeling was understandably tough for Roger, making it tricky for him to fit in with our musical digressions. I kept taking over the lead microphone and kicking off new songs. My adrenaline on stage was running so high most nights I couldn’t control myself.

After the show at the Riverfront we assembled in the band’s dressing room. Bill had terrible news.

‘Something terrible happened out there tonight,’ he said. ‘Eleven kids have died. I don’t know the exact details.’

‘When did this happen?’ someone asked. ‘During the show? In the crowd?’

‘No.’ Bill tried to calm us. ‘It was at the entrances, on the plaza outside.’

‘Before the show?’ I got to my feet.

‘We decided not to tell you.’ he said. ‘The crowd couldn’t be allowed to leave the building while security was still dealing with the trouble outside.’

Back at the hotel we all gathered in a meeting room and watched the television. Some of us were weeping at the images of bodies laid out, reminiscent of a mass shooting. We didn’t say much. We had a few drinks, but I was already numb.

It turned out that eleven fans were killed (and many more injured) in the rush for seating. The concert was sold out, and when the crowds waiting outside in the cold heard us performing the soundcheck they assumed the concert had started and stampeded. Those at the front were trampled to death by those pushing from behind, who hadn’t realised that the doors were still closed.

I was reminded of the incident in New York when Bill Graham had decided not to tell us there was a fire. I re-ran the show in my head over and over again. Had I said anything stupid on stage? It was possible. How did the lines ‘It’s only teenage wasteland’ and ‘They’re all wasted’ at the end of ‘Baba O’Riley’ fit with the rows of bodies outside? Why couldn’t we have been trusted to know what had happened?

The answer was obvious. And I’m sure that if I had been in Bill’s shoes I wouldn’t have told the band either. Poor Bill, having to watch that show with fingers crossed that we didn’t make things worse. Our shows were becoming incendiary and unpredictable, and he often described my stage persona during this period as ‘malevolent’.

I mishandled the press, trying to be ironic in an interview with Greil Marcus of
Rolling Stone
: I railed at the rock industry for being so stupid it couldn’t keep its audiences alive. We made another mistake when we decided to continue our tour. We should have stayed in Cincinnati for at least a few days to show our respect, which we genuinely felt, for those who had died and their families. Instead, we automatically followed the dictum that the show must go on, and flew to Buffalo to perform the very next day.

The first chance I had I chartered a jet to Myrtle Beach, hoping to find some solace from Meher Baba’s ever-present spirit. Barney and my friend Geoff Gilbert went to the centre, but I couldn’t bring myself to go. Instead Jackie and I walked along the beach until dawn. We slept all day. Meher Baba was with us, much as I sometimes tried to keep him out.

Mo Ostin, chief of Warner Brothers Records, and his wife Evelyn came to AIR studios in Oxford Street to hear the first playback of my solo album on 7 January 1980. They loved it; Mo would carry the word back to Doug Morris and Ahmet Ertegun that they had a hit album. Chris Chappel, my young minder and fashion advisor, and I hung out a bit. I was finding it very hard to be home. A couple of nights when I was working in Oxford Street I stayed at a hotel nearby, where Jackie joined me. She was waiting for me to make a decision about our relationship.

Chris knew of a vacant flat above a shoe shop in the King’s Road that I thought might be useful as a bolthole, so I arranged to rent it. I set myself up a record player and settled in. The master bedroom faced the main road and it was noisy, so I slept in one of two tiny bedrooms at the back of the flat.

One evening after work recording my solo album,
Empty Glass
, my friend Jeremy Thomas, the film producer, set up a screening of
Bad Timing
, directed by Nic Roeg. The film was a masterpiece, in which Art Garfunkel plays a university lecturer who becomes involved in an obsessive relationship with a student, played by Theresa Russell. My song ‘Who Are You’ was used in various scenes to highlight the turmoil that Garfunkel’s character is being thrown into by Russell’s much younger character.

Russell was 23, at the height of her beauty, and a completely convincing and committed actor. The film was full of explicit sex scenes. Chris Thomas and I were blown away by her. Jeremy explained that she was in a tempestuous relationship with Nic that had destroyed his marriage. I knew how that felt. I was hawking a version of the
Lifehouse
film script at the time, and there was a possibility Nic might take the project. It seemed like an ideal time to fly to LA and talk to Nic. I called his number and a woman answered. I recognised Theresa Russell’s voice at once.

‘Hi, it’s Pete Townshend. Can I speak to Nic?’

‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘This is Theresa Russell. Nice to speak to you. Nic is actually in Paris.’

‘Damn. I’m coming to town and was hoping to meet him.’ I paused. ‘But while I’m on the phone, I loved your work in
Bad Timing
.’

‘That’s wonderful, thank you.’ She seemed genuinely pleased, as all actors are when their work is recognised and complimented. ‘It was my idea to use your song. I’ve always loved it.’

‘Good, good.’ I had nothing more to say. I’d heard the voice I wanted to hear, and she sounded fabulous. We said goodbye and I put down the phone.

I stood helplessly for a while, just staring at the carpet. Then I called again.

‘Hello, Theresa?’

‘Yes, still here.’

‘I was going to invite you and Nic to join me and some friends to see Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
next week. I know you’re alone, but maybe you’d like to come with us?’

‘Wow. Wow. That would be great. Maybe you could call me when you arrive and we can confirm then?’

I put down the phone again and danced around the flat.

On the evening of
The Wall
concert I went first to meet my buddy, comedy writer Bill Minkin at Chateau Marmont Hotel. I was nervous about meeting Theresa and had shaved off my stubble for some reason, so my face looked kind of pasty. Bill offered me a small line of cocaine. I seemed to be operating with a completely new rule book: there was no point in trying to control my life.

The coke didn’t seem to do much. We drove around the corner to collect Theresa. She let me in to her apartment. The first shock was that her long blonde hair was now short, and looked a little red.

‘I fucked it up,’ she said, ruffling her bob. ‘Too much bleach.’

‘You look great,’ I said. Jesus Christ. She was without doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her eyes were hypnotic and feline. She fussed around the room, uncomfortable.

‘Are you OK with this?’ I said.

‘Yes. No. Yes.’ Then she picked up a bag. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, without looking up.

We drove to the Coliseum and were given seats so far back in the huge venue that it was impossible to see the musicians’ faces on stage. During the interval we went backstage and I introduced Theresa to Roger Waters. It pleased me to see him make the same bemused assessment he had made when he met me and Karen at the first UFO Club Pink Floyd gig back in 1967.
How the fuck does he do it?
The show was extraordinary. David Gilmour’s rendition of ‘Comfortably Numb’ will remain with me for my entire life. Roger Waters was spine-chilling, as usual, a towering and formidable presence.

After the show we went to Le Dome, my favourite restaurant on the Strip. We were given a discreet table in the back room, and I tried to impress Theresa. Bill and I did comedy routines. She was quite a party girl, at one point sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table and trying to get Bill and me to sing something. At the bar I pretended to pass out. She shouted my name, over and over, in an adorable American accent: ‘Peeder, Peeder.’ I can still hear it today. ‘Get up, Peeder,’ she laughed, hauling me back onto my stool. I pretended my spine had collapsed. I heard her and Bill talking about me.

‘He’s adorable,’ she said.

‘He’s bluffing,’ said Bill.

Later I walked her to her door, where she made it clear I wasn’t going to get past the threshold.

‘I love Nicolas Roeg,’ she said.

‘But I love you,’ I whined.

‘I love you too,
Peeder
,’ she laughed, slowly closing the door in my face. ‘You’re cute. But Nic is the man. He’s the
leader
, sweetie.’ I didn’t fail to notice the rhyme.

The door clunked shut. I knocked a few times before giving up. I slumped to the floor. I felt as though I had been speared in the gut with a lance of fire. I remembered that pain from my childhood – when my mother, who needed to work, had tried to leave me with her mother, my
wicked witch
of a grandmother, when I was ill. Back then I had howled so loud my mother could hear me down in the street, and she had come back and took me with her.

Back at my hotel, decades later, I howled again, but this time the only response was the hotel manager, calling to tell me to keep the noise down. I called my driver. I explained I needed cocaine.

‘I’m fucking dying,’ I moaned.

‘Pete,’ he soothed. ‘Get a grip. She’s just a girl.’

The next day was Valentine’s Day. I bought a huge bunch of lilies and roses and a case of tequila and went to Theresa’s apartment. She wouldn’t open the door. I heard her on the phone to Nic, and he was obviously telling her off. She was shouting at him, defending herself, crying. She must have told him we’d gone out the night before.

I left the stuff outside the door and slunk off like a rat to Amigo Studios to write. The drug dealer met me at the studio, and the small amount of stuff he sold me was excellent – not that I was any kind of connoisseur. I worked efficiently and quickly, writing about eight songs and making demos. The lyrics of my song about Theresa say it all: ‘I felt like a flattened ant in a windstorm.’ At a dinner at Mo Ostin’s extraordinary hilltop house in Los Angeles I told the story of Theresa; Evelyn, Mo’s wife – almost as much a romantic fool as I was – told me to ‘go after her’. That wasn’t going to happen.