Fact #103490
When:
Short story:
The High Numbers (later to find fame as The Who) release
their debut single, I'm The
Face/Zoot Suit, on Fontana Records in the UK.
Full article:
Pete Townshend : We were known as The Who, then we changed to the High Numbers when we recorded a song called Zoot Suit.
At this time we had a fanatical mod manager who wanted us all to be the complete mod. But this was a contrived, artificial modness, and we wanted to be ourselves.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, High Numbers) : We'd been playing for a while as The Detours when Pete Meadon came upon us. He obviously recognised that within this music, basically an American blues derivative, but which had the Shepherd's Bush anger and frustration running through it, was something that had a particular potential.
In addition to that, here were four of the most odd-looking guys that you could ever come across, who looked pretty much like the kids on the street.
He also recognised that there was this mass of young people with, for the first time, real amounts of money in their pockets and real freedom to be mobile. Brighton and back in a day wasn't a sore arse on a push-bike any more, you know?
But he also saw that these kids were clutching onto things that they really didn't know anything about. Mods music was very diverse. They liked Motown, blue beat, James Brown, the blues - all black music; they didn't like anything English. There was a huge hole there to be filled, so Pete Meadon took us over.
With our long hair and scruffy clothes, our beatnik, Rolling Stones-type look, no-one would bat an eyelid when they saw us together. But Pete was an image maker. He dragged us into the barber's, then put us into white jeans and Ivy League stuff, and the effects were immediate. People started to stare at us, like we were off another planet. So he was totally right.
Chris Downing : By that time, we were hanging out with them quite a bit. I used to go round to Moon's house and Entwistle's, and shortly after they did that single I remember learning that the reason the harmonica solo on I'm The Face is so all over the place is that Roger had picked it up upside down in the studio and started the solo with the harmonica the wrong way round. Of course, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to do another take in those days.
Roger Daltrey : Then, having been re-christened the High Numbers, we went into the studio to make a single. We were going to record a blues song, 'cos that's what we did, songs about sex and women and feeling down and frustration but, when he heard it, Meadon said, 'Hang on, we can't sing these lyrics. They won't mean anything to a kid on the street in England. So he wrote his own lyrics. But the only trouble was that we found we couldn't sing his bloody lyrics either. They were just diabolical.
Pete Townshend : We brought out that very self-conscious record, I'm the Face, you know, 'I wear white buckskin shoes and side jackets with five inch vents'. The kids out in the street didn't need that kind of leader. They knew that information before you even thought of the lyric.
Roger Daltrey : We were confused. But that's always the way when someone's honing someone else's talent. And the idea of music specifically tailored for a certain audience of young British mods, played by people who looked and sounded just like them, was, as it turned out, spot-on.
David Bowie (early Who fan) : They wore stuff that was five months out of date as far as we were concerned, but we liked them because they were kind of like us. They were our band.
Pete Townshend : Though we were on stage, we were still Tickets
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At this time we had a fanatical mod manager who wanted us all to be the complete mod. But this was a contrived, artificial modness, and we wanted to be ourselves.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, High Numbers) : We'd been playing for a while as The Detours when Pete Meadon came upon us. He obviously recognised that within this music, basically an American blues derivative, but which had the Shepherd's Bush anger and frustration running through it, was something that had a particular potential.
In addition to that, here were four of the most odd-looking guys that you could ever come across, who looked pretty much like the kids on the street.
He also recognised that there was this mass of young people with, for the first time, real amounts of money in their pockets and real freedom to be mobile. Brighton and back in a day wasn't a sore arse on a push-bike any more, you know?
But he also saw that these kids were clutching onto things that they really didn't know anything about. Mods music was very diverse. They liked Motown, blue beat, James Brown, the blues - all black music; they didn't like anything English. There was a huge hole there to be filled, so Pete Meadon took us over.
With our long hair and scruffy clothes, our beatnik, Rolling Stones-type look, no-one would bat an eyelid when they saw us together. But Pete was an image maker. He dragged us into the barber's, then put us into white jeans and Ivy League stuff, and the effects were immediate. People started to stare at us, like we were off another planet. So he was totally right.
Chris Downing : By that time, we were hanging out with them quite a bit. I used to go round to Moon's house and Entwistle's, and shortly after they did that single I remember learning that the reason the harmonica solo on I'm The Face is so all over the place is that Roger had picked it up upside down in the studio and started the solo with the harmonica the wrong way round. Of course, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to do another take in those days.
Roger Daltrey : Then, having been re-christened the High Numbers, we went into the studio to make a single. We were going to record a blues song, 'cos that's what we did, songs about sex and women and feeling down and frustration but, when he heard it, Meadon said, 'Hang on, we can't sing these lyrics. They won't mean anything to a kid on the street in England. So he wrote his own lyrics. But the only trouble was that we found we couldn't sing his bloody lyrics either. They were just diabolical.
Pete Townshend : We brought out that very self-conscious record, I'm the Face, you know, 'I wear white buckskin shoes and side jackets with five inch vents'. The kids out in the street didn't need that kind of leader. They knew that information before you even thought of the lyric.
Roger Daltrey : We were confused. But that's always the way when someone's honing someone else's talent. And the idea of music specifically tailored for a certain audience of young British mods, played by people who looked and sounded just like them, was, as it turned out, spot-on.
David Bowie (early Who fan) : They wore stuff that was five months out of date as far as we were concerned, but we liked them because they were kind of like us. They were our band.
Pete Townshend : Though we were on stage, we were still Tickets