Fact #157563
When:
Short story:
The Who record Call Me Lightning at Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, California, USA. It is highly probable that they also record John Entwistle's song Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde on this day.
Full article:
Pete Townshend (The Who) : Call Me Lightning ... was among the batch of songs that I submitted for The Who's first single. It tries to be a slightly surfy, Jan And Deany kind of song, to satisfy Keith Moon's and John Entwistle's then interest in surf music, which I thought was going to be a real problem. Being a trumped-up mod band was bad enough for us to handle, but trying to be a trumped-up mod band playing R'n'B but with surf overtones was almost impossible.
Keith Moon (drummer, The Who) : It was very dishonest. The mod thing was (co-manager Kit Lambert) Kit's idea. We were all sent down to a hairdresser, Robert James. Absolutely charming lad, We were then sent to Carnaby Street with more money than we'd ever seen in our lives before, like a hundred quid [$250] each. This was Swinging London, England, UK, Europe. Most of our audience were mods, pill-'eads like ourselves, you see. We weren't into clothes; we were into music. Kit thought we should identify more with our audience. Coats slashed five inches at the sides. Four wasn't enough. Six was too much. Five was just right. The trousers came three inches below the hip. It was our uniform. (Source : Interview with Jeremy Hopkins, Rolling Stone, Dec 21, 1972)
Pete Townshend (The Who) : Anyway, I was trying to write this song which was all things to all men, with an accent on the men, and I came up with this kind of Shadow Morton backing track and then wrote the lyric for Roger. All of the lyrics are about things that I thought - it's lie a double think - would help Roger to portray himself in the way he thought he should be portrayed. So this kind of braggadocio, grandiosity, aggression, flash, empty kind of figure is obviously what I took Roger to be at the time. When I wrote Anyway Anyhow Anywhere later, I realised how right I was (laughs).
What's really interesting for me about Call Me Lightning is realising how hard from the very beginning it was, writing for Roger's voice - for the characteristics which Roger carried which I thought were lacking in me. I don't have what Roger has. I don't have his conviction that, if he gets into a fight, he can win. I don't have his ... well, not that I'd want his looks today but, when I was younger, I didn't have his looks, I didn't have his magnetism. I just had talent.
So what I was trying to do in a way, in the early days, was to get half-way to Roger and to bring Roger half-way to me. Me using Roger in the way I did always caused problems for us, and they perpetuate today (1994). It's difficult for us both. It's an uneasy growth. Luckily, it's filled with great affection and love, but it's still fucking hard.
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : I wanted my songs to be like no one else was writing. And no one was writing that sort of black kind of stuff. And also, the idea for me to write Silas Stingy and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they were all meant to go on a kids' rock album. Young kids love Boris the Spider and a lot of the other songs I'd written. So we were gonna release a children's album with all these snakes and spiders and creepy things. So they all ended up being used for B-sides on albums that came afterwards. And I just got this black image but the song was written for a children's album, a project that Kit Lambert thought of.
(Source : not known)
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Keith Moon (drummer, The Who) : It was very dishonest. The mod thing was (co-manager Kit Lambert) Kit's idea. We were all sent down to a hairdresser, Robert James. Absolutely charming lad, We were then sent to Carnaby Street with more money than we'd ever seen in our lives before, like a hundred quid [$250] each. This was Swinging London, England, UK, Europe. Most of our audience were mods, pill-'eads like ourselves, you see. We weren't into clothes; we were into music. Kit thought we should identify more with our audience. Coats slashed five inches at the sides. Four wasn't enough. Six was too much. Five was just right. The trousers came three inches below the hip. It was our uniform. (Source : Interview with Jeremy Hopkins, Rolling Stone, Dec 21, 1972)
Pete Townshend (The Who) : Anyway, I was trying to write this song which was all things to all men, with an accent on the men, and I came up with this kind of Shadow Morton backing track and then wrote the lyric for Roger. All of the lyrics are about things that I thought - it's lie a double think - would help Roger to portray himself in the way he thought he should be portrayed. So this kind of braggadocio, grandiosity, aggression, flash, empty kind of figure is obviously what I took Roger to be at the time. When I wrote Anyway Anyhow Anywhere later, I realised how right I was (laughs).
What's really interesting for me about Call Me Lightning is realising how hard from the very beginning it was, writing for Roger's voice - for the characteristics which Roger carried which I thought were lacking in me. I don't have what Roger has. I don't have his conviction that, if he gets into a fight, he can win. I don't have his ... well, not that I'd want his looks today but, when I was younger, I didn't have his looks, I didn't have his magnetism. I just had talent.
So what I was trying to do in a way, in the early days, was to get half-way to Roger and to bring Roger half-way to me. Me using Roger in the way I did always caused problems for us, and they perpetuate today (1994). It's difficult for us both. It's an uneasy growth. Luckily, it's filled with great affection and love, but it's still fucking hard.
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : I wanted my songs to be like no one else was writing. And no one was writing that sort of black kind of stuff. And also, the idea for me to write Silas Stingy and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they were all meant to go on a kids' rock album. Young kids love Boris the Spider and a lot of the other songs I'd written. So we were gonna release a children's album with all these snakes and spiders and creepy things. So they all ended up being used for B-sides on albums that came afterwards. And I just got this black image but the song was written for a children's album, a project that Kit Lambert thought of.
(Source : not known)