Fact #176199
When:
Short story:
The Who record My Generation, The Kids Are Alright and The Good's Gone with producer Shel Talmy and engineer Glyn Johns at IBC Studios, Portland Place, London, England, UK, Europe.Full article:
Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : My Generation was originally about anger and communication but, by the time it got on record, it came out as the pilled-up kid who for the first time in his life becomes aware of things but, unfortunately, the sheer process of taking purple hearts has incapacitated him and he can hardly speak.
He wants to say things but he can't. It's like having a big nose. You can't communicate because of it. That's what the stutter means.
(Interview with Ray Connolly, Dec 1967)
Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : It's a very big social comment, My Generation, it's the only really successful social comment I've ever made. Some pilled-up mod dancing around trying to explain to you why he's such a groovy guy, but he can't because he's so stoned he can hardly talk. People saw different aspects of the record, it was repetitive, there were lots of effective key changes in it so it didn't bore you too much. And there was a bit of feedback at the end to keep people happy. It was our biggest seller and we never hope or want to produce anything like it again.
(Source : interview with Miles, International Times, Feb 13, 1967)
Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : I wrote the lines of My Generation without thinking, hurrying them - scribbling on a piece of paper in the back of a car. For years I've had to live by them, waiting for the day when someone says, "I thought you said you hoped you'd die when you got old. Well, now you are old. What now?" Of course, most people are too polite to say that sort of thing to a dying pop star. I say it often to myself.
I wrote it just after I did I Can't Explain. We had loads of rows about doing it. Chris Stamp was all for it, but the others kept wanting to put their own bits in. The ending is a natural progression of what's come before. It's the way it happens on stage... It was meant to get back more to the general theme at the end, but it doesn't.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, The Who) : The demo of My Generation was very Bo Diddley, jink-ajink-ajink – ajink jink, and it was only when we got into the studio that Moon got to grips with it. Moon hated playing that stuff. It was all too much for him. He loved to bash on the on-beat, on the one, so he soon changed the original rhythm.
Then, as I was singing the words, the idea for the character to stutter came from Kit Lambert.
Keith Moon (drummer, The Who) : Pete had written out the words and given them to Roger in the studio. He'd never seen them before so, when he read them the first time, he stuttered … Kit said, 'Leave in the stuttering.' When we realised what had happened, it knocked us all sideways. And it happened simply because Roger couldn't read the words. (Source : Interview with Jeremy Hopkins, Rolling Stone, Dec 21, 1972)
Shel Talmy (producer) : I think the stuttering bit was a gag that came about screwing around during rehearsal, and then when it came to the 'f%$£ off' it seemed even funnier and something we could get away with, and I guess we did. Of course, the BBC banned the record, because it was detrimental to the stutterers of the world, which helped immensely.
Glyn Johns (engineer) : I can remember very clearly the session for ‘My Generation.’ ... A bass solo? A stuttering vocal? Not to mention feedback or the song itself. Extraordinary! It was certainly special to me at the time. Are you kidding? You’d have to be deaf not to get excited by that.
(Source : Sound Man by Glyn Johns, published by Blue Rider Press, 2014)
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : A lot of the solos I played were much faster and more interesting than the ones that finally went on the record. I'd play a really fast solo, and they'd say it hadn't recorded properly, so I'd play something simpler. I was using a Danelectro bass with very thin strings, which were inclined to break, but you couldn't buy replacement Danelectro strings in Britain then, so I'd have to buy a new guitar. I went through three guitars at £60 a time during the recording of My Generation. In the end, they decided to record it one more time, and I bust a string again and there literally weren't any more Danelectros in the country. I went out and bought a Fender Jazz bass and put the trebliest strings I could find onto it - tape-wound La Bella strings - and played the solo on that.
Chris Stamp (co-manager, the Who) : Pete's voice was this discontented, fucked-up mod kid. This is when his muse came together. It was a quiet beginning of vocalizing a dis-satisfied need.
Pete Townshend : Perhaps if I had died before I got old, I might have been forgotten. You tend to hope you'll become James Dean or Jimi Hendrix, but a lot of dead people aren't remembered at all ... But I've tried to compensate by actually making myself happy.
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He wants to say things but he can't. It's like having a big nose. You can't communicate because of it. That's what the stutter means.
(Interview with Ray Connolly, Dec 1967)
Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : It's a very big social comment, My Generation, it's the only really successful social comment I've ever made. Some pilled-up mod dancing around trying to explain to you why he's such a groovy guy, but he can't because he's so stoned he can hardly talk. People saw different aspects of the record, it was repetitive, there were lots of effective key changes in it so it didn't bore you too much. And there was a bit of feedback at the end to keep people happy. It was our biggest seller and we never hope or want to produce anything like it again.
(Source : interview with Miles, International Times, Feb 13, 1967)
Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : I wrote the lines of My Generation without thinking, hurrying them - scribbling on a piece of paper in the back of a car. For years I've had to live by them, waiting for the day when someone says, "I thought you said you hoped you'd die when you got old. Well, now you are old. What now?" Of course, most people are too polite to say that sort of thing to a dying pop star. I say it often to myself.
I wrote it just after I did I Can't Explain. We had loads of rows about doing it. Chris Stamp was all for it, but the others kept wanting to put their own bits in. The ending is a natural progression of what's come before. It's the way it happens on stage... It was meant to get back more to the general theme at the end, but it doesn't.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, The Who) : The demo of My Generation was very Bo Diddley, jink-ajink-ajink – ajink jink, and it was only when we got into the studio that Moon got to grips with it. Moon hated playing that stuff. It was all too much for him. He loved to bash on the on-beat, on the one, so he soon changed the original rhythm.
Then, as I was singing the words, the idea for the character to stutter came from Kit Lambert.
Keith Moon (drummer, The Who) : Pete had written out the words and given them to Roger in the studio. He'd never seen them before so, when he read them the first time, he stuttered … Kit said, 'Leave in the stuttering.' When we realised what had happened, it knocked us all sideways. And it happened simply because Roger couldn't read the words. (Source : Interview with Jeremy Hopkins, Rolling Stone, Dec 21, 1972)
Shel Talmy (producer) : I think the stuttering bit was a gag that came about screwing around during rehearsal, and then when it came to the 'f%$£ off' it seemed even funnier and something we could get away with, and I guess we did. Of course, the BBC banned the record, because it was detrimental to the stutterers of the world, which helped immensely.
Glyn Johns (engineer) : I can remember very clearly the session for ‘My Generation.’ ... A bass solo? A stuttering vocal? Not to mention feedback or the song itself. Extraordinary! It was certainly special to me at the time. Are you kidding? You’d have to be deaf not to get excited by that.
(Source : Sound Man by Glyn Johns, published by Blue Rider Press, 2014)
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : A lot of the solos I played were much faster and more interesting than the ones that finally went on the record. I'd play a really fast solo, and they'd say it hadn't recorded properly, so I'd play something simpler. I was using a Danelectro bass with very thin strings, which were inclined to break, but you couldn't buy replacement Danelectro strings in Britain then, so I'd have to buy a new guitar. I went through three guitars at £60 a time during the recording of My Generation. In the end, they decided to record it one more time, and I bust a string again and there literally weren't any more Danelectros in the country. I went out and bought a Fender Jazz bass and put the trebliest strings I could find onto it - tape-wound La Bella strings - and played the solo on that.
Chris Stamp (co-manager, the Who) : Pete's voice was this discontented, fucked-up mod kid. This is when his muse came together. It was a quiet beginning of vocalizing a dis-satisfied need.
Pete Townshend : Perhaps if I had died before I got old, I might have been forgotten. You tend to hope you'll become James Dean or Jimi Hendrix, but a lot of dead people aren't remembered at all ... But I've tried to compensate by actually making myself happy.