Pretend You're In A War: The Who & the Sixties, by Mark Blake
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Pretend You're In A War: The Who & the Sixties, by Mark Blake
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"A definitive tome for both Who fans and newcomers alike" - Q Magazine
Pete Townshend was once asked how he prepared himself for The Who's violent live performances. His answer? 'Pretend you're in a war.' For a band as prone to furious infighting as it was notorious for acts of 'auto-destructive art' this could have served as a motto.
Between 1964 and 1969 The Who released some of the most dramatic and confrontational music of the decade, including 'I Can't Explain', 'My Generation' and 'I Can See For Miles'. This was a body of work driven by bitter rivalry, black humour and dark childhood secrets, but it also held up a mirror to a society in transition. Now, acclaimed rock biographer Mark Blake goes in search of its inspiration to present a unique perspective on both The Who and the sixties.
From their breakthrough as Mod figureheads to the rise and fall of psychedelia, he reveals how The Who, in their explorations of sex, drugs, spirituality and class, refracted the growing turbulence of the time. He also lays bare the colourful but crucial role played by their managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. And - in the uneasy alliance between art-school experimentation and working-class ambition - he locates the motor of the Swinging Sixties.
As the decade closed, with The Who performing Tommy in front of 500,000 people at the Woodstock Festival, the 'rock opera' was born. In retrospect, it was the crowning achievement of a band who had already embraced pop art and the concept album; who had pioneered the power chord and the guitar smash; and who had embodied - more so than any of their peers - the guiding spirit of the age: war.
Pretend You're In A War: The Who & the Sixties, by Mark Blake - Amazon Sales Rank: #832784 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x 1.00" w x 5.13" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Pretend You're In A War: The Who & the Sixties, by Mark Blake Review
"***** A definitive tome for both Who fans and newcomers alike" - Q Magazine
"A compelling read...and a story told with unflinching care and infectious enthusiasm." - Classic Rock
"Pretend You're In A War wastes no time in parachuting you directly into the combat zone" - Record Collector
"A rollicking and insightful tale" - Mojo
"the quality of research and analysis here is unsurprisingly of the highest standardâ?¿ a superb biography" - Dave Jennings Louder Than War
"Blake gives new reasons to appreciate the angst and theory behind The Who's music' - Seven, Sunday Telegraph
"puts other Who books in the shade' - Richard Evans TheWho.com
"...(a) great new book that belongs on every Who fan's shelf" - JP's Music Blog
"By focusing so meticulously on the '60s, the writer has turned in one of the most definitive books on the band to date." - NewNoiseMagazine.com
"...a deep dive into the group's formative years...Blake's level of research in Pretend You're in a War is exemplary." - Portland Mercury
"...it's fascinating to read the very rare opinions and stories from those who previously had not spoken much on the topic, most especially early drummer Doug Sandom, who was fired and replaced by Keith Moon." - TheRecoup.com
"Pretend You're In a War offers something different in its approach to events: more research-based, with a stronger focus on The Who's early years." - Midwest Book Review
"Mr. Blake doesn't just tell The Who's warped tale of their more warped trail/trial to success. You are given The Who's story fully in context with what was going on in England and international youth culture and how that impacted the band and how the band impacted it." - Binky Phillips/Huffington Post
About the Author
Mark Blake is a former assistant editor of Q magazine and a long-time contributor to Mojo. He is the author of the definitive Pink Floyd biography, Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, as well as Is This the Real Life? The Untold Story of Queen, and edited Stone Me: The Wit & Wisdom of Keith Richards (all published by Aurum). He is also the editor of Dylan: Visions, Portraits & Back Pages and Punk: The Whole Story. He lives in London with his wife and son.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. "SHOULD WE SURRENDER TO THE TEENAGERS?" By Stuart Jefferson "Pretend you're in a war." Pete Townshend on how he prepares for a Who concert.With all the books about The Who and late '60s rock music/bands/musicians, this book, by Mark Blake, is actually one of the better reads if you want to know what things were like for and around The Who in their formative/early years. Beginning with a Who gig at the Marquee in Soho with Daltrey taking a shotgun away from a gunman bent on revenge, the band then went on to totally destroy their instruments with little regard for the patrons or themselves. And so begins this look at not only The Who, but the Mod period and the sixties era in general. From their first gigs as The Detours to The High Numbers, to possible new names like The Hair, The No One, The Hair and The Who (which the band decided sounded "too much like a pub."), to their final name (which everyone in the band laughed at), the first days of the band are recounted with snippets of recent interviews from people who were there."Every time I smashed a guitar I saw my grandmother's face." Pete Townshend."The Who won't last that long." Pete Townshend.From the band's early days as "leaders" of the Mod movement, into the psychedelic years of the '60s, this is a good, interesting look at that whole period. And while other books have covered this period in England, Blake has done extensive research into all things connected with The Who during this period which give his book a distinct leg up on his subjects. Not only the band but their managers are looked at in detail to help tell the story of working class-art school members of the band and their uneasy relationship with both Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. That the band and their management didn't see eye to eye is well known to fans, but the author has delved deeper into both manager's lives to form a good picture of why neither men got along with the band. That portion of the book is well worth reading because it helps form a much better picture of the relationship between the band and their managers."All great art is crap." Kit Lambert."I was a horrible little sod." Roger Daltrey."We wanted The Who to be like Miles Davis meets Johnny Kidd and the Pirates." An early Who manifesto by Richard Barnes and Pete Townshend.The early days before the band came together helps set the scene and shines some light on why the band members never seemed to truly come together as a band--they were always prone to fighting amongst themselves. Plus the music just before rock 'n' roll--"trad jazz" and skiffle--is looked at in some depth, with that music helping to lay the foundation for the band's eventual formation. Daltrey (for example) tried (unsuccessfully) to play guitar in an early skiffle band ("Basically he couldn't play."), while 12 year old Pete Townshend began to play the guitar (" a cheap guitar of the kind you'd see hanging on the wall of a Spanish restaurant"), and met John Entwistle. But as Townshend said, "The Who are four people who shouldn't be in a band together". And so it goes."The Who didn't really do peace and love." Roger Daltrey."I felt as if a bomb had gone off in my head...I had to find something to fill the empty space." Pete Townshend.The book goes on to describe the songs, the singles, the albums, the concerts, the drugs, the spiritual quests, and the many people in the band's orbit during the "swinging sixties". For anyone who wants a good inside look at The Who and that entire era, the author has done his homework in laying out in an easy to read and digest manner most everything of interest connected to the band during these early and exciting (and arguably best) years of the band's career. There's 16 pages of b&w photos from different periods that help tell the story--many of them rarely seen before. All in all this is well worth adding to your music shelf if you're either/and a fan of The Who in the '60s/the sixties music scene in Britain."I could point that guitar at my dad and say, 'Bang! You're dead!'". Pete Towhshend on discovering the guitar.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful. In-depth review of a welcome study on the Who's birth and growth By John L Murphy While Mods and The Who inevitably join together in many fans' minds, the band's ties to modernism, in art and culture, have not received the in-depth attention they deserve. To address these contexts, Mark Blake incorporates many years of interviews with Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey, adding material gleaned from multimedia and previous books on the band. As an editor at Qand Mojo magazines, and a biographer of Queen and Pink Floyd, Blake fits in comfortably with rock journalism. He presents in Pretend You're in a War a solid study of the band's birth and growth during the 1960s.While this narrative momentum is thwarted by the tendency of Townshend to tell one story to one journalist and another to another scribe a few years later, and further complicated by the reticence of Entwistle, the demise of Keith Moon and the determination of Daltrey to get his side of the record straight (all four sometimes seem at odds with other bandmates and witnesses), the members invigorate Blake's account. They were a fractious four who insisted on autonomy even as they combined their talents to make rousing music. Blake offers a readable and accessible consideration of the band's origins, its tensions early on and its struggles as fame took over.Blake treats the emergence of the band, their early musical ambitions and their early members, especially drummer Doug Sandow, who was edged out before Moon was recruited. The detail here surpasses other treatments I have read, so those less obsessed by history may find the research too meticulous. Fans may argue for its necessity; it exposes The Who's deep London roots.Townshend's tutelage at Ealing Art School under Gustav Metzger, known for action painting, and Roy Ascott, known for cybermetrics and confrontation, earns welcome inclusion; I wish more had been given over to these impacts on the guitarist's formative years. Townshend embraced a liberating lifestyle along with the music. He plunged into London's swirl of art, books, and films as part of this cultural upheaval. Again, his prescient immersion into home taping and mechanical recording techniques is astonishing, and deserved more depth here; Townshend mastered intricacies of production rapidly.Despite some production oversight being left to the band's managers, the spirited pair of East End-bred Chris Stamp and Oxbridge-tutored scion and heir to a classical music pedigree, Kit Lambert, Townshend took much of the band's control away from Daltrey. Relegated to the mike, as his confidence grew, Daltrey became a powerful, more nuanced vocalist. This took years, as his wish to guide the band competed against Townshend's technical skills and formidable ego. But Daltrey by decade's end channeled Townshend's lyrical gifts and vulnerable sensibility into his own cocky, strutting and preening presence. The book's title comes from Townshend's attitude when the band, held up as Mod models, took the stage.While their managers contended, while the guitarist and singer bickered and fought for leadership, so the stoic bassist Entwistle and the manic drummer Moon sought their share of the Who's spotlight. The band ascended quickly into the top ranks, but preceded by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, The Who had to catch up to talented peers and rivals. The Kinks especially competed with The Who sonically and lyrically from the mid-1960s on, and Blake documents this contest well.The mythic Mod connection was pushed more by management and media, as Townshend longed to speak to his fans from that cohort, but the Mods themselves never lasted very long. "'A powerful, aggressive little army' with its mysterious dress code, music, dances and semiotics" sums up for Blake the unity of The Who and Mods. Yet equally crucial were the art school lessons Townshend learned from modernism.Mentors such as Ascott, Metzger and Helmut Gorden (the most eccentric of many contenders) merit mention, and Blake notes their suggestions to an eager student. Townshend merged pop art into the classical tastes of Lambert. He integrated Henry Purcell and music-hall into three-minute ditties, often singles, which conveyed in Blake's phrasing "black humour and sexual perversion" as "cameos, essays of human experience."The "visual gimmick" accidentally invented at Harrow's Railway Hotel (Blake evokes its shabby ambiance well) when Townshend smashed his guitar led to a routine. Moon destroyed his kit, Daltrey lassoed his microphone, Entwistle stood stock still on the side. Townshend loved and hated this. His frustration at rock-star poses led to his own changes, in his lyrics, his music, and then his attire. He chose before decade's end his workmanlike white boiler suit and Doc Martens as onstage fashion, contrasting with his three colorful bandmates.Moon, under Lambert's sway, found pills, expensive champagne and excess inviting. Entwistle succumbed to drink and drugs, if in a quiet, self-critical manner. His musical talents shone in the band, but not enough compared to the main songwriter. Entwistle longed for his ideas to be accepted more by the band, which under Townshend's dominance roused Daltrey's understandable resistance. Unlike The Beatles circa 1966, one senses The Who did not close ranks out of friendship so much as necessity, when songs had to be constructed and tours had to be endured, to pay the bills that the lavish lifestyles of the band required. Blake leaps from the band members getting by in flats or living with their parents to mansions, driving luxury autos (more than one meeting a quick demise) and indulging in conspicuous consumption with barely any transition. Perhaps the band's entry into the upper ranks of British rock happened that fast.What wearied The Who, barely into their career, was the pace they had to keep to stay on the charts, on tour and in the studio. 1965-1966 as recounted here resembles the last stages of The Beatles. At least, unlike that foursome or the Stones, the machinations of Allen Klein to take over The Who's finances were fended off by Lambert, Stamp and Townshend. Yet, the band by the close of 1966 lacked continuity or consistency in their releases; the experimentation of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd signaled an era far from Mods vs. Rockers. Townshend's "story-songs" struggled at times to chart.By then, the drug culture which consumed the Mods had soured for the lead songwriter. He distanced himself from the scene, even as he loved spending money and acting out his artistic ambitions. This bifurcation helped his music, however. The guitarist's decision to turn to Meher Baba is well-known, but it did, as Blake shows, ease Townshend's egotistical compulsion. He appreciated the awareness of the damage done by his insistence on pushing limits and refusing to listen to the wisdom of his comrades. That drive enabled Townshend to rise above his peers and to reign as a young eminence, but it also aroused his disgust with the contradictions a rock celebrity's career represented, if that star spoke for pure intentions.Meanwhile, the bassist connived, sometimes with a drummer bent on hotel-room smashing, while the singer gave up Dippity-Do. Daltrey groomed a leonine mane atop his buckskin vest and rugged, tanned physique. Among a homely band, he stood out. Despite or due to his short stature, he grew into the role that Townshend and he had worked out, as the confident voice for the guitarist's torments and triumphs.Blake regales readers with many familiar stories. Townshend's versions, whether set down in his 2012 autobiography or as venerable, conversational anecdotes, can differ with each other as well as with bandmates. Daltrey gets his own words in, with similar contradictions now and then. The truth of Moon's legendary Holiday Inn debacle in Flint, Michigan, or what song Jimmy Page did or did not play on, may never be known, but it is fun following the narratives as these moments enter rock star lore. Blake strives to keep straight who said what to whom and when. This accuracy enhances this book's value. (A recommended archive, although it may have appeared too late in 2014 for consultation, is not cited: Mike Segretto's The Who FAQ [see my review]. Otherwise, Blake blends smoothly many standard sources on the band into his presentation.)The albums themselves gain short shrift; track-by-track commentary is not Blake's intent. He emphasizes the band's nature more than their recordings, although Lambert's suggestions get due credit, as does the input of Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon to what seems soon after the start Townshend's band. Blake depicts vivid scenes: touring with Herman's Hermits, sparring at Monterey with Jimi Hendrix, making money from and losing even more for Track Records. The "financial profligacy" of the Who grew as troubled, feckless Lambert gave in to the addictions which would eventually consume first the drummer and much later the bassist. This hedonism met with the singer's disdain and the guitarist's ambivalence. Amidst hippie excess, Townshend "felt like a workman in a lunatic asylum, come to fix the plumbing." But both Townshend and Daltrey celebrated the onstage energy of the band, which reached its peak, in the studio and in concert, as ornamented productions on {Tommy} warped into massive assaults, performed live.Even muddy Woodstock worked, despite three-quarters of the band accidentally on acid. Shunted aside to open their set at 4 a.m., luck came their way. They started "See Me, Feel Me" as dawn broke.Blake ducks out as the story gets good, for the decade ended before the band sustained or perhaps surpassed its 1969-1970 breakthroughs in albums and on tours. Blake provides a brief coda summing up the next decade, but one closes this narrative hoping for the author to return, and to follow this with a complete look at the next seven or eight years. The book ends in 1970, not 1969. But as many claim along with the author, "The Sixties" did not begin until nearly mid-decade. That counterculture period of creativity and chaos ended nearly ten years after The Who as we know them assembled, to make their unsteady climb to near or at the top of British rock. There, they won their war, amid very strong competition, during what remain the best years of that music, and arguably much more in art and culture, as this book demonstrates.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. What made them tick By Jake This book is good. It focuses narrowly on what made The Who an angry young band. He provides the answersand offers a lot of fascinating insights with it. Don't expect a story of band, but if you are interested in what made them tick, this book delivers.
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