ON SONGWRITING
going to be blown to bits. In college a lot of
people were walking around like normal and
occasionally one person would say what the
fuck are we doing all this for? Everybody was
so resigned to it. They knew there was going to
be an atomic war. No one looked like they were
going to back down.
mini opera on a A Quick One (Happy Jack in the
states). It was him pushing me to do grander
things. So even if I wasn’t getting a reputation
as a great writer, Kit Lambert was telling me I
was a great writer and I believed him because I
wanted to believe him. There were other people
I respected who liked our music. Jagger really
liked it and said so. The Beatles really liked A
Quick One. Paul McCartney was saying that they
were in the recording studio - at that time they
would have been recording Sergeant Pepper and they heard that album and really liked it
and he said they were doing something similar
and that was affecting what they were doing,
which I thought was very nice.
“MY GENERATION”
I remember very clearly when “My Generation”
came out with the words “I hope I die before I
get old.” I kept on being asked, “Do you really
mean that and if you’re working in five years
then what do you think?” And I said, “No way
am I still going to be doing anything in five
years.” I really believed I was going to be dead.
There was a huge atomic crisis through the
Cuban missile thing. I remember in England
going to school one day knowing the world was
DEC/JAN
That was the consciousness at the time when
everybody was living “under the shadow of the
bomb.” I was in the Ban the Bomb movement in
England for a little while, the Young Communists
League, and stuff like that. But the thing that
bowled me over was LSD. It wiped me out.
I stopped working and got very obsessed
with it and really did believe it was something
enormous and incredibly important. I was
also involved with some of the sentiments
surrounding it – the love and peace thing.
During this period I can only remember two
songs I wrote, “Relax,” just pre my first acid
trip, which ended up on one of our albums,
and “Pictures of Lily,” which was released as
a single. Afterwards I wrote some very weird
songs, like “Faith in Something Bigger,” that
nothing ever happened to, “Happy Jack.” “The
Underture to Tommy” and “Welcome” from
Tommy. This is before I ever had the idea for
Tommy.
TOMMY START HERE
I tend to think in trains of thought for maybe
up to two years. I’ll start to write a song, and
I won’t really know what it’s got to do with –
then two years later I’ll look back on it and
then I’ll know why I wrote it. It might have
some kind of catch thing that fits in with all the
others. I know when I put Tommy together I
drew on all kinds of sources that came from
earlier on that just fit. Every time I wrote I was
writing about that kind of thing – adolescence
or spiritual desperation. Then in order to draw
all the loose ends together I have to sit down
and do it. I have a studio in my house where I
finish things off and organize music. I have to
shut myself up in this room and work. I start to
DIGITAL EDITION
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