STORY
There was a before, there was an after. Fifty years ago, the Woodstock wave swept the world. Europe 1 makes you relive, at the time of the festivals of the summer, the history of this revolution, not only by what it brought, but also by those which incarnated it. Today, The Who.
A legendary performance at 5 o'clock in the morning
In the history of rock, they are in a way equal to the Beatles or Rolling Stones. And maybe it was in Woodstock that everything was played out. Because a few months before the festival, The Who does not know very well where he goes. After a smashing debut in every sense of the term, the English group has been locked in a routine, and is becoming more known for its (awesome) 45-rounds than for its (unjustly underestimated) albums.
Then in late 1968, his leader as great as tormented, Pete Townshend, tries everything for the whole. He writes what will soon be called an "opera-rock", the ambitious and improbable story of a deaf, dumb and blind child who becomes a God ... a pinball machine. The double-disc, titled Tommy, which comes out three months before Woodstock, is a global cardboard. Bingo! And even extra-ball ...
On Monday, August 18, at 5 am in Woodstock, this is an excerpt from the famous opera-rock legend. On stage, the Who perform We're Not Gonna Take It.
Shortly before daybreak, The Who will play the entirety of this opera-rock. And We're Not Gonna Take It will appear in the film-documentary festival. It seals the legend and the success of this group really unlike the others.
"Anyway, I'm better than the guy you're going to hire"
To understand all of this success, we must go back to the roots. We are in the early 1960s in Acton, West London. This is Roger Daltrey, the singer, who is at the time is a little gouape. Fired from his college, he already works as a metal worker. The weekend, he spews his rage within the well-appointed Detours. He meets a bassist, John Entwistle, then a guitarist, Pete Townshend.
The new formation begins to become known with a repertoire of covers of all kinds. And then one night, a kid docks, full of nerve. He wants to be their drummer. "Give me a test, I'm better than the guy you hire, whoever he is." It runs ... and leaves the three others stunned by the power and madness of his game. This kind of cartoon character, who calls himself Keith Moon, makes the trio a quartet.
Wild music and amphetamines
The group will be called The High Numbers for a moment to stick to the wave of Mods, these young rebels obsessed with style, before adopting The Who. It's short, it's funny, it sticks and it's easy to decline graphically: Mods love it. The group quickly became their standard bearer, scooters, parkas, two-piece suits, and short hair in support. There is especially this wild music, and for good reason. All this little world is addicted to amphetamines, these little pills that we take for not sleeping.
Thus, for his first album, recorded it appears in a single afternoon of 1965, The Who draws a title of legend. Some say that Roger Daltrey, made too excited by the pills, could no longer control his stuttering. Others that he wanted to make fun, precisely, of those who were victims of this unfortunate side effect. Anyway, the result of My Generation is bluffing.
"I hope to die before being old", we retain this title yet immortal. This sentence sums up the mindset of the post-war "baby boomers" who are determined to break the social class block and live on time. Whatever the consequences ... and the obstacles. Because the Who do not love each other and have never loved each other. Their alliance is more a matter of circumstances than of friendship between Daltrey, the little boss, Townshend, the shady intellectual, Entwistle, the silent one, and Moon, the grenade happily unpinned.
A history of violence
Finally, there is little in common between them, except violence. Verbal, physical, musical too. These four are probably the noisiest, the wildest of all, not hesitating to smash their own material on stage, then to give their audience concerts more than 120 decibels (the volume of an airplane line takeoff). A challenge at the time that Pete Townshend still pays today, he who is half deaf.
Violence is that of the time, but also of existence. Much of the work of the guitarist, the brain and main composer of the group, is directly inspired by his childhood, during which he was abused, abused and raped. In a way, "Tommy" is an autobiographical work.
A huge teenage mess
Throughout his long career, Townshend will try to find a spiritual outlet for his traumas, without ever giving up his squeaky irony. The most perfect example comes just after Woodstock, in 1971, in what is considered the best album of the band, Who's Next, "Next". The song is called Baba O'Riley: Baba for Meher Baba, who was at the time the Townshend Indian and Anti-Drug Guru, and Riley for Terry Riley, an avant-garde musician who greatly influenced the Londoner.
As for the text, it is a virulent critique of Woodstock's legacy. Peace and love? Nice nonsense, tells the song. "It's only teenage wasteland", it's just a huge teenage mess.
This piece of bravery, whose introduction made fans of the group and / or the series " Experts" in Manhattan , the triumphal moment of a near perfect album, often cited in the list of the best rock records Of the history. "I wanted to sound like a bomb ready to explode," Daltrey said.
The best reconciled enemies
Despite a new rock opera become cult, Quadrophenia, Who will never reach these summits again. The inevitable death of Keith Moon occurred in 1977, when he was only 31 years old, after a life of excesses sometimes hallucinating, like an evening when he had driven into a swimming pool. This death has, somewhere, killed the spirit of the group.
But the Who continue, despite everything. John Entwistle, the bassist, who also disappeared in 2002 from an overdose of cocaine, they are more than two of the original formation. The best enemies today reconciled, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, remain the backbone of the formation.
Fifty years after the release of Tommy, an orchestral version of rock opera (which was also a hit movie in the 1970s) was released in the spring. And we are expecting a new studio album very soon, the first in thirteen years. Finally, it may not be worse to have survived the My Generation injunction ...
Find all the other episodes of our series "Woodstock, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: The origins of the most iconic festivals
> Episode 2: Richie Havens, the story of a fate that topples
> Episode 3: Tim Hardin, dubbed by Bob Dylan, destroyed by drugs
> Episode 4: Joan Baez, the consciousness of a generation
> Episode 5: Santana, and the legend was created
> Episode 6: Canned Heat, as long as the blues live
> Episode 7: Creedence Clearwater Revival, the essential casting error
> Episode 8: Janis Joplin, the pearl of the sixties
> Episode 9: Sly and the Family Stone, downtown funk