KGSR: Pete Townshend of The Who is on the line with us, and where are you calling from Pete?
Pete: I’m calling from Chicago. We just did a few shows here and I’m flying in and out of a few shows out on to Winnipeg tonight.
KGSR: Is Chicago a home base for you of sorts these days?
Pete: Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of friends here and I’ve always kind of made it base. I’ve built up quite a good bunch of social acquaintances here. My girlfriend, Rachel, did a show at the House of Blues, as well, so we’ve been doing all kinds of things – having fun.
KGSR: As a matter of fact, I was listening to a show that you and Rachel do on the internet. It’s called “In the Attic.” It’s amazing.
Pete: Thank you, it’s kind of crazy. It’s very informal and very loose. You can see some of it now, she has got a new website, which is www.intheattic.tv, you can see some of the songs and the kinds of things we do. We are thinking it might one day go to television, but there is also talk of it going out on the new iFilm channel which is opening in the beginning of November
KGSR: I would recommend “In the Attic” to fans, especially because they get to hear things that you don’t ordinarily get to hear Pete play like Blue, Red and Grey or Greyhound Girl.
Pete: That’s right. I mean, also it’s an unplugged environment. People that are used to the kind of fireside music scene in Austin would really enjoy it, if you like Ronnie Lane’s kind of music, it’s informal. Rachel’s co-host on the show is a guy called Mikey Custer, he’s never really ever cracked the big time but his songs remind me just a little bit of Ronnie. So if you are a Ronnie Lane fan, you may just like Mikey Custer.
KGSR: And we are lucky enough to talk to Pete Townshend today because we are going to talk a little bit about Ronnie Lane, whose DVD documentary, The Passing Show, is coming out later this month.
When the Small Faces were around town in England, Mr. Townshend, in the mid-sixties, and The Who was around…were the two bands peers, was one more of a mentor to the other? How was that at that time?
Pete: I think we both came from our own place. We were from west London and they were from east London. We really only met once we had become successful. We met at T.V. shows and radio shows and at gigs and we immediately got on very, very well. We respected each other. They were much more lighthearted than The Who. I have always been very, very serious about my work onstage but off we shared a lot of humor and fun times. But, of course, my friendship with Ronnie was a lifetime friendship and that was almost like meeting a brother. I know of a lot of people actually who met Ronnie and felt the same way. He was very much a universal solider, so I think that we all felt that we knew him very well. But he was very, very important to me. He helped me a lot in those early days because we had a lot of fun together and his girlfriend who became his first wife, Susan, and my girlfriend who became my first wife, Karen, they got on very well. So, we made a useful foursome, we used to hang out and go and see bands and, yeah, those were good days.
KGSR: What was interesting at the time is that you, of course, wrote for The Who as a solo person, a Pete Townshend composition. But Ronnie had to work, or he did work, successfully with Steve Marriott. Would he ever ask you about writing with different people or would you ask him what it was like to be in a songwriting team?
Pete: I think it was the latter. I’ve never really been able to co-write comfortably. I’ve done it a few times, but I’ve never done it the way I’ve watched other people do it - sitting around, playing, picking up ideas. I suppose for me it’s probably about control and the control doesn’t come from any kind of artistic petulance, it comes from the fact that I usually have a brief before I sit down and write a song. If I don’t have a brief, then the song just seems to appear in mid-air and when it’s done it’s done. When I sit down with somebody else, I find it quite tricky to get past the fact that I feel that there’s a kind of negotiation, a creative negotiation, going on, which I don’t know that I’ve quite got the generosity of spirit to deal with. You know Ronnie was just extraordinary in that respect, he could work with anyone. He was so adorable, but such an under-estimated musician in those early days. It’s very interesting to watch “The Passing Show” DVD and realize that even when he was suffering badly from MS down in Texas, you guys very, very quickly divined that this was a very, very special folk hero of the English music scene, that he had something very, very special. And I was one of the first people to, not to learn that, but to be gifted with that. He wasn’t a real Who fan. He wasn’t into really hard rock. He wasn’t into the punk rock that The Who was into. He loved coming around and listening to my demos. He loved coming around and listening to the little things that I did that The Who never recorded. He encouraged me and, as you know, he was the first guy that ever encouraged me to do a real solo record, which I actually did with him, Rough Mix in 1976. Prior to that, I just put out a few demos for a thing called “Who Came First,” which was a game Ronnie and I did together. We made an album or two or three dedicated to the Indian teacher that we followed back in those days, Meher Baba.
KGSR: We are speaking with Pete Townshend of The Who about Ronnie Lane and the forthcoming issue of the Passing Show DVD documentary. There is also Ronnie’s first ever American compilation on the way and that’s called, Just for a Moment. You mentioned your relationship with Meher Baba, which you and Ronnie shared, and I think the first time any of us in the public heard you together was his song on the “Who Came First” album, which was known as “Evolution” or “Stone”. It was kind of interesting that on your solo album you gave over a track to Ronnie.
Pete: Well, that’s right but what’s interesting about that track is that it was very much a solo track. We recorded it in my home studio. I felt very much a part of it and I felt he was very much a part of what I was doing in those days. As I’ve said, there were a few people, John Sebastian was another one. John Sebastian used to play a lot with Bob Dylan in the early days, he would gaze into Bob Dylan’s eyes, I suspect, and sing to him (laughs). I always found it very hard to do that and I remember when John Sebastian used to come and hang out with me and gaze into my eyes, I used to say, “John, don’t fucking do that.” Ronnie’s relationship with me was very intimate, very kind, very thoughtful, and very constructive and quite spiritual, I think, in quality. He brought out something in me. He broke me down, I suppose, with his humor. But when we did that song, that “Evolution” song, I was just stunned. What he had actually done is taken Meher Baba’s very, very complicated description of the universe and the way that consciousness travels and grows and evolves through the universe and turned it into a really amusing, lighthearted and funky song. This is Ronnie’s way, he was a real story teller.
KGSR: Karmic evolution in 3 minutes and thirty seconds.
Pete: (laughter) Well, there’s a book that Meher Baba wrote called God Speaks, which some of us try to read and very few of us understand. I think it runs to three or four hundred pages. Ronnie’s song does it better, I think, it really does.
KGSR: And I would recommend to anyone who would like to explore that music further, there’s a box set called “Avatar” which you can find on Pete’s website. We were talking, Pete, about your first full-fledged collaboration with Ronnie Lane, “Rough Mix”. First of all, is that about to be reissued?
Pete: I think it just has. In Europe it’s on SPV, but over here in the US it’s coming out on Universal. And it’s out probably this week or next week. It’s not a high schedule release but because all of my solo catalog which Universal purchased from Atlantic, which included the “Rough Mix” album, has been re-released with extra tracks. So there are some bonus tracks on there as well. Yes, it has been re-mastered and spruced up – not that it needed that. You know the other thing that has actually happened is that (Bob) Pridden, with the engineer’s permission has done a 5.1 mix of that album, which is just beautiful to listen to because it was all recorded live in a beautiful old studio, Olympic in London, which is now gone. The studio is still there, but the room is very different than it used to be. This is the studio where The Who recorded a lot, and the Stones, and Traffic and various other bands of that period. It had a wonderful atmosphere and sound, and when you listen to the 5.1 you can hear it. When that happens I’ll make sure that I send you a note and you can announce it. I think right now the re-release is probably available right now actually.
