April 1968, The Who have added three, count ’em, three Eddie Cochran numbers to the set-list for the Filmore East gigs – ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘My Way’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’. In 1967, between the release of ‘Pictures of Lily’ in April and The Who Sell Out in December they laid down two studio versions of ‘Summertime Blues’, the first as a potential single, the second, alongside ‘My Way’, for possible inclusion on the album. What was it with The Who and Cochran that led one American journalist to report that Townshend carried tapes of the rocker wherever he goes?
The band were not alone in making a down shift in gears back to rock ’n’ roll as a reaction to the swerve taken during the high-days of psychedelia. The Beatles, the Stones and The Move, among others, felt the curve away from the music’s founding roots was too steep and attempted a recalibration, but if The Who were following a general trend then their latching on to Cochran, if not unique, had a depth and reach that exceeded the likes of Blue Cheer.
Nik Cohn thought Cochran played ‘pure rock’, whatever that might be, and he was ‘a composite of a generation . . . a generalised 50s blur’. Greil Marcus considered ‘Summertime Blues’ the ‘grammar book of rock ’n’ roll language’, but you might say the same of Gene Vincent and ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’. Or maybe not, Vincent was too much of a greaser, much more of the pool hall punk than Cochran, whose performances and songs spoke more clearly to a suburban teenage dissatisfaction than to an urban disaffection. Cochran wrote teenage anthems, he worked the high school beat and the soda hop, Vincent came from the world of juke joints and honky tonks, he smelt of reefer and whiskey. In Cochran’s world, dad busted up your fun. Vincent was sui generis, without parents: it is unimaginable to think of him sitting down to Sunday dinner with mom and pop. The differences are there in their individual performances in The Girl Can’t Help It. Cochran is projected into the family home via the television set, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps are playing in some downtown rehearsal space uninvited to the party.
You might pull on Vincent’s leather jacket, like countless British rockers did, but you could only mirror back his stance and hang on to the microphone stand in a pose that mimicked him. You couldn’t better Gene Vincent at being Gene Vincent. But Cochran, his stance and pose, The Who could own. They could remake him to fit their purpose, with Townshend incorporating, as Charlie Gillett wrote, the rock ’n’ roller’s ‘chunky, resentful guitar’, while Daltrey and Entwistle could play teenage parts with a knowing wink as a counter to Moon’s arrested development.
a very rare tri-centre promo edtion . . . a homage to the original London release I believe