Circus Magazine’s Pinups No. 4: Collector’s Edition $1.95 (1976)
Chris Charlesworth recently tipped me off to the existence of this magazine, no surprise it had passed me by given its exclusive American provenance and that Nik Cohn’s journalism is woefully documented and catalogued.
You can read how the project ended up with Cohn on Chris C.’s webpage (here). Cohn’s 7–8,000 words cover the story of the band from their beginnings up to the release of The Who By Numbers and an immanent American tour, which The Who Generation was intended to exploit.
There are some strange ellipses in Cohn’s history, there’s nothing of any consequence on A Quick One and The Who Sell Out doesn’t even merit a mention; lost too in despatches are ‘I’m A Boy’, ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘Pictures of Lilly’. Much was left in the editor’s waste bin, I would wager. Pity.
Nevertheless, there are things here to thrill Who fans and Cohn-ites alike, he is particularly good on Tommy.
But this is how it begins:
First of all, The Who were Mods. And Mod, in its own way, was a true pop religion. . .
No question, they [Mods] were most strange. Undersized, very young, white faced with exhaustion, they seemed almost like alien beings, pill-head Martians, newly emerged from time-warp.
Cohn describes his first encounter with the band, at the Marquee on a Tuesday night late in 1964, having been dragged along to see them by Kit Lambert:
No amount of pre-hype could have prepared me for the furore they whipped up in person. They were, no question about it, the most volcanic group that I had heard in my life. Come to that, I’ve never heard their equal since.
In contrast to the ‘updated beats’ look of the Rolling Stones and all the ‘grubby’ Rhythm and Blues bands that followed:
Out of nowhere there came the Who, the diametric opposites. Their music was as wild as anyone’s, or wilder, but to look at they were positive choirboys. Snow-white Mods, gleaming and precise, in their Union Jack jackets, Mondrian T-shirts, Malibu jeans. It was like reading Clockwork Orange after Howl, watching James Dean after Ernest Borgnine.
Somehow the spotlessness made the underlying violence all the more powerful, the anarchy more seductive. ‘Nice boys committing one murder is far more shocking than a pack of degenerates committing ten,’ said Kit Lambert and, watching the Who that night, it was true, murder was the only metaphor that one could possibly use.
