The Who London 1965 . . . Ealing Club, Feburary 1965 with Fery Agasi (pinched from **HERE**)

The Who – Maximum R&B Tuesday Nights at the Marquee . . . a 23 week residency that became a cornerstone of the band’s foundation myth. As much as anything we have the classic poster to thank for that impression, reinforced by the one in The Who Live at Leeds package. Yet, the majority of the residency at the Wardour Street club appears to have been advertised not in its maximalist rhythmic and bluesy incarnation but as ‘THE WHO – LONDON 1965’. Sometimes with the hyphen, sometimes not . . .

An original is on the left, above is the Live at Leeds repro

‘Maximum R&B’ was used from November through to December 1964. The Monday Red Lion and Wednesday Florida gigs were in the same week the block ad, below, appeared in Melody Maker

Following the Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp takeover there was obviously an on-going debate over the band’s name or rather how best to present it. The first show of the residency, November 24, they were billed a ‘THE “WHO”’ which seems to have been the case until January 5 when the quotation marks were dropped, though they were back on the 12th and stayed in place until the first gig in February, when they went absent once more. From February 9 until April 6, if you paid to see The Who at the Marquee it was under the banner ‘THE WHO – LONDON 1965’. For the final couple of Tuesday gigs in April, the 27th being the last of the 23, they were simply ‘THE WHO’.

On the Brunswick label for ‘I Can’t Explain’, and in press advertisements and posters promoting the single, there was never any uncertainty over the name, they were just ‘The Who’. The heavily used appendage ‘LONDON 1965’ for the Marquee (and Ealing Club dates in February) was then a statement and a declaration. It was a contract with their audience that laid down the claim that they were not only at the very centre of things in Soho, but they were its centre – ‘right here, right now, we are what’s happening’, it said.

An April ‘65 interview with Kevin Swift, published in the May edition of Beat Instrumental, doesn’t refer to any of this directly, but it is there in plain sight – Stamp and Lambert ‘look upon them as the embodiment of London’s various characteristics’, Swift wrote:

It is quite a valid theory when you consider if for a moment. After all, their act contains an aggressiveness, humour, action and an overall indication of frustration.
London – The Who. The Who – London. Even the name is representative of the anonymity of the big city

**The High Numbers** *Record Mirror* (July 23, 1964)

Before the Pop Art epiphony of ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’, Townshend was already dumping the Mod tag: ‘this was a contrived artificial modness and we wanted to be ourselves’. Lambert’s reference to the band appearing in four films is intriguing. The French TV programme had been trailed in Britain as early as March in Record Mirror, with filming taking place at the Marquee, in Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, Mods – Seize Millions de Jeunes (Sixteen Million Teenagers – tx March 18, you can find it on Vimeo as originally broadcast). Lambert is the ‘adult’ interlocutor, explaining teenage London. In one shot you see Moon (?) seemingly helping to design the Marquee poster but,The Who’s appearance aside, the highlight is the kids, smashed blocked and dancing like beautiful fools to some other band chopping away on Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’.

One of the two British TV spots could be Ready Steady Go (tx January 29) and the promotional short for ‘I Can’t Explain’ shot by the two managers and sold to Rediffusion to be used in ‘That’s For Me’ (tx March 15). The film ‘about a stripper’ was Carousella. The reference to it in this NME piece confirming, for me at least, that the band and management had contracted/cleared their appearance with the documentary’s producers, Mithras Films. They were billed as “The Who”. . . Much, if not all, of this on the films is in Andy Neill and Matt Kent’s essential Anyway Anyhow Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who (2007)

Mail Bag, *Melody Maker* (June 19, 1965)

Paul Barrett with Hilary Hayward, Shakin’ Stevens (Star, 1983).

On cover and format alone this looks to be just another exploitation title, a George Tremlett style cut n’ paste job to capitalise on Shaky’s chart success, but it is so much more than that. The first 3/4 are a first hand account of the Sunsets’ story written by their card-carrying Communist manager, Paul ‘Legs’ Barrett. It is a terrific account of the early 1970s rockin’ scene, the gigs and the band’s high expectations and low returns as they endless tour the UK and Europe taking their message to the people. And if you wanna know why so many of the revivalist discs suck, you’ll get the real dope here - no advance, no royalties, minimal recording time in cheap shit studios, and producers who were good at harvesting a fast buck and hopeless at the task they were paid to carry out.

When the band confront Lionel Burge, head of Contour Records (who released some Sunsets sides and LPs by The Houseshakers and Hellraisers), about getting paid directly rather than their funds being channelled through producer Donny Marchand, he tells them to agree to his way or he’ll get the Hellraisers in to make the album. What could you do? asks Barrett. In the end, the records helped them get gigs and that was where the money was and, eventually, good money too.

After 7 years of playing the circuit the band come to an end, killed not by Shaky jumping ship for the Elvis Musical in 1977 but by a new generation of rockers. Barrett tries to sell the band to Island Records’ A&R man, Richard Williams, but tells him, ‘Sorry I think you’re too old. I’m gonna sign Eddie and the Hot Rods instead.’ He then tries Danny Seconda at Track records, who are excited about having The Heartbreakers (if you don’t stare too long you can kinda see a potential synergy between the two bands), and tells the Sunsets to get some new clothes at the expense of the company. off they go to a King’s Road emporium, reserving themselves suede jackets, cowboy boots and fancy shirts’ and then they wait on the company to stump up. . . it never does. Tapes are made with Charlie Gillett, Vic Maile, and Mike Hurst, none are ever released. By the time Track does do something with Shaky he’s gone solo – the Sunsets are long gone . . . and that synergy with Johnny Thunders no longer looks so good.

Barrett stories are worth the price of admission alone, but it’s his depiction of Shaky that is the real draw. He paints him as naive, vain, semi-literate, overly sensitive and just plain dumb. Payback is a motherfucker, as they say, and Legs gets in a bank vault full. Is he bitter? The book’s final sentence:

To quote Paul Barrett, who has been watching Shaky’s career with the caring, concerned interest of a colleague who has been a friend, ‘he’s got what he always wanted, but he’s almost certainly lost what he had.’

A chance find . . . Letters page of *Disc Weekly* (April 3, 1965) . . . Paul was certainly a man of conviction

Record Mirror had run a Bob Dylan poetry competition, Paul Barrett came second, he was cheated . . .

Sadly, Paul ‘Legs’ Barrett died on 20 January 2019, 78 years old. His presence and voice is all over The Sunsets 1969 debut album A Legend (Parlophone, PCS 7112), including a dedication to Karl Marx. It is easily their best sounding disc, Dave Edmunds production gives it a depth and a dynamic that was never matched on their subsequent, rushed, recordings. ‘This album contains what was the most progressive music in the history of recorded sound’ writes Edmunds in his sleeve notes, while fans of Colosseum may dispute this fact, and his use of the past tense qualifies the idea somewhat, 50 years later it still sounds good n’ rockin’ to me.

Not sure of the date of this flyer . . . I bought it in 2022 from the eBay seller who is off-loading Ted Carroll’s garage contents. Lots of Sex Pistols flyers that go for £££££££££££££ but this was less than a tenner inc. shipping. What’s not to love about a band that can play three types of music