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You can own Roger Daltrey’s 1977’s green Volkswagen Beetle
11.27.2019
10:10 am
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Of course I’m tempted to buy Roger Daltrey’s 1977 Volkswagen Beetle and I don’t even drive. I’d keep the damned thing in a garage and have buddies drive it around while I’m drinking beer and listening to Quadrophenia or Tommy or The Who Sells Out or Who’s Next. It would be fun. Well, for a time. But let’s be honest, I’d eventually get bored with the novelty (even though this little beauty is painted sparkling green—the color of my favorite soccer team Celtic), and know in my heart it really should be owned by someone who not only likes the Who but digs vintage cars like this one.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Who but I have never quite understood most people’s passion for cars. Call me olde fashioned.

Like I have no idea what all this spiel…

The 1303LS Beetle was the range-topping model of its day. It is powered by the 49bhp 1.6-litre twinport air-cooled flat-four engine, driven through the rear wheels via a four-speed manual transmission.

...actually means.

All I appreciate is that it’s got four-wheels, was once owned by a rock star (god) I admire, and gets you from A-B. Yeah, you can call me a Luddite, but I live in Scotland where we all wear kilts and climb mountains every morning before breakfast just to wrestle some grouse into two falls or a submission and like salt in our porridge. Fuck that maple syrup and fruit shit.

Any-old-how.

The stuff that does interest me is that Mr. Daltrey owned this 1977 VW Beetle 1303 LS Cabriolet (a classic, iconic design in “outstanding condition”) for nearly thirty years between 1977 and 2005. Mr. D. clocked up 76,000 miles during this time, which is a lot of driving. Where the fuck did he go? What was he doing? And why didn’t he ask me along for a ride? Selfish bastard…

The other stuff you petrol-heads will need to know is that:

A Volkswagen Museum certificate on file confirms the specification above, that it was built on 27 January 1977, and that the delivery destination was Great Britain. It also confirms the original colour scheme of Viper Green metallic paintwork with a Pale Sand hood.

And:

The Karmann bodywork received a full bare metal respray in 2014, in the original factory hue of Viper Green. It is now in outstanding condition, with a smooth and glossy finish all around the car. Its hood has evidently been replaced recently as well, in the correct Pale Sand colour. There is absolutely no damage to the material, and it fits snugly over the original frame.

The vehicle has seat belts, a “contemporary Alpine stereo head unit [...] fitted, with an MP3-compatible CD player, additional speakers, and Bluetooth connectivity. A custom air-conditioning installation is also present, with the compressor running off the engine via a modified pulley system,” and a trunk with “with smart black carpeting tailored to size.”

The owner after Mr. Daltrey clocked up 2,000 miles since 2005, which doesn’t seem much. But during “the penultimate service while in Roger Daltrey’s care, the original service book was mislaid, and so the maintenance history for this period is authenticated solely by his signed letter.” I have no idea if this is good or bad. But I do know this green VW is now domiciled in Kuala Lumpur which means there will be some cost in transporting this rock star mobile to your address in Moosefart, Montana, or wherever it is that you live.

At the time of writing, there is only one bid of $1,000 for the vehicle, which sounds to me as incredibly cheap. But what the fuck do I know? Like I said, I don’t even drive. Now where’s that fucking grouse…
 
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See more of Roger Daltrey’s fab green VW, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.27.2019
10:10 am
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Sex, Nazis, and classical music: Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’

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Scene: Opening titles.

A group of sunny So-Cal cheerleaders kick and shake: “Give it an L. Give it an I. Give an S. Give it a Zee. Give it…”

They’re going to do the whole fucking alphabet…

“...an O. Give it an M. Give it an A…”

We’ll be here all day….Jesus fucking Sanchez...

“..Give it an N. Give it an I. Give it an A.”

Wait…

“...What does it it spell…LISZTOMANIA!”

Cue Alan Whicker, for it is he…He speaks into his microphone…

Whicker: The thing about Ken Russell’s most misunderstood and most reviled film Lisztomania is that it has some of his best stylistic devices and some of his worst artistic traits. It is a film that shows the best of Ken Russell while revealing the problems involved in ever fully realizing such a febrile imagination on a shoestring budget.

Cut to: Archive footage of producer David Puttnam in a bank vault counting money while reading movie reviews. In the background hundreds of Oompa-Loompahs are making telephone calls to very important Hollywood producers.

Whicker (in voice-over): This man is God. He is a movie producer. He wants to leave his fingerprint on everything he touches…Today he wants people to know he is making the Ken Russell film that will “Out-Tommy Tommy.”

Note that David Puttnam has a beard. The writer Roald Dahl hated people who wore beards because he thought they were hiding something. Ken Russell sported a beard during Tommy. Two beards could be seen as two negatives. But as Woody Allen once noted, two negatives make a positive.

Puttnam hopes Lisztomania will be a positive.

Unfortunately, Russell shaved his beard before filming and tried out a rather dapper mustache…

Suitable music, cue the blog:

Russell had originally intended to make a film about George Gershwin starring Al Pacino. He was under contract with Puttnam to make six movies on six composers. Together they’d already made Mahler starring Rober Powell and Georgina Hale to mixed reviews though some minor success at the box-office. Then came Tommy, the movie version of the Who’s classic concept album. Tommy had been a major hit with both audiences and critics across the world. Russell’s movie kick-started pop promos and whole new way of cinematic storytelling. At Puttnam’s bidding, Russell wrote two scripts. One on sex-mad classical composer Franz Liszt. One on George Gershwin. The latter was dull, The former interesting...

Scene: Exterior Day: Enter Roger Daltrey juggling fish while walking on water and turning it to wine.

Daltrey was at his peak. He was Tommy. He was the frontman for the Who. He was the one name everyone wanted to work with. Russell wanted to make another film with Daltrey. Daltrey wanted to make another film with Russell—despite 32-takes running barefoot through a mustard field for Tommy.

Puttnam liked the idea of Daltrey and Russell making another film together. He opted for Lisztomania and dropped the idea of Pacino as Gershwin.

Cut to: Ext. Day: Archive footage of Ken Russell on location.

Russell: Roger is a natural, brilliant performer. He acts as he sings and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence which is why he was a perfect Tommy and why he is the only person to play Liszt.

Flashback: Roger Daltrey discusses Liszt in a TV interview from 1974.

Daltrey: Liszt’s music is just like modern day rock. He was a lot like me. He had this religious thing like me but he still went lusting after women.

Cut to Alan Whicker walking on a surf-washed beach.

Whicker: Lisztomania was the term coined by German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine to describe the mass adulation composer Franz Liszt aroused in his fans. Liszt was mobbed by breathy young women, who swooned at his recitals, chanted his name, plundered discarded detritus for keepsakes (cigar butts, coffee cups, gloves) and dared to touch the hem of his garment.

Many Germans considered Lisztomania to be a genuine fever, but no one could find its cause or its cure. Heine later wrote:

What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt.

The seed was sown in Russell’s brain. Classical musicians like Liszt are the same as pop stars like Daltrey, Mick Jagger or the Beatles.

Cut to the blog:

Actually, Russell originally wanted Mick Jagger to play Liszt. However, the starting point for his script and the film was the novel Nélida by Marie d’Agoult–the “thinly disguised fictional account” of her four year affair with the long-fingered composer Liszt.

Russell saw Liszt, as Joseph Lanza notes in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films,  as “Romanticism’s baby and the precursor to the modern pop star.”

Like other great names that caught Russell’s eye, Liszt fought internal wars. He was torn between love for his music and his prurient desires, his guilt about leading a cushy lifestyle and sitting idly during the 1849 Hungarian rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, his desperation for the kind of commercial success that would belie his artistic integrity, and most important, the queasy fact that Wagner was eclipsing him as Europe’s symphonic superstar.

Russell saw much to play with here and described Lisztomania as not a straightforward biography but coming:

...from things I feel when I listen to the music of Wagner and Liszt, and when I think about their lives.

Russell wanted to make a film about the rivalry between Liszt and Wagner, and how Wagner plagiarized some of Liszt’s work and ended up marrying Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. However, Puttnam wanted another Tommy full of rock stars and great tunes. Tommy was money. Tommy was Oscar-nominations. Puttnam liked both. But Lisztomania was an unknown quantity. Puttnam forced Ringo Starr on Russell. He added scenes and even included some musical cues that had nothing to do with anything. Russell was beginning to feel frustrated.

Sidebar: When I produced stuff for TV, I saw my job as enabling the director to bring their vision to the screen. Puttnam was of the olde school where he thought a producer had his/her vision on the screen, not so much the director. The problem with creative industries is that everyone thinks they are creative. But in truth: Producers are money and editorial. Directors and writers are talent.

Here’s another interesting piece of casting: Russell allegedly wanted Marty Feldman to play Wagner but he settled for Paul Nicholas. Not that there’s much wrong with “Cousin Kevin” Mr. Nicholas, but he ain’t Marty Feldman…

Russell’s screenplay was only 57-pages long. The script was all in his head. Puttnam insisted on having everything down on paper so he could cost it. The budget spiralled upwards but not as much as Russell wanted. What should have been Fellini became end-of-the-pier cabaret. It probably suited Russell as his imagination soared in adverse circumstances. But the different aims of a producer who wanted a pop promo; and director who wanted to make a film about art, music, and rivalry between two composers, were never fully resolved.

Russell fell back on the comic strip format he had used with his (banned) TV biopic on Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. The film became a series of dreams which highlighted key moments in Liszt’s life. Russell eschewed any realism using references to Universal horror movies, pop concerts, the rise of National Socialism, mensch und übermensch, Pop Art, comedy, and even some of the movies that most influenced the young Ken Russell.

The resulting film may be considered by some as a mess, but it’s a genius mess. A film that offers up more ideas in one sequence than a dozen studio movies with one-hundred times the budget. As Ross Care correctly noted in Film Quarterly:

Ken Russell is an intuitive symbolist and fantasist, a total film-maker who orchestrates his subjects in much the same manner that a composer might transcribe a musical composition from one interpretative medium to another…

Or as Joseph Lanza wrote:

Lisztomania—[was] the film that established once and for all Ken Russell’s refusal to pay any more token favors to biographical “realism.” Lisztomania contains many relevant facts about Liszt—his music, the people who affected his life, his marital problems, his womanizing, his recourse to religion, and of course, his strained relationship with Wagner—but it goes further into the deep end than even the swastika-adorned portrait of Strauss from five years before.

Released in 1975, shortly after Tommy, Lisztomania continues Russell’s harder, more satirical edge, with more lavish sets, more crazed acting, more frenetic plot pacing, and a premise that is simultaneously silly and fantastic.

Cut to: Alan Whicker up to his next in water on a beach.

Whicker: Cinema and TV was never the same after Tommy. And Ken Russell’s career was never quite the same after Lisztomania.

End titles.
 
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More on Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.23.2019
11:17 am
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Who are You??? That time Keith Moon OD’d onstage and was replaced by a member of the audience

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It’s like a Boy’s Own story. You’re at a concert with your best friend, watching your favorite band, when the drummer collapses on stage. The call goes out, “Is there a drummer in the house?” Next thing you know, your buddy has pushed you into the spotlight and there you are playing the drums with your rock star heroes.

This actually happened to one Scot Halpin when he turned up to see his favorite band The Who open their Quadrophenia tour at the 14,000 seater Cow Palace in Daly City, San Francisco, back in November of 1973. Halpin and his buddy arrived twelve hours before the concert was set to begin. They wanted to ensure they had the best seats in the house up near the front of the stage. This was to prove fortuitous for both Halpin and for the band themselves, for an hour into The Who’s gig—during “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in fact—Keith Moon passed out at his drums and was carried off the stage.

The house lights came up. Guitarist Pete Townshend announced:

“We’re just gonna revive our drummer by punching him in the stomach. He’s out cold. I think he’s gone and eaten something he shouldn’t have eaten. It’s your foreign food. The horrible truth is that without him, we aren’t a group.”

There was a thirty-minute intermission while Moon was revived backstage with “a cold shower.” The Who returned to the stage and resumed playing. But not for long. Moon collapsed again and this time he he could not be revived so easily.
 
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Moon the Loon.
 
It was later discovered what had actually transpired: Moon had ingested a massive quantity of veterinary tranquilizers, which he then washed down with his customary bottle or two of brandy. The rest of the band: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle carried on performing—Daltrey filling-in for Keith’s drums with a tambourine. It wasn’t exactly working. Townshend once more stepped toward the mic and asked:

“Can anybody play the drums? I mean someone good!”

This was the moment when Halpin’s buddy started yelling at the stage crew that yes, his friend was a drummer and boy could he play. Which was true up to a point. Halpin could play but was out of practice as he hadn’t picked up his sticks in nearly a year.

What happened next surprised both band and audience and has become the stuff of legend. Concert promoter, Bill Graham approached Halpin and pulled him up onto the stage.

“Graham just looked at me and said, ‘Can you do it?’ And I said ‘Yes,’ straight out. Townshend and Daltrey look around and they’re as surprised as I am, because Graham put me up there.”

A roadie then gave Halpin a shot of Moon’s brandy.

“Then I got really focused, and Townshend said to me, ‘I’m going to lead you. I’m going to cue you.’”

Townshend introduced him simply as “Scot” and launched into a couple of blues standards “Smokestack Lightning” and “Spoonful.” Halpin acquitted himself well. He kept good time and followed Townshend’s lead. Next up was the Who’s “Naked Eye” which proved far more tricky with its contrasting tempos. Halpin kept his cool and managed a steady beat throughout.
 
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Scot Halpin fills for Moon with The Who.
 
It was the band’s last number. Halpin deservedly took his bow alongside Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle. Backstage they thanked “...the skinny kid from the audience for stepping to the plate” but who “didn’t hang around long after the show.”

“They were very angry with Keith and sort of fighting among themselves,” Halpin said. “It was the opening date on their ‘Quadrophenia’ tour, and they were saying, ‘Why couldn’t he wait until after the show (if he wanted to get high)?”

Daltrey, who’d begun drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle at that point, told the substitute they’d pay him $1,000 for his efforts, and a roadie gave him a tour jacket on the spot. “Then everyone split,” Halpin said. “My friend and I both had long drives ahead of us, so we loaded up on all the free food that was put out for the band, and we both headed for home.”

In the meantime, someone stole the tour jacket that Halpin had just received as a gift.

Halpin received favorable mention in the next day’s Chronicle review. He received a nice letter from the band but no money - not that it mattered.

The event was commemorated by Rolling Stone magazine who honored Halpin with “Pick-Up Player of the Year 1973.”  Interviewed at the time, Halpin praised The Who’s stamina, saying:

“I only played three numbers and I was dead.”

More on the night Moon the Loon was replaced by a member of the audience, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.18.2016
10:02 am
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The Who: Perform the best live version of ‘Tommy’ at Tanglewood 1970

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The Who give one of the best live performances of Tommy at Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts, July 7th, 1970.

If anyone wants to know what The Who were like at their best, then they need only take a look at the talent, passion and energy of these 4 exceptional, young musicians, who together make this an incredible and unforgettable concert.

Track Listing

01.“Heaven and Hell”
02. “I Can’t Explain”
03. “Water”
04. “I Don’t Even Know Myself”
05. “Young Man Blues”
06. “Overture”
07. “It’s a Boy”
08. “1921”
09. “Amazing Journey”
10. “Sparks”
11. “Eyesight to the Blind”
12. “Christmas”
13. “The Acid Queen”
14. “Pinball Wizard”
15. “Do You Think It’s Alright?”
16. “Fiddle About”
17. “Tommy Can You Hear Me?”
18. “There’s a Doctor”
19. “Go to the Mirror!”
20. “Smash the Mirror”
21. “Miracle Cure”
22. “I’m Free”
23. “Tommy’s Holiday Camp”
24. “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
25. “See Me, Feel Me”
26. “My Generation”
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.19.2013
07:37 pm
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Roger Daltrey’s ‘Fillmore East’ t-shirt is for sale on eBay

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You can own the “Fillmore East” t-shirt that Roger Daltrey wore during the Who’s 1976 US tour. And your money will go to a good cause: Teenage Cancer Trust.

The shirt is being auctioned on eBay and so far is at £1,650.00 with 4 days to go. To place a bid, click here.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.29.2012
02:36 pm
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Ken Russell’s Lisztomania in glorious new 35mm print
08.14.2012
06:12 pm
Topics:
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Ken Russell’s 1975 ribald cult favorite Lisztomania will be screened this coming weekend at Cinefamily in Los Angeles as part of the Allison Anders curated Don’t Knock The Rock film festival:

The most fantastical, bawdy, synth-adelic, opulent and outré film ever from the Seventies’ most audacious cinematic enfant terrible! Following the huge success of Tommy, Ken Russell next tackled one of his trademark composer biographies—and the result was the life of Franz Liszt as channeled through Superman comics, 10-foot phalluses, glittery hoedowns, Frankenstein, Metropolis, Ringo Starr as “The Pope”(!), and a stupendous list of other impossible stuff. Portrayed by Roger Daltrey (and accompanied by an adapted score from keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman), Liszt is at first shown as a 19th-century equivalent to Daltrey’s real-life brand of rock ‘n roll animal—but, of course, Russell gleefully ramps every piece of sensory input to 11, pitting Liszt as a superhero priest sent to annihilate the scourge of vampiric Nazi mad scientist Richard Wagner. Not all pure insanity, Lisztomania also features startling moments of quiet clarity, exemplified in a heartrending flashback re-imagining Liszt’s idyllic romantic life as a cross-pollination between the winter cabin scenes of both Citizen Kane and The Gold Rush. Woefully misunderstood and critically savaged upon its original release, Lisztomania is one hell of a good time, and exemplifies a kind of radical chance-taking Hollywood can’t even conceive of today—the kind that Russell couldn’t conceive of not bringing to the screen.

Co-sponsored by the Warner Archive
 
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If you live in the Los Angeles area and you’d like to win tickets to this special screening of Lisztomania, Dangerous Minds is giving away three pairs of tickets. All you have to do is come up with a good caption for the above photograph of Roger Daltery and Rick Wakeman (seen here playing a particularly demented looking Thor).

The three “Caption This” winners will be chosen by the number of “likes.”

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Original Photo-spread for Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, 1975
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.14.2012
06:12 pm
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Ken Russell: A documentary tribute to his life and work

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There was an interesting letter in that scurrilous rag, the Daily Mail yesterday, printed under the headline, “Let Ken’s movies inspire a new audience”. It was written by Paul Sutton, of Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, who gave a passionate plea for the BBC to stop using edited clips of Ken Russell’s early TV work to liven-up crap shows made by today’s lesser talented directors:

These Ken Russell films aren’t entertainment fit only for ‘found footage’. They’re films, works of very real cinema in which every frame,pictorial composition, cut and music cue has been thought through with a craftsman’s hand and an artist’s mind and eye. They constitute a body of work which stands with the best of any director working anywhere in the world between 1959 and 1970.

Mr. Sutton went on to explains how both Lindsay Anderson, in If…, and Stanley Kubrick, in A Clockwork Orange, lifted from Russell’s TV work, and concludes:

Every one of Ken Russell’s 35 BBC films displays the master’s art. We should be boasting about them and using them to inspire the next Lindsay Anderson, the next Stanley Kubrick and the next Ken Russell.

I for one, certainly do hope the BBC listen up and release all of Ken Russell’s TV films for all of us to enjoy, very soon.

Most recently, the Beeb made this fine documentary Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil , and while it doesn’t cover all of the great, genius director’s work (no Savage Messiah, no Crimes of Passion, no Salome’s Last Dance) it does manage to show why Ken Russell was England’s greatest film director of the last 50 years, and one of the world’s most important film directors of the twentieth century.

Presneted by Alan Yentob, this documentary tribute includes interviews with Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Amanda Donohoe, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey.

Read Paul Sutton’s blog on Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson and Stanley Kubrick here.
 

 
With thanks to Unkle Ken Russell
 
More on L’enfant terrible Msr. Russell, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.19.2012
05:14 pm
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Who’s Next? Scot Halpin the drummer who filled in for Keith Moon in 1973

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It’s a Boy’s Own Adventure Story moment. You’re at a concert with your best pal, watching your favorite band, when the drummer collapses on stage. The call goes out, “Is there a drummer in the house?” Next thing you know, your buddy has pushed you into the spotlight and there you are playing the drums with your heroes.

Well this is kind of how it went for Scot Halpin when he turned up to see his favorite band The Who open their Quadrophenia tour at the 14,000 seater Cow Palace in Daly City, San Francisco, in November 1973. Halpin and his companion arrived 12 hours before the concert began to ensure they would have good seats. They found seats up near the front of the stage, which was fortuitous for both Halpin and the band, as an hour into the gig, drummer Keith Moon passed out and was carted off stage.

The house lights came up, and a thirty minute intermission followed, while Moon was revived backstage with “a cold shower”. The Who returned to the stage, and started performing, but once again Moon collapsed - this time for good. It later transpired that Moon the Loon had ingested massive quantities of animal tranquilizers, which he had washed down with his usual bottle or two of brandy. His three band mates, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle carried on, performing their next number “See Me, Feel Me”, with Daltrey filling-in for Keith’s drums on tambourine, before Townshend asked the audience:

“Can anybody play the drums? I mean someone good!”

It was at this moment Halpin’s companion started yelling at the stage crew that his friend could play. What he omitted to say, was that Halpin was slightly out of practice, as it was nearly a year since he had played. What happened next surprised both band and audience, and has become the stuff of legend, when concert promoter, Bill Graham approached Halpin and pulled him up onto the stage.

“Graham just looked at me and said, ‘Can you do it?’ And I said ‘Yes,“‘straight out. Townshend and Daltrey look around and they’re as surprised as I am, because Graham put me up there.”

A roadie then gave Halpin a shot of Moon’s brandy.

“Then I got really focused, and Townshend said to me, ‘I’m going to lead you. I’m going to cue you.’”

Townshend introduced him as “Scot”, and went straight into a couple of Blues standards, “Smoke Stack Lightning” and “Spoonful”. Halpin acquitted himself, kept good time and followed Townhend’s lead. Next up was The Who’s “Naked Eye”, which proved far more tricksy with its contrasting tempos. However, Halpin kept his cool and managed a steady beat throughout.

It was the band’s last number and Halpin deservedly then took his bow alongside Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle. Backstage the band thanked:

...the skinny kid from the audience for stepping to the plate but didn’t hang around long after the show.

“They were very angry with Keith and sort of fighting among themselves,” Halpin said. “It was the opening date on their ‘Quadrophenia’ tour, and they were saying, ‘Why couldn’t he wait until after the show (if he wanted to get high)?”

Daltry, who’d begun drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle at that point, told the substitute they’d pay him $1,000 for his efforts, and a roadie gave him a tour jacket on the spot. “Then everyone split,” Halpin said. “My friend and I both had long drives ahead of us, so we loaded up on all the free food that was put out for the band, and we both headed for home.”

In the meantime, someone stole the tour jacket that Halpin had just received as a gift.

Halpin received favorable mention in the next day’s Chronicle review. He received a nice letter from the band but no money - not that it mattered.

However, the event was commemorated by Rolling Stone magazine, when they honored Halpin with “Pick-Up Player of the Year 1973.”  Interviewed at the time, Halpin praised The Who’s stamina, saying:

“I only played three numbers and I was dead.”

Halpin went onto graduate from San Francisco University, and became composer-in-residence at the Headlands Centre for the Arts, in Sausalito, California. He also played with a number of bands including The Sponges, Funhouse, Folklore, Snake Doctor and Plank Road and also managed a punk rock nightclub before moving to Bloomington, Indiana, in 1995 to become a visual artist.

Halpin died in February 2008, less than a week after his birthday, he was 54.
 

 
More of Scot Halpin and The Who, plus bonus clip, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Heather Harris for suggesting this story!
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.11.2011
05:36 pm
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