Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who turns 65 today. Happy Birthday Pete and thanks for all the great music, which is still better than 100% of the pop music being produced today!
Tag Archives: the who
The Who Record Pinball Wizard
Pinball Wizard Picture Sleeve (German Release)
On This Date, February 7th in 1969: The Who recorded “Pinball Wizard” at Morgan Studios in London. Although it was not one of songwriter Pete Townshend’s favorites, it went on to become by far the most popular song from the rock opera, Tommy, reaching #4 in the UK charts and #13 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. “Pinball Wizard” remains part of The Who’s live set to this day. Perhaps they will perform it later today when they provide musical entertainment for the half time show at the Super Bowl (aka The Stupid Bowl), which I will be doing everything in my power to avoid watching!
Teenage Wasteland
On This Date, December 3rd, in 1979: At a concert by The Who held at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, eleven people were trampled to death after a stampede to claim general admission seats. It was the saddest day in rock, ever. The tragedy was later memorialized in a very sobering episode of the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati.
Happy Birthday to John Entwistle, John Lennon, and Others!!
John “The Ox” Entwistle, bassist for The Who and astounding musical genius, was born on this today, October 9th, in 1944. Of course, Entwistle is not the only massively-famous-but-dead rock star posthumously celebrating a birthday today. John Lennon (born in 1940) would have celebrated a birthday on today’s date had he not been assassinated by the psychotic Mark David Chapman in 1980. John Lennon’s son Sean also turns another year older today (Born 1975), and Al Jorgensen of Ministry (Born 1958) and a zillion other projects has lived for another year as today. Happy Birthday, guys!
Remembering Keith Moon
On This Date, September 7th in 1978: Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, died in London of an overdose of Hemenephirin, a drug he was taking to cure his alcoholism. He was 32. I still remember that day like it just happened; what a fucking tragedy. In an oddly related story, on this same date in 1985, drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) and his wife Sarah welcomed their first child, daughter Tatia Jayne. Starkey has played drums for The Who since 1994, and actually received his first professional drum kit from Moon, who is also his Godfather. That kit later sold at Sotheby’s auction house for £12,000.
Keith and Zak