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KGSR: Pete Townshend of The Who is on the line with us, and where are you calling from Pete?

Pete: I’m calling from Chicago. We just did a few shows here and I’m flying in and out of a few shows out on to Winnipeg tonight. 

KGSR: Is Chicago a home base for you of sorts these days?

Pete: Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of friends here and I’ve always kind of made it base. I’ve built up quite a good bunch of social acquaintances here. My girlfriend, Rachel, did a show at the House of Blues, as well, so we’ve been doing all kinds of things – having fun. 

KGSR: As a matter of fact, I was listening to a show that you and Rachel do on the internet. It’s called “In the Attic.” It’s amazing. 

Pete: Thank you, it’s kind of crazy. It’s very informal and very loose. You can see some of it now, she has got a new website, which is www.intheattic.tv, you can see some of the songs and the kinds of things we do. We are thinking it might one day go to television, but there is also talk of it going out on the new iFilm channel which is opening in the beginning of November 

KGSR: I would recommend “In the Attic” to fans, especially because they get to hear things that you don’t ordinarily get to hear Pete play like Blue, Red and Grey or Greyhound Girl. 

Pete: That’s right. But I mean, also it’s an unplugged environment. People that are used to the kind of fireside music scene in Austin would really enjoy it, if you like Ronnie Lane’s kind of music, it’s informal. Rachel’s co-host on the show is a guy called Mikey Custer, he’s never really ever cracked the big time but his songs remind me just a little bit of Ronnie. So if you are a Ronnie Lane fan, you may just like Mikey Custer. 

KGSR: And we are lucky enough to talk to Pete Townshend today because we are going to talk a little bit about Ronnie Lane, whose DVD documentary, The Passing Show, is coming out later this month.

When the Small Faces were around town in England, Mr. Townshend, in the mid-sixties, and The Who was around…were the two bands peers, was one more of a mentor to the other? How was that at that time? 

Pete: I think we both came from our own place. We were from west London and they were from east London. We really only met once we had become successful. We met at T.V. shows and radio shows and at gigs and we immediately got on very, very well. We respected each other. They were much more lighthearted than The Who. I have always been very, very serious about my work onstage but off we shared a lot of humor and fun times. But, of course, my friendship with Ronnie was a lifetime friendship and that was almost like meeting a brother. I know of a lot of people actually who met Ronnie and felt the same way. He was very much a universal solider, so I think that we all felt that we knew him very well. But he was very, very important to me. He helped me a lot in those early days because we had a lot of fun together and his girlfriend who became his first wife, Susan, and my girlfriend who became my first wife, Karen, they got on very well. So, we made a useful foursome, we used to hang out and go and see bands and, yeah, those were good days. 

KGSR: What was interesting at the time is that you, of course, wrote for The Who as a solo person, a Pete Townshend composition. But Ronnie had to work, or he did work, successfully with Steve Marriott. Would he ever ask you about writing with different people or would you ask him what it was like to be in a songwriting team?

Pete: I think it was the latter. I’ve never really been able to co-write comfortably. I’ve done it a few times, but I’ve never done it the way I’ve watched other people do it - sitting around, playing, picking up ideas. I suppose for me it’s probably about control and the control doesn’t come from any kind of artistic petulance, it comes from the fact that I usually have a brief before I sit down and write a song. If I don’t have a brief, then the song just seems to appear in mid-air and when it’s done it’s done. When I sit down with somebody else, I find it quite tricky to get past the fact that I feel that there’s a kind of negotiation, a creative negotiation, going on, which I don’t know that I’ve quite got the generosity of spirit to deal with. You know Ronnie was just extraordinary in that respect, he could work with anyone. He was so adorable, but such an under-estimated musician in those early days. It’s very interesting to watch “The Passing Show” DVD and realize that even when he was suffering badly from MS down in Texas, you guys very, very quickly divined that this was a very, very special folk hero of the English music scene, that he had something very, very special. And I was one of the first people to, not to learn that, but to be gifted with that. He wasn’t a real Who fan. He wasn’t into really hard rock. He wasn’t into the punk rock that The Who was into. He loved coming around and listening to my demos. He loved coming around and listening to the little things that I did that The Who never recorded. He encouraged me and, as you know, he was the first guy that ever encouraged me to do a real solo record, which I actually did with him, Rough Mix in 1976. Prior to that, I just put out a few demos for a thing called “Who Came First,” which was a game Ronnie and I did together. We made an album or two or three dedicated to the Indian teacher that we followed back in those days, Meher Baba. 

KGSR: We are speaking with Pete Townshend of The Who about Ronnie Lane and the forthcoming issue of the Passing Show DVD documentary. There is also Ronnie’s first ever American compilation on the way and that’s called, Just for a Moment. You mentioned your relationship with Meher Baba, which you and Ronnie shared, and I think the first time any of us in the public heard you together was his song on the “Who Came First” album, which was known as “Evolution” or “Stone”. It was kind of interesting that on your solo album you gave over a track to Ronnie. 

Pete: Well, that’s right but what’s interesting about that track is that it was very much a solo track. We recorded it in my home studio. I felt very much a part of it and I felt he was very much a part of what I was doing in those days. As I’ve said, there were a few people, John Sebastian was another one. John Sebastian used to play a lot with Bob Dylan in the early days, he would gaze into Bob Dylan’s eyes, I suspect, and sing to him (laughs). I always found it very hard to do that and I remember when John Sebastian used to come and hang out with me and gaze into my eyes, I used to say, “John, don’t fucking do that.” Ronnie’s relationship with me was very intimate, very kind, very thoughtful, and very constructive and quite spiritual, I think, in quality. He brought out something in me. He broke me down, I suppose, with his humor. But when we did that song, that “Evolution” song, I was just stunned. What he had actually done is taken Meher Baba’s very, very complicated description of the universe and the way that consciousness travels and grows and evolves through the universe and turned it into a really amusing, lighthearted and funky song. This is Ronnie’s way, he was a real story teller. 

KGSR: Karmic evolution in 3 minutes and thirty seconds.

Pete: (laughter) Well, there’s a book that Meher Baba wrote called God Speaks, which some of us try to read and very few of us understand. I think it runs to three or four hundred pages. Ronnie’s song does it better, I think, it really does. 

KGSR: And I would recommend to anyone who would like to explore that music further, there’s a box set called “Avatar” which you can find on Pete’s website. We were talking, Pete, about your first full-fledged collaboration with Ronnie Lane, “Rough Mix”. First of all, is that about to be reissued? 

Pete: I think it just has. In Europe it’s on SPV, but over here in the US it’s coming out on Universal. And it’s out probably this week or next week. It’s not a high schedule release but because all of my solo catalog which Universal purchased from Atlantic, which included the “Rough Mix” album, has been re-released with extra tracks. So there are some bonus tracks on there as well. Yes, it has been re-mastered and spruced up – not that it needed that. You know the other thing that has actually happened is that (Bob) Pridden, with the engineer’s permission has done a 5.1 mix of that album, which is just beautiful to listen to because it was all recorded live in a beautiful old studio, Olympic in London, which is now gone. The studio is still there, but the room is very different than it used to be. This is the studio where The Who recorded a lot, and the Stones, and Traffic and various other bands of that period. It had a wonderful atmosphere and sound, and when you listen to the 5.1 you can hear it. When that happens I’ll make sure that I send you a note and you can announce it. I think right now the re-release is probably available right now actually. 

KGSR: You mentioned that the people in Texas took Ronnie to their bosom when he lived here and that was from 1987 to 1992. For most of us, besides the Small Faces material, we were exposed to Ronnie Lane through the album that you were just talking about, “Rough Mix”. You also said earlier that you were not a collaborative songwriter, how much of “Rough Mix” actually was a collaboration, or was it a Pete song, a Ronnie song, a Pete song…

Pete: It was the latter; it was one on, one off. However, for me, that album was a divine collaboration. It was a very life changing record for me. 1976 was a very critical year for me in a whole number of different ways and a very intense, very packed year. I did a lot of work; I did a lot of stuff with The Who and I did a lot of extramural stuff too. And I can remember it was the first time when I realized that Ronnie was getting sick. We had a little argument about something, he accused me of treating my wife very badly, and said something a bit indecent about me and I pushed him or punched him and he just went flying. I thought ‘well, he is a little guy, but God this is a bit strange.’ He really went flying. I helped him up and I said “what’s up, what’s up?” and he said, “oh, I just lost my balance,” and I said, “you know, you look like you are drunk,” and then I went back and somebody else in his circle said to me, “we think Ronnie might have MS.” That was the very first time that I realized that was happening. So it was wonderful time, in a way, to be with him and supporting him and you know trying to knock him out in the middle of a rile (laughter). We were so close we were the kind of people that we could have stand up riles, but we would very, very quickly make up. That’s not the case with everybody in my life I have to say. It was a really, really important time for me. The other thing was, of course, the record was critically acclaimed. It didn’t sell a lot of copies but it was absolutely critically acclaimed when it came out. So that was really good for both of us because I’d never made a solo record; it made me confident that I could pursue a solo career. It may also, in a bad way, perhaps from a Who fan’s perspective, been the record that sewed the seed of doom for The Who. I think already by ’76, I was running out of ideas as to how to get The Who to move to the next level, if there was one. We were so busy on the road, we got this reputation for being a hotel room smashing roustabout rock band, which didn’t fit in with many of my personal ideas, but I was in it, I was of it, I’m not denying my role in it. It was a tricky one really, and so the reviews made me feel ‘oh, actually maybe I could do this, maybe I could do solo work as well,’ and if I can do that as well then that will be good because maybe then that will give me a way of adjusting to the fact that there are things about The Who recording career which were not as fulfilling as they used to be in the old days. So that record was very critical for me and Ronnie’s role in it was absolutely as a collaborator, without question, he was a true collaborator. We didn’t actually write songs together, that was my fault, not his. 
KGSR: Six years later, The Who made its final studio album, “It’s Hard,” up ‘til now. Later this month, you are releasing “Endless Wire”. You are on the road with The Who right now. How is the new material coming across for you and the audience? 

Pete: It’s going very well. People are being quite kind. The part of the new record which I call a mini-opera, which is called “Wire and Glass” is fairly rockin’ so that goes down quite well. But we play a couple of other songs that are really very different, they are almost like folk music more like Fairport Convention or Bob Dylan or even Dave van 

Ronk than traditional Who songs and it’s just Roger and me on the stage for two of the songs with an acoustic guitar and Roger sings and it’s all going down very well. The record is a good record. It’s a slightly different record; I made it entirely by myself at home. I often thought about Ronnie while I was making the record. I often thought about the encouragement he gave me to work at home and to stick to my guns and to play as much of the music myself as I could. I did that and this was easier for me to do this time because there is no Who band, as such, we have a great band that we tour with, but the Who, if there is a Who nowadays, its definitely Who 2. It’s definitely just me and Roger, we are a duo now, and everything is very new for us. So I was able to shape the record using the techniques that I used way back in those days with Ronnie. I worked on an 8-track tape machine. I used computer very, very little. I’m pleased with the record and I am really pleased to be out on the road, I am really enjoying it. My partner, Rachel, has come with me for the tour. She’s not coming just to go shopping. She’s working. She’s doing a program for Sirius satellite, which she presents a Who channel. She’s plugging her own EP, which is called “Shine,” which has been released by Barnes and Noble and so she is doing some Barnes and Noble book shop appearances. She’s doing a few shows of her own, she did one at the House Of Blues here with (?) and a really great new artist and writer, who I’m sure you guys down there would love is a young guy called Willy Mason have you heard of him? 

KGSR: I have.

Pete: Oh god, his songs are wise beyond their years. He is such a towering performer. Where he is going to go with this stuff I really don’t know. And my brother, Simon, played and, of course, Mikey played, and Rachel did a set, so she just does a few shows like that. So I am happy on the road because I have got my partner, my family. I miss the dogs, I miss my son and I miss my home but it’s as good as it gets. We are having a really good tour.
KGSR: We are wrapping up with Pete Townshend. He is talking to us from Chicago. He and The Who will be in Texas, Houston and Dallas, in November. Pete, one of the songs we have been favoring on our radio station is called “Tea and Theatre” it sounds like something that we could have heard Ronnie doing in the Passing Show in the DVD. 

Pete: Yeah, that’s right. It does. Roger does it with such sensitivity on the stage, I hope you’ll get to come and hear it. We close our show with that song now and it’s a very moving moment. I think people think it’s about us, but it’s the closing song from the mini-opera – it’s about two very old people, they are in their eighties, and one of them is in an old people’s home, a sanotorium, whatever you want to call it. He’s not very well mentally, but his ex-partner comes to see him and they watch a little theatre show at the home and then they have a cup of tea and its about the end of a story, it’s the epilogue of a story. But when we play it live, it seems to be about The Who story, it seems to be about Roger and I, and I am very touched that you said that. Like I said, when I was making this record, I thought a lot about Ronnie and I thought a lot about those days because its 25 years since we put a record out. I’ve done some solo work, but I had to kind of pick up the pieces. I had to pick up where I left off, and where I left off with The Who wasn’t very satisfactory so I had to kind of find some way to link back a little bit further, so I was back in the years before the decline and make that connection. Watching “The Passing Show” as I did before I came out, I have to say that the person I thought really shone out in that was the guy that ran my companies for a while in London, Russ Schlaugbaum. 

KGSR: Oh, he was great.

Pete: But also towards the end when you suddenly see all the people in Austin playing his music and reviving his memory, this is something I knew nothing about really and it was just so great to see. Ronnie was like a brother to me. I just hope one day that I get to come and play in Austin. My girlfriend, Rachel, did SXSW and I think she wants to do it next year so maybe I’ll come and hang out with her and do something then. 

KGSR: Well, we would love to see you. The last time The Who played Austin was in the summer of 1980. We have been talking with Pete Townshend, who is on the road with The Who, coming back to Texas in Houston and Dallas in November. And talking with us about the new DVD about the life of Ronnie Lane, “The Passing Show.” Pete, it is so nice to know you were as inspired by that DVD as those of us that have already seen it. 

Pete: Cool, yeah. I suppose a lot of you were in it. It’s very good, you know these things sometimes turn out to be sentimental, but it’s very good. Ronnie had quite a life, didn’t he? Outside of the Faces and certainly outside of his time in the UK, when he really hit America, he had another life. When his last wife, Susan, talked about going up into the mountains and looking out at the elk, and whatever it was they had out there, my eyes fill with tears. I just felt this is what he needed sometimes was just some real peace and quiet, and she was certainly able to give it to him. But he also needed to have a good time or feel that he was still a musician, and I think that is what you people did for him, made him feel that he still had music as part of his life. It was a really great period for him. And I want to thank you. 

KGSR: Well, Pete, it’s nice to share the love that we share for Ronnie together on the airwaves today. And I think you would agree with me that he was an April fool. 

(Pete laughs) 

KGSR: And that’s what’s we will play right now. Pete Townshend, thank you very much. 

Pete: Thanks for having me. 

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