The Who talk about MOD

PETE: A strange thing is, is that at the time I don’t think the mods really had a voice of their own. I know Marc Bolan has said some fairly outrageous things about being King Mod and God knows what. The amazing thing about the mod movement is there were no Kings, there was no hierarchy. There were Faces and Tickets basically, this is the way I remember it anyway. The Tickets being the ordinary kids who could just about get by sort of buying themselves a new pair of plimsolls every week, or maybe a pair of Levis and a T-shirt which was the basic equipment. And there were The Faces who had scooters and usually were a lot older than the others, usually sometimes maybe twenty, twenty-five years old, but looked very young. Who would be always be very tough, leaders of gangs in a physical sense, would have jobs and thus have a lot of money, wouldn’t be at school in other words. Enough money to buy lots of clothes and would also get into clubs in town, and which local kids wouldn’t do. And so there were no Kings really, there were no real leaders. That’s why The Who in a sense has always been the crowds band as it were.

JOHN: When we first got into the recording we had a publicity man who decided that we needed a new image, he didn’t like the name of The Who and he thought we should all be little mods. At the time we were walking round in leather waistcoats trying to look like The Rolling Stones, y’know, and I think the change to looking like mods completely disgusted me cos at the heart of it all I was a rocker, y’know. I wanted to dress in leather, not like boxing boots and sort of jeans with half inch turn ups. I remember we all went to have our hair cut at the same time and I was so disgusted I threw the hairbrush at the mirror after they’d finished, it had taken me so long to grow my fringe, and then it was all cut off. And we just sat in a row and watched each other get our hair cut y’know. I’ve got no idea why they didn’t like the name of The Who but I hated the name The High Numbers anyway. And when we made the record I’m The Face and we had the new image to go with it and I remember the first concert we ever did, well it was the same night we got our new set of clothes and new haircuts, I walked through a puddle in boxing boots and the soles fell off.

PETE: The way we became identified with the mod movement in this country and the way we influenced it began in a rather contrived manner really. In other words we adopted a lot of their styles and stuff. But because it is, it was, such a real thing - you know it wasn’t merely fashion - it became very really to us as well. Originally we were an R&B band in the tradition of bands like The Stones and The Yardbirds and people like that. And it was only when Pete Meaden came along, he was one of our early, early influences. He was introduced by our very first manager as a publicity man mainly. It was only when Pete Meaden came along that we started to really realise the full depth of the mod movement. Me in particular I think, I was really sort of incredibly influenced by it, and in fact it became a very solid part of it you know. He figured that it was the greatest thing happening at the time. And from a group’s point of view I mean the main thing that was interesting about it is that it had such explosive musical links. I mean the mod movement at that time wasn’t just fashions and scooters and things like that, it also had very sort of ethnic taste in music, you know it used to like blubeat stuff and stuff like this that’s very very hard to get hold of. And Tamla Motown which again it seems it’s practically a dirty word these days, to rock fans you know, intellectual rock fans. But in those days it was a sort of very in-crowd thing.

PETE: Initially we were moulded if you like, steered in the direction of the mod movement… And it was only later on when we realised how we were being swept along in the mod wave as it were, that we settled in and actually fully identified with it. I mean there’s no doubt about it, The Who were never real mods in the street as it were, because we were doing gigs. I mean there was no way that we could spend our time, you know, in archetypal mod manners, hanging about on street corners with our scooters and in our anoraks or whatever, because we were too busy working, on the road you know. But we were very affected by it all and I suppose the most important thing of all was is that we became like a barometer if you like. From the stage you know there’s something that a lot of people don’t realise, they just look up at a stage and they think well there’s the artist up there and you know he does his thing and we watch it you know. In actual fact you can see a lot from the stage you know, particularly in ballrooms, you can spot fashion changes much more quickly than you can eye level you know. You can spot a new dance more quickly than you can at eye level, and you get to know playing regularly at a place like the Goldhawk Club or the Notre Dame in London or The Scene Club or Carpenters Park, Watford Trade, South London. We used to play that whole sort of ring of places, which were all mod strongholds, ah, you get to know who the Faces are, in other words the key people that would set the trends, and all. It would be much more easy to identify who the trend setters were from up on the stage than down in the audience in a way. You could keep a close eye on the trend setters and then merely mimic them, and thus the majority of the audience because they were looking up on the stage would think that you were actually setting the trends. And then after a couple of months of doing that you could of course start to set trends anyway. You know you could invent a dance on the stage and everybody would say oh that’s The Who doing ah, what’s obviously going to be next weeks dance. And ah they start doing it y’know.

JOHN: It was very contrived in the beginning. Then we actually threw ourselves into it, and started identifying with the mods. But it certainly wasn’t seer-sucker jackets and boxing boots that endeared us to the mods. You know, the mods took us over as their own band, for completely different reasons. I’d like to think mainly because we were a good live band. And we played in Brighton during the great mod uprising, the mod-rocker war, and that’s what really got us into it. Well Pete wrote songs about teenagers and people stuttering because they’re on, you know, taking leapers and pills, and the mods could identify with us.