some Swedish input...

[svante@df.lth.se (Svante Boerjesson)]

Hi all, (I'm back)

Just thought I'd lay out some general thoughts about the Who and what's happened to me the last days.

Last Thursday I went to a preview "party" held here in Malmoe. A local cable channel was previewing a program they'd produced on their own, which is quite rare for a channel of such a small size as this one.

Anyway, the program was a two hour documentary of the pop/rock life of Malmoe in the fifties and sixties. Among the people at the party were of course quite a few who had lived to tell the tale. By pure coincidence I started talking to a guy called Tommy Hansson, the lead singer of the Namelosers, a popband in the sixties. (They settled on the name _The_Namelosers_ after having been forced to change their name for the third time.)

He told me that they were very influenced by the Who. Two of the members had travelled to London to watch the Who perform at the Marquee in '65. The Namelosers copied much of the Who's act, ie using a fuzz box, destroying the guitar, kicking over the drumset. They had to stop doing much of this because the instrument smashing was far too expensive.

The Namelosers were also one of the warm-up bands when the Who played in Copenhagen in September '65. After the Who's set Tommy Hansson was in the dressing room to witness Roger Daltrey burst in - furious. Daltrey rushed over to Keith Moon who had already sat down, lifted him up by the collar and gave him a good "header" across the nose. Keith, Roger explained as the blood was seeping out of Keith's nose, had been playing too loud!

Tommy Hansson just shook his head as he told me this, not really finding any of it amusing. "This was just the way they were. It was no image", he said. He kept on talking about how "nasty" the English bands were in general and their use of drugs as they went on Scandinavian tours, always bringing their "purple hearts" and even syringe/needles to inject stuff directly. 

I even read in an old sixties issue of a Danish teeny magazine, that Roger Daltrey had been seen using a syringe, which was most certainly a false rumour, because Roger was supposedly the one who was the straight guy, and infact incidents like the one above and Roger's objection to the others using drugs were the reasons for him almost getting thrown out of the band in late '65.

Tommy Hansson carried on talking about how he'd made some new demos, almost as if he was expecting some grander sixties revival. I really don't think this will ever happen, but I didn't want to disappoint him, so I held my thoughts to myself.

The Who anecdote was especially interesting for me because, as some of you may know, I've been helping out on a book called "The Who in Sweden", which is due for release pretty soon. If you've read the latest "Generations" you know what I'm talking about.

I talked to "editor" Olle Lundin just recently and they're about to do some testprints this week. He said he'd send down a copy to me, so I can do a more thorough "review" for the wholist.

I've been thinking about what to do with remaining material from Danish shows, and I thought I'd make some web documents. These can be arranged like timecapsules - like going with the Who on tour in the sixties! Sound interesting?

Well, that's it for now.

- Svante

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Svante Boerjesson<svante@df.lth.se>, Malmoe, Sweden. Phone: (+46) 40 916403 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------