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Top 5 + anecdote



        Here are my top five favorite Who songs this evening (in no
particular order):

        1)  The Real Me
        2)  Out in the Streets (I had to put down something from TWSMG.)
        3)  Amazing Journey/Sparks (LAL)
        4)  A Quick One (TKAA)
        5)  Odorono

        Runner up:  They Are All in Love

        I never liked Squeeze Box too much.

        Blood and thunder were two of the first things that attracted me to
the band.  I remember the time my friend and I went to the video store
after school in seventh grade, and flipped a coin in order to decide
whether we would rent "TKAA," which I had never seen before, or "A Hard
Day's Night."  She was very disappointed when I won, since she was an
intense Beatles fan.  The entire movie stunned and amazed me, particularly
the scenes from Woodstock, where Pete's bloody fingers and blood smeared
across the seat of his jumpsuit are visible.  My first impression was that
if what I was seeing wasn't passion, I didn't know what was.  The "thunder"
that I love was empasized in "Sparks" at Woodstock--it made my hair stand
up.
        Several months later, a friend of my family, once discovering that
I was a Who fan, began bouncing a bunch of recollections about the band off
me.  My personal feeling about this guy is that I can't trust him as far as
I can throw a car, but I liked his stories.  He said he was in front of the
stage at one concert, and Pete flung the blood on his hand into the
audience, and it sprinkled onto his shirt.  When I asked him where the
shirt was now, he said his friend kept it, and he doesn't talk to that
friend anymore.  You don't have to know anything about medicine to know
that Pete probably would have been close to bleeding to death to produce
that much blood, but I like to muse that this really happened, because it's
such a good story.  However, this wasn't as good as another one he told me
about The Who.
        Here's a story I've been wondering for years if it is true.  In
1967, when The Who were playing in NYC, this guy, let's call him "Bob,"
bought Sell Out with a friend at a record store, went back to Bob's house,
played the record, and really liked it.  They decided to go see them
perform the following night, and afterwards went to the hotel where The Who
were staying.  There was a group of about thirty screaming girls behind a
police barricade, and Bob and his friend asked an officer if they could go
up and meet the band.  The officer let them, because they were guys, and he
didn't think they would try to tear the members of the band apart (this is
what Bob told me.)  They knocked on the door of the hotel room, and Pete
Townshend answered the door (can you imagine.)  He let them in, introduced
them to John Entwistle, and talked for a while.  Roger was not around, and
Keith was "doing something" in the bathroom.  Bob inferred to me that Keith
Moon was breaking stuff in there, but I don't remember him telling me any
details about that.  The conversation turned to the subject of "horror
comics."  John asked these guys from New York, "Do you know of a place
around here that sells them?"  They replied, "Sure," and agreed to go out
and buy him some.  John handed them a hundred-dollar bill (in 1967,) and
asked, "I don't know too much about American currency, would this be
enough?"   Bob said, "Oh yeah, yeah," took the money and left.  At first
they considered taking the money and not returning at all, but supposedly
they had too much of a conscience.  They came back to the hotel with the
comics, and the right change, and John was very grateful.  He autographed
one of the bills Bob and his friend brought back, and he also signed, along
with Pete, Keith, and maybe Roger at that point, the brand new record,
"Sell Out."  He couldn't show me the record, or the bill because his friend
has it, of course.  Hey, so what if it might be bullshit, it's still a
great story.  As Jack Palance would say, believe it...or NOT.
        BTW, I haven't spoken to "Bob" since I was fourteen, when he told
my parents that he saw me smoking.
                                                                        Stacey