Talmy and My Generation

[James Marshall Boswell <jboswel@emory.edu>]

On Mon, 18 Mar 1996, Gary M. Gillman wrote:

> Reading about Shel Talmy on the list recently makes me realize how little I
> know about him other than that there is a well known dispute which has
> prevented the remixing in stereo of classic early Who singles such as My
> Generation, I Can`t Explain, and The Kids are Alright.  

Yes, and this is my question, which has probably been done to death on 
this list but I'm new so I'll reprise it: what exactly is the legal 
dispute with Talmy and why can't Astley get his hands on those early 
recordings?  My partial understanding is that The Who, early in their 
career, signed some Satanic soul-surrendering recording contract that 
guaranteed Talmy a sizeable royalty on all the records he produced and so 
forth.  Everyone in those days got screwed this way: the Beatles STILL 
don't own the rights to their recordings, for instance.  Michael Jackson 
owns them or some shit.  Anyway, I thought Meaty Big And Bouncy was in 
part a happy cry of release from the confining terms of that contract.  
But in the box-set liner notes Astley points out that he was not allowed 
to remix the Talmy stuff?  Details anyone?

I bring this up primarily because this weekend I finally bit a bullet and
bought an old MCA Price-Buster version of The Who Sings My Generation on
CD.  I taped the record from someone way back in high school--the early
eighties for me, if you must know--but lost the tape.  I didn't re-buy it
on CD becuase, for awhile, I wasn't re-buying any of The Who stuff on CD. 
I had most of the albums, those old CDs looked cheap and
uninteresting--and what was with that green artwork on the back?--and I
thought, for awhile anyway, that I was kind of done with The Who.  But I
bought the box set awhile ago to fill in those gaps and rediscovered The
Who anew, and I must say, I've never been as big a fan as I am now.  It's
not just the new re-mixes: it's also all the new material!  So far MCA has
released something like three albums worth of (for me, anyway) new stuff,
and for someone who only knew and loved The Who from the old domestic
albums, this is like having them around all over again!  Anyway, listening
to My Generation this weekend I was reminded by how seminal this record
really is.  It is not too much of an overstatement to say that 90% of what
we're hearing on alternative radio these days finds its roots right here. 
A standard enough statement, I realize--lots of people have said this--but
one that needs to be said again.  The kids listening to Green Day and
Nirvana and Live and Pearl Jam and Oasis only know The Who from their
Seventies incarnation; they probably have no idea that The Who were
hitting it this hard in 1965.  My younger brother, for instance, who has
an encyclopedic knowledge about hard-core and punk and alternative music
from the Sex Pistols on had no idea The Who were hitting it this hard in
1965.  I played My Generation for him this weekend and his jaw dropped. 
He said he was going to have to rethink his pop history, completely. 
Nineteen sixty-five used to mean "Help!" and "Nineteenth Nervous
Breakdown" to him: he never could have imagined anyone was doing "The
Good's Gone" back then, a song Oasis has rewritten about, what? five times
already. 

Marshall