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[Fwd: GROPERS GAZETTE. issue 1]

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          gropers gazette
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                              daily sale: 140                                                 issue 1   1977
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                       TOWNSHEND/LANE
                        Sing The Almost Middle-Aged Blues

That Peter Townshend should pick the quiet setting of an unassuming, one-shot collaborative album with Ronnie Lane in which to work out some highly personal and private thoughts about his own life is probably the most interesting thing about Rough Mix. This record has the feel of Mahoney's Last Stand, the soundtrack LP which Lane and Ron Wood worked up on some back porch a while back - plenty of acoustic guitars, banjos and dobro.
Its so meek and humble that it almost belies the character of Townshend, at least the one most of us know from his work with the Who. Yet Townshend is undeniably one of the most complex individuals in the rock world and, other than a small collection of songs from over the years ("Sunrise," "The Song Is Over" and his one solo LP), we really haven't seen that much of Peter Townshend as mastermind/mentor of the Who.
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*TOWNSHEND DID                             THE ONLY CLEAR CUT
*NOT DIE BEFORE                             ROCKERS HERE ARE LANE'S
*HE GOT OLD.....                                 "CATMELODY'
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And so Rough Mix is a rather startling album because, as a writer who most of the time hides himself behind narratives, allegories and personas, one is totally unprepared for the nakedness which Townshend shows here. I hesitate to call the rock album a rock album, because though there are certainly rock elements abounding (if only for the backgrounds of both Townshend and former Face Lane), they are mostly atmospheric. The only clear cut rockers here are Lane's Faces-styled "Catmelody" and the title track, an instrumental featuring Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

Most of Lane's songs are ballads, a bit country flavored ("Annie," with its rustic violin) and folksy ("Nowhere To Run" sounds like a Dylan song - a good Dylan song, too). As for Pete ( the dropping of the "r" seems significant here, for Townshend has not died before he got a bit old), his contributions here amount to some of the best songs he's written since - well, in retrospect I'd have to go back to The Who Sell Out as far as songs that hit the heart rather than the gut.

Townshend is looking back here, not at the Who, as in Quadrophenia disaster, but at himself, and the closest one feels between the singer and the song on his compositions here is truly affecting. "Heart To Hang Onto" is a haunting track about loneliness, with Lane singing the versus and Townshend the choruses. Each verse tells of someone who's defending himself against the world through different means. There's a drunkard, a fat women and finally, in the last verse, a guitarist who finds that "his whole life is just another try." Townshend's voice almost cracks on the last chorus, as he sings "Give me a heart to hang onto/give me a suit that's tailored true/Give me a heart to hang onto."

There are key lines everywhere that remain: "They saw the Messiah, but I missed him again/That brings my score up to a hundred and ten, from "Keep Me Turning", "I wanna be either old or young/Don't like where I've ended up or where I've come from," from the half smiling half sad "Misunderstood." On "My Baby Gives It Away," Townshend comes into Ray Davies territory, and more noticeable so on "Street In The City," more a show tune than a regular pop song. Performed with only Townshend's acoustic guitar and string section. Townshend sings of watching the world through the window (Waterloo Sunset revisited), but the view is one in which the protagonist wishes that a man on a ledge was an attempted suicide rather than a window washer (I'm gonna...pray for him to fall").

Its interesting that Townshend alienation, as expressed on Rough Mix, is no longer the alienation of the young but the alienation of the near middle-ages. Being older and wiser, it seems, is just as confusing as being younger and more reckless. Whether Townshend will ever work out his jigsaw puzzle is as unknown as exactly why these songs wound up on this record. Nevertheless, Rough Mix is a rather softly intense album, and certainly one of this years best.

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taken from the dec 1977 issue of "CREEM".
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                                                                    MICK TAYLOR
 
 

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