Pete Diary 6/1

[L. Bird]

http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?id=290&zone=diary

1 June 2006
Who Rehearsals


1225 am. First day of Who rehearsal – I’m on my way in my car, and writing 
this as I travel.

I am going to start with a poor me. I’m shattered. I’ve had two major 
difficulties to face while writing and recording the album. First is the 
fact that Nick Goderson, my best buddy and the managing director of my 
company, has been treated for a very tough cancer condition since January, 
and I’ve had to learn to help look after my own financial direction while 
he’s away. I’m not very good at it. We were all hoping he’d be back before 
the tour – he especially - but it is not to be. He needs more time to 
recover.

He is getting well slowly. Nick is truly loved in our little team at Eelpie, 
and it has been heartbreaking for us to feel so helpless to do anything but 
love him. That’s probably enough, but it doesn’t always feel that way. 
Everyone today has someone who has been through chemo or radiotherapy – you 
all know how it is. We are all rooting for him, but hope he can now get some 
rest and recuperation that is so needed.

The other shock was Matt Kent’s resignation. This tour is the most 
web-intensive we have ever embarked on, and Matt’s role was central to the 
provision of the portals we need to make it work. Luckily everyone has 
rallied around me to help drive this forward, especially the people at 
StreamingTank who are providing the bandwidth.

So I move into rehearsals a little more frayed than I would like.

9:00 pm. Home now after the rehearsals. It all went very well, Zak, Simon, 
Rabbit and Pino playing up a storm and Roger and I chasing as fast we could. 
We are knocking the old Who show from the 2004 tour into shape for our first 
outing which is at Knebworth for Teenage Cancer. This is next week. Then we 
go back into rehearsal to learn the Mini-Opera (that Zak hasn’t even heard 
yet) and maybe a few ‘rarities’ to spice up the summer shows.

Brian Beaver and Hamish Mackintosh came in their new roles as web-content 
providers. Brian made the videos. Hamish took some pix that will appear 
shortly. More soon.


bray_who 060601_1.7mb_low (QuickTime movie: 1.69MB)
You will need the Quicktime player to view this clip.
Download it here.

bray_who 060601_11mb_med (QuickTime movie: 10.99MB)
You will need the Quicktime player to view this clip.
Download it here.