'Lambert And Stamp'

Managing The Mighty 'Oo

If you've ever wondered what Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were doing when they were running their 16mm cameras on The Who in the 1960s, this is the documentary that gives you that footage. It's a rockumentary that looks back in longing towards the early days of The Who, and... well, 1965 sure looks like a long way back.



What's Good About It

There's some footage that definitely hasn't been seen before as well as really sociographic stuff of the Swinging 60s London. Lots of interesting footage of the audience as well as street scenes. The interviews with Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey add a good deal of nuance to the story, telling it from their point of view. It does go into grea detail about Chris Stamp, the surviving member of the managing duo while explaining the bizarre motive behind the big search that took them to discovering The Who.

The interviews with people like Richard Barnes and Irish Jack also adds greatly to the narrative as they recall the context in which decisions and plans were being made. The Who through the eyes of Lambert and Stamp's camera look incredibly fresh and explains the beautifully documented rise of the band which was shown to us in 'The Kids Are Alright'. In some ays it's more of a film's film about The Who.

Throughout it all, Chris Stamp tells most of the telling moments of his side of the story, which is a rambling funny yarn.

What's Bad About It

Unfortunately it's really not great camera work for the old footage. It's strictly for fans and aficionados. I can't imagine this film makes much sense if you already didn't know a whole lot about The Who.

What's Interesting About It

Lots, really. In most part, it's a fitting epitaph to an era where music could communicate big ideas and things really mattered in the world of rock music. It's a long lost world since then, so getting a whiff  of the heady days of rock music's ascension is pretty cool.

Not only is it unlikely that music will ever matter so much again, it is also unlikely that cultural projects should be formed in such a cauldron of ideas and willing participation and cooperation from unlikely people.

The Lamberts

The documentary only manages to scratch the surface, but there is a book on the three generation of Lamberts out there which includes the chronicle the Lambert family and how third generation Kit managed to launch The Who and drown in drugs. George Lambert was the Australian painter whose works hangs in the NGA as well as the War Memorial. Constance Lambert, the father of Kit was a conductor of note, while Kit became this kind of degenerate aristocrat right out of Brideshead Revisited. Kit Lambert was very much like Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder and any number of upper class misfits Evely Waugh portrayed so well in his work.

The great cultural heritage of the upper class England filters down to The Who through Kit Lambert, and it is via his own sense of egalitarian devil-may-care attitude that puts the classical music and its forms through the back door into The Who's music. If you go digging into The Who's early catalogue, you see shades of baroque and classical composition scattered through songs as diverse as 'So Sad About Us', 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'A Quick One While He's Away', with chord
substitutions and suspensions of 2nd and 4th.

This stuff wasn't readily available without recorded music, but also a curator of decent understanding such as Kit Lambert who grew up living and breathing this material. It would be a shame if in future generations, the only understanding of The Who is reductionist image of London yobbos smashing their instruments on stage. There was a lot more to it, and most thankfully to Kit Lambert who made sure they were there.

The Stamp Brothers

In other tellings of the rise of The Who, it's never really discussed how much Terence Stamp floated Chris Stamp to be able to do his thing. It's singularly cool that the guy we know from playing the Limey and General Zod had a hand in launching The Who on an unsuspecting world.

There is also the delightful story of how Terence Stamp got his brother to get a job in the showbiz, which involves a scary photo of a young gang member Chris Stamp standing with Ronnie Kray of the Kray twins infamy. The fabric of London of the 1960s peeks right through the combination of characters, with the Kray Twins as underworld bosses on the one hand, with Terence Stamp the star actor, his brother Chris the budding impresario, Kit Lambert as the upper class toff who hacked the class system to get his way, and the amazing rock music being played.
it's a fascinating view.

Chris Stamp's best moment in the film is when he recalls the denouement of the partnership and management of The Who, which was negotiated the day after Keith Moon was buried. The lawyers for The Who argued Lambert and Stamp were mismanaging The Who. Stamp recalls he indicated to the surrounding location, Shepparton Studios, saying, "you guys now own Shepparton Studios. You tell me this is mismanagement?"

Stamp proves to be the better man by taking the separation on the chin. It's fascinating seeing how the men have mended their differences since.

Pete Townshend's Ennui

I was - for a very long time - big Pete Townshend fan. I probably still am a fan of his music, but I got put off by his autobiography and biography which appeared a few years ago. What got me really browned off was the fact that he spent most of his career trying to divest himself from The Who. If you're a fan, it's hard to take the kind of carping that Townshend unleashes in the two biographies. How can you hate the thing that takes you to the top? How can somebody be so miserable being so successful doing what people love? Pete Townshend essentially claims that he just wanted to be a jazz guitarist like Barney Kessel and not the windmilling rock icon he became. Yes, it strains credulity, but that is where he left us after the two biographies appeared.

All the same, there are a few telling moments in this film, where he explains The Who was a construct to which he was a party, but what the audience thought they saw as the band was actually a mirror. The things the audience might see and hear in the music is not him, it is what he thinks of us, and so we have never glimpsed the man in the music or the myth. Besides which, all this belies the origins of 'Quadrophenia', which relied on the identity of the band members being incorporated into the narrative.

Of course the upside is that Pete Townshend claims the reason he could never walk away from The Who was because he was working with geniuses in John Entwistle and Keith Moon. It's a laudatory admission he doesn't have to make.

Roger Daltrey Was The Boss

Another thing that becomes clear in the history of The Who is that Daltrey was the inadvertent spokesperson for the band because of many complicating factors. Townshend remained the spokesperson for te work, but Daltrey had the job of representing the band to the management. As the years pile on, and as The Who go on their slow farewell with their "Who Turns 50" campaign, it is becoming more evident how Roger Daltrey kept the band going when others would have walked away, and how it came down to him to take a sober stocktake of the band's business fortunes.

The conversation that takes pace between Townshend and Daltrey reveals a lot of nuanced reconciliation between the men. Townshend acknowledges Daltrey got the short end of the stick when it came to dealing with Lambert and Stamp. It leaves the lingering impression that there was a lot more to Roger Daltrey than just the singer and frontman. Now that Townshend has retreated from his position as the band' artistic light, it has fallen to Daltrey to keep the operation going.

It's a touching moment when the two men discuss Keith Moon. They both agree there was something deeply wrong with Moon. Townshend admits that he ignored that possibility while it was Roger who constantly tried to make things better for Keith who was a manic depressive. Pete admits that Roger was the one who had the compassion Pete so often talked about.

"Hope I Die Before I Get Old"

I've been wondering about Pete Townshend's claim that it wasn't about him, it was about us the audience. It seems rather unlikely. I think it really coms down to Pete's inability to live up to his most famous line, "Hope I die before I get old" from 'My Generation'. It's a great line, but the men who really did live to the line were Keith Moon and Kit Lambert. He has written about the anguish of that moment of Lambert's passing in the song 'Somebody Saved Me', which leads me to believe that he has indeed struggled with the legacy of the line.

There's a lot of self-flagellation in Pete Townshend's post-Who work which also betray his sense of struggling with something. When it really gets down to it, I think Pete Townshend formulated the notion that it wasn't about him, it was about the audience in order not to implicate himself in the line. After all, if the line represented the audience and not him, then it is easier for him to explain just why he didn't die before he got old.

It's also ironic seeing this film after the death of David Bowie, who as a young person was a Mod, and followed The Who. That David Bowie should pass before Pete Townshend would surely weigh upon his mind.