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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It is the summer of 1967. \u00a0\u00a0Herman\u2019s Hermits and The Who are touring the United States. \u00a0Which band is the opener and which is the headliner? \u00a0This is a trick question because technically, the opening band was The Blues Magoos with The Who second on the bill and Peter Noones\u2019 lightweight pop band Herman\u2019s Hermits being the main attraction. \u00a0You read that right: \u00a0The Who were warming up the audience of screaming, mostly teen girls who came out to see the Hermits perform their hits.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I am on the road visiting the West Coast Bureau in Eugene, OR this week so an article about touring seemed be a good match with my own little tour. \u00a0I was lucky enough to make it in and out of Chicago between major storms on the way to Oregon. \u00a0The airport shut down twice before we departed west and for a longer stretch after we were somewhere over Nebraska. \u00a0The eastern half of the trip was over cloud covered terrain so I was able to spend a couple of hours reading up about the fabled Who\/Hermit tour that spawned many of the iconic \u2018terrible Who\u2019 stories that survive to this day. \u00a0The Hermits may have been marketed as the squeaky clean, anti-Stones, but they were in the thick of some of The Who\u2019s notorious adventures.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Why on Earth were The Who even touring with Herman\u2019s Hermits to begin with? \u00a0Simply put, HH were a bigger draw at a time when The Who weren\u2019t getting much traction in their career. \u00a0By this time, the band had broken up twice due to interband tensions between the pill popping trio of drummer Keith Moon, bassist John Entwistle, and guitarist\/creative director Pete Townshend and their drug-free lead singer Roger Daltrey. \u00a0Daltrey was fired the first time in 1965 for punching out a drug addled Moon backstage in Denmark. \u00a0After his return, they spent an unsettled year that was capped off when Daltrey left on his own with the intention of forming a soul group. \u00a0He again returned to the band whose norm could best be described as a \u2018dysfunctional family\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Herman\u2019s Hermits were the pop band even your mother could love, but The Who were touring America with the intention \u201cto leave a wound\u201d. \u00a0Herman warbled <\/span>Mrs. Brown You\u2019ve Got a Lovely Daughter <\/span><\/i>\u00a0and that was just what his fans wanted to hear, but how did they filter out the guitar smashing finale of <\/span>My Generation<\/span><\/i> that came before it every night? \u00a0While Noone and Company charmed their way to the top of the charts singing <\/span>I\u2019m Henry The Eighth, I Am<\/span><\/i>, Townshend was telling much less frilly tales with songs like <\/span>A Quick One While He\u2019s Away <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Pictures of Lilly. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Herman\u2019s Hermits were laying the foundation for a later career on the oldies circuit (which is where one can find the still impossibly cute Noone today), but Townshend and The Who were digging much deeper as they invented the art of what is now commonly called \u201cThe Rock Opera\u201d. \u00a0On the surface, these bands may not have been compatible, but the members of both had similar backgrounds. \u00a0<\/span>Classic Rock Magazine <\/span><\/i>describes them all as, \u201cPost-war, ration-book kids, hell-bent on enjoying themselves in a country that until recently they had only seen on T.V..\u201d \u00a0The Hermit\u2019s manager Harvey Lisberg was all of 27 years old and handed the responsibility of being \u2018the adult and common sense\u2019 on the tour but he summed it up quite nicely when he said, \u201cThey were all English, they were all working class and they were all drunk in the middle of nowhere.\u201d \u00a0He probably should have added \u201cand we had Keith Moon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The guitar smashing became Townshend\u2019s calling card when they won a coin flip at the Monterey Pop Festival in June. \u00a0Winning meant they did not have to follow Jimi Hendrix, but they certainly wanted to raise the bar a bit going on before him. \u00a0What the crowd didn\u2019t know was Townshend knocked his guitar around enough to separate the body from the neck and each night, his roady glued it back together for the next show. \u00a0Hendrix responded by sacrificing his Stratocaster with a lighter fluid induced blaze. \u00a0A lot of great musical moments came out of Monterey, but the most enduring images are still Townshend smashing and Hendrix burning (their) guitars. \u00a0The Who found a way to shock and fascinate their audience at the same time so they came into the ten week tour with The Hermits looking to top themselves every night.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Keith Moon was not the only prankster in the crowd, but he certainly wasn\u2019t going to let anyone else out prank him. \u00a0Five days into the tour, Moon put a piranha (or two or three depending on whose account one believes) in his hotel bathtub and asked room service to deliver a raw steak to his room. \u00a0Whether the water was too warm or the steak was too tough matters little as something killed the fish and Moonie left it gift wrapped in toilet paper for the cleaning lady. \u00a0Some of the band boys started a ritual of jumping from their balconies into the hotel pool. \u00a0Multi-storied buildings dictated that shoes be worn so no feet would be damaged. \u00a0At one particular establishment, the Hermits were placing bets on who could jump from the highest balcony. \u00a0Moon bested them all in riding boots, a top hat and cape as he rocketed past them all from the roof. \u00a0Moon may have picked up the headlines, but he had to keep ahead of his younger cohorts who were egging him on.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the tour hit the southern United States, they were shocked by the lingering Jim Crow politics they encountered. \u00a0They all loved black music but found in some areas, \u2018long haired Limeys\u2019 were treated with the same contempt that the non-whites were still subjected to. \u00a0Moon countered by using his newly discovered distraction (cherry bombs) to blow up anything that he thought might need to be blown up. \u00a0Having stocked up on over 500 of the cartoonish looking contraptions, he blew holes in chairs and suitcases before he and Entwistle decided to see what would happen if one got flushed down a toilet. \u00a0The duo were quite surprised when the little devil bobbed back to the surface with the fuse still burning after they tried to flush it. \u00a0Townshend reported, \u201cThere was no toilet (after the explosion), just a sort of S-bend coming out of the floor.\u201d \u00a0Lisberg was handed the $1000 bill as tour promoter: \u00a0\u201cWe weren\u2019t going to pay. \u00a0I tried to have a talk with Keith and tell him not to do it again, but he was totally wacko.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That any of them survived scooting about the country in an aging DC-9 is also somewhat of a miracle. \u00a0Taxing down a runway in Florida after one show, they were chased down by a pickup truck driven by an enraged father whose daughter had spent time with the band after the show. \u00a0Luckily for them, he found it hard to hit a moving airplane with a double barrelled shotgun from a moving vehicle. \u00a0They left Providence Rhode Island in the same plane and watched in horror as oil splattered the side windows and flames shot out of the engine. \u00a0Having made an emergency landing to have the fire extinguished in Memphis, The Who and The Hermits killed time in the bar while repairs were made. \u00a0Townshend, however, spent his time composing the song <\/span>Glow Girl <\/span><\/i>(<\/span>\u2018The wing of the airplane has just caught on fire \/ I say without reservation we ain\u2019t getting no higher. . .\u2019<\/span><\/i>). \u00a0With Moon and Entwistle spending their time drinking and Daltrey entertaining the groupies, Townshend occupied more and more of his time looking for the idea that could match The Beatles\u2019 <\/span>Sgt. Pepper.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The crown jewel of the traveling circus came the night of Keith Moon\u2019s twenty first birthday. \u00a0Various conflicting versions of this end of show birthday bash have been related but there are a few undeniable facts: \u00a0Moon indeed required an emergency trip to the dentist after knocking out one of his front teeth, a car did end up in the hotel swimming pool, and The Who were banned from the Holiday Inn chain for life. \u00a0While the event has become a bit of \u2018music biz folklore\u2019, Townshend remembers, \u201cThis day was unpleasant for me, though it has been turned into an apocryphal joke by everyone involved.\u201d \u00a0This may be true, but after the final show in Honolulu in September, The Who capped their American journey with an appearance on <\/span>The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour<\/span><\/i> before returning to England. \u00a0To say they ended their American adventure with a bang would be an understatement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Moon was somewhat unhappy that the stagehands\u2019 union rules would not let him load the prop cannon he planned to set off at the end of their mimed set. \u00a0When no one was looking, he added a little extra charge to the cannon. \u00a0When he set it off during the set ending equipment smash up, there was a thunderous explosion that shook the studio. \u00a0The survivors can be seen holding their ears and staggering about the stage as the cameras wobbled. \u00a0Being closest to the blast, Townshend had the best vantage point to observe the carnage: \u201dMy hair caught on fire and my hearing was never the same again.\u201d The unexpected consequence of this near disaster on American T.V. was seeing <\/span>I Can See for Miles<\/span><\/i> climb into the top 10 of the American record charts after it had bombed (sorry) in England.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Who were on the cusp of becoming one of the biggest acts in the world. \u00a0Herman\u2019s Hermits found their career going in the other direction and The Blues Magoos headed for the one hit wonder charts. \u00a0One must ask how a tour like this could have happened in the first place. \u00a0With that said, I am reminded that Jimi Hendrix once toured as the opening act for another \u2018cute\u2019 band: \u00a0the Monkees! \u00a0That will have to be another story for another day!<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video: \u00a0The music is mimed, the explosion is not! \u00a0Canon or cherry bombs? \u00a0You decide!