Nine years after The Beatles were laid to rest in a boardroom with Allen Klein present, another pioneering British rock ‘n’ roll band found itself befuddled by this divisive businessman. This time, in 1978, The Who were the unlucky souls forced to see the financial, corporate side of being in a band. On a positive note, the painful experience would go on to inspire their hit single, “Who Are You”. But they certainly had to jump through some hoops to get that idea.
For guitarist Pete Townshend, this meant spending 12 hours in a conference with his former manager, Chris Stamp, and Klein, in an attempt to sort out his royalty earnings. Townshend left the arduous meeting with a check and little else. Well, except for the distinct feeling that he had just been cheated out of what was rightfully his.
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“I said to Chris Stamp, ‘I don’t f***in’ believe all that,’” Townshend later recalled, per The Who On The Who: Interviews and Encounters. “I don’t believe that after all these years in the rock business that I’ve sat through all that s*** and gone through all that for six months just to get a check…I felt like a piece of s***.”
The Who’s Hit “Who Are You” Was Partially Inspired by This Businessman
Once Pete Townshend was free from his laborious meeting with Allen Klein, his next stop was the bottle. The Who guitarist found his way to the Speakeasy, where John Otway and Wild Willie Barrett were performing. Two members of The Sex Pistols were also there. Townshend immediately began talking—or, perhaps more accurately, confronting them.
Townshend’s tirade was half “old man yells about the changing world” and half “who the f*** are you,” the latter of which he incredulously yelled at Paul Cook, drummer for The Sex Pistols. He later said he thought Cook was Johnny Rotten. “I wasn’t even that drunk,” Townshend wrote in his memoir, Who I Am. “Just angry about our submission to Klein. I should have gone home.”
Of course, if he had, it might have ruined the picture-perfect rock ‘n’ roll end to the story. In the hours that followed Townshend’s nightclub encounter, he passed out in a Soho doorway. A police officer found him the next morning. The officer woke the musician by name and told him, “If you can get up and just walk away, as a special treat, you can sleep in your own bed today.”
Townshend got up, brushed himself off, and went on to write “Who Are You” later that day. The lead single from their album of the same name broke into the Top 20 in the U.S. and U.K. It remains one of the band’s most ubiquitous songs today.
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