My Generation

Having just played the Monterey Pop Festival where Jimi Hendrix lit his guitar on fire, the reigning prop-masters of British rock were suddenly upstaged. Sure they’d been smashing guitars and drum kits on stage for years — but how do you beat a guy lighting your guitar on fire?

Leave it to Moonie.

This show was all kinds of trouble. To skip to the Loon, they figured if Jimi was gonna burn his guitar, they were gonna blow up their instruments. That’ll show who’s boss. During the afternoon rehearsal, the stage explosion at the end of "My Generation" wasn’t big enough, so the props dept. increased the charge. They didn’t realize they had the Hunter S. Thompson of drums on hand, who, at the first smell of gunpowder, sniffed out extra charges and doubled it up again.

Ka-BOOM! Pete goes deaf, and the word goes out — never book The Who on TV again!  But it was a spectacle that only needed to happen once.  

Although everyone's rather blinded (or deafened) by The Big Bang of the show, there were all sorts of outrageous other things happening around it:

First of all, they opened with "I Can For See For Miles," where the hip-leaning network show used all the video effects they had to create a psychedelic visual trip for the 18—24 audience at home.  Which also helped mask the fact the band were lip-synching — as they also were for the historic "My Generation."

After "Miles," Tommy Smothers comes out (the beginning of this clip), and unknown to the members of the band, his shtick was this simple or "slow" guy — sort of an early Forrest Gump, an everyman who doesn’t quite “get” the world around him, but always comes through with the quirky pithy eternal truth.  He and his brother would bicker as Tom strummed an acoustic guitar and Dick as the straight-man plucked a large upright bass — Tom always delivering the final punchline.

As good an improv comic as Tommy was, these were two different cultures clashing on stage. To this day there’s still distinctly different American and British comedy that often works only in its homeland. That was the pre-global ocean between these two giant forces in a half-rehearsed routine that starts off bad and gets worse.  It’s a classic clash.  And pretty much anyone's gonna lose going up against Keith Moon.

Then there’s the ending.  If you pause it at 4:32, you can see where they were positioned at impact:  John and Roger away from the exploding kit, but Keith's still on top of it and Pete's still right in front smashing his guitar.  Moonie gets cymbal shrapnel in his arm, and Pete goes totally deaf for 20 seconds, and maybe longer.  You can’t even see him after it goes off until he stumbles out of the smoke with his hair smoldering.  

Pete scratches around deafly and then proceeds to smash a stunned Tommy Smothers’ guitar. And after The Who have destroyed everything, Tommy delivers the perfect poetic comedic summation line.

Aaaand . . . scene.

One of the classic RockPeaks in the history of television.

— Brian Hassett