Post by Papillon on Jul 28, 2004 18:55:02 GMT
Interesting article in the Australian:
Who the hell are you?
The Who land in Australia today despite vowing in 1968 never to return after being held by police in Melbourne for five hours. Glenn A.Baker looks back at the horror flight that led to the band's siege
July 27, 2004
LEGENDARY tour manager for four decades, Ron Blackmore, remembered every second of what unfolded on the last day of the Who's Australian tour in January 1968, as the party in his care boarded a 7am Sunday flight from Adelaide via Melbourne to Sydney, where they were supposed to connect to a Christchurch flight.
Just 3 1/2 years earlier Australia had swooned shamelessly over the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo were lovable moptops whose every indulgence or indiscretion was complicitly overlooked by a breathless nation. But the likes of Pete Townshend and Keith Moon were seen as little better than hoodlums.
In typical tour tradition the last night was party night and being volatile bands, the Who and their support, the Small Faces and Paul Jones, partied all night, Blackmore once told me. "I'll never know how we did it but we got all the performers out of bed at five and then had them at the airport by 6 o'clock. As you could imagine, everyone was dead on their feet. Most of them hadn't been to bed, none of them had had a shower. It was summer and they were all wearing singlets. Nobody in Australia had ever seen anything like those singlets with names printed on them.
"By the time I rounded them up at the airport we were last on the plane. The last one on was Paul Jones. He wasn't the party type and hadn't been up all night so he bounded on board as fresh as a bloody daisy. He had done himself up all ready for the press in New Zealand. He really kept up an image -- open neck silky shirt with a cravat, fancy shoes, all spick'n'span."
The plane took off and Blackmore, roughly the same age as the band members, had his head in a newspaper when a flight attendant demanded angrily: "Are you the leader of this bloody mob?" He quickly scanned the rows, ascertained that his charges were largely out cold and admitted he was. "Well I've had them," she said. "We've only been in the air five minutes and they want beer!" He looked around again and spotted three, one being the Who's loony drummer Moon, going "Yeah, beer".
"I won't serve them beer until I've served everybody teas," she insisted. Blackmore thought that fair enough so he stood up, told them all the score and received the general response "Terrific. We'll have a cup of tea then." He then returned to his paper.
The urbane Oxford-educated Jones, the former lead singer of the group Manfred Mann, who had sung their global hit Do Wah Diddy Diddy and had previously toured Australia with them, picks up the tale. "It was a scene of people asleep, reading newspapers or, in the case of Kenney Jones of the Small Faces, playing gently with a baby who was leaning over the seat in front of him. I had been dying for coffee and I saw that the hostess had begun serving from the front of the plane. She came to the four or five rows that our party occupied and stopped serving coffee and then resumed serving it behind us. After I had recovered from the surprise I pressed my call button, twisted around and said over my shoulder, 'Could I have some coffee please? And she said 'You'll get coffee when I'm ready'. I thought that was astonishing so I replied, 'actually no, I'll have some coffee now please', then she said, 'I've never been spoken to in this way in all my life!' So I said, 'My goodness, you've led a sheltered life' and she stormed off."
Blackmore heard her say "I was told not to serve you" so he walked to the servery area and inquired "Excuse me, who's the hostess in charge?" Innocent but obviously inflammatory words. "This bird with her back to me spun around in tears, totally distraught, and she started screaming 'I am!'. I said to her 'Look, I don't understand. I don't know what we've done. I haven't seen anybody do anything wrong, so what's the problem?' But she kept on screaming, 'I'm going to see the captain, I'm going to have you arrested!' 'Fine, but what's the problem, what have we done?' 'You know what you've done!'
"She steamed off to the captain so I turned to the other girls and said 'Look, I really don't know what's upset her, if I knew I'd be down there yelling at them, but honestly, somebody had better give them some tea and coffee or they're gonna pull this plane to pieces. Remember, that's what you told them -- don't make a noise for beer, wait for the tea -- and they've sat there patiently, haven't done a thing and you walked right past them'. She said: 'You're right, you're dead right, we'll serve them straight away but you must remember, we've got to take our instructions from her.' I said 'Look, she's in no fit state to give any instructions, so you're on your own. They're all Poms, bring 'em all tea, don't even ask them, just give it to 'em.'
"They started pouring the tea and I was sitting in my seat totally confused but thinking that I'd sorted it all out. Then I looked up to see the captain coming down the aisle checking off the seat numbers. He walked up, looked at me and said: 'Are you Blackmore? I'm the captain.' I said 'How do you do, sir?' He didn't waste any time being polite. 'I've just come here to inform you that on arrival in Melbourne I have arranged for the Commonwealth Police to meet you and you will all be taken into custody.' 'What have we done?' 'I'm not prepared to discuss it; I have one of my girls in the cockpit hysterical.' Then he started to march back down the aisle. I just couldn't believe it was happening, I was spluttering 'Whaa but why ... who ... how ... uh ... uh, wh ... wh ... what ya talking about?!', then one of the Who's roadies jumped up and said: 'Hey don't you want to hear our side of it?' The captain turned his head, said 'I'm not interested' and kept walking. So that was it, these guys started yelling 'You ...', y'know."
As the aircraft taxied at the old Essendon Airport in Melbourne, an increasingly apprehensive Blackmore sighted from his window what he estimated to be 40 Commonwealth Police on the tarmac. "One of them started up the stairs and I looked over at Pete Townshend, who was packing death.
"This guy in a suit was standing in the doorway just watching us and he looked right at Townshend and said, 'you're coming with me'. Pete asked him 'am I under arrest?' and the cop said he wasn't. 'Well I ain't going anywhere with you pal, cause the last pig that said come with me when I wasn't under arrest kicked the s**t out of me in Germany. So I'm not going anywhere with anybody unless I'm formally charged in front of witnesses and at this point I can't understand what you could possibly charge me with'.
"The policeman huffed a bit and said: 'Be it as it may, you will all have to get off this plane and you will go into the VIP lounge where you will be under close surveillance. You will not be allowed to ring or contact anybody, you will not be able to leave the room, and you will not be continuing on this flight."'
Airport manager Allan Trail had been rung at home about the "massive problem" and dashed in wearing gardening shorts. He knew Blackmore and persuaded police to let him use a phone, though not an Ansett one. The Commonwealth Police let him out of the room on the condition that he would not speak to the waiting media. As he walked past a row of phone booths outside the airport he overheard reporters talking to their editors. "Because nobody had told them anything they started making up stories, things like 'they're all under arrest, it seems they stripped naked and ran up and down the aisles' or 'they had a fist fight with a couple of passengers and three people have been taken to hospital' and on it went."
The flurry of calls began but being Sunday, everyone had gone fishing, or to the beach. Blackmore demanded to speak to airline owner Reg Ansett. "Oh no, it's Sunday, he's at home, can't get him ..." As a last resort Blackmore asked to speak to the captain again.
Blackmore apologised for whatever it was the bands were supposed to have done.
Blackmore recalls: "Then, I'll never forget this, I extended my hand and said 'Incidentally my name is Ron Blackmore'. He [the captain] put his hand behind his back, said 'I'm not going to touch you mister, you're s**t', turned to Trail and said, 'if they're on the plane it doesn't fly, that's all there is to it', then stormed off with Bawling Bertha [the flight attendant] in tow.
"When I got back, the Who and Small Faces wanted to tear the place apart. Stevie Marriott [Faces singer] was just lovely to control. He wanted to kick a wall down and I was holding him in the corner saying, 'shut up man, cool it'. There wasn't even a beer to calm him. Paul Jones was simply dumbfounded, he just didn't believe it was happening. He was running around warning the rowdy ones, 'no, no that's the worse thing to do'."
Who the hell are you?
The Who land in Australia today despite vowing in 1968 never to return after being held by police in Melbourne for five hours. Glenn A.Baker looks back at the horror flight that led to the band's siege
July 27, 2004
LEGENDARY tour manager for four decades, Ron Blackmore, remembered every second of what unfolded on the last day of the Who's Australian tour in January 1968, as the party in his care boarded a 7am Sunday flight from Adelaide via Melbourne to Sydney, where they were supposed to connect to a Christchurch flight.
Just 3 1/2 years earlier Australia had swooned shamelessly over the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo were lovable moptops whose every indulgence or indiscretion was complicitly overlooked by a breathless nation. But the likes of Pete Townshend and Keith Moon were seen as little better than hoodlums.
In typical tour tradition the last night was party night and being volatile bands, the Who and their support, the Small Faces and Paul Jones, partied all night, Blackmore once told me. "I'll never know how we did it but we got all the performers out of bed at five and then had them at the airport by 6 o'clock. As you could imagine, everyone was dead on their feet. Most of them hadn't been to bed, none of them had had a shower. It was summer and they were all wearing singlets. Nobody in Australia had ever seen anything like those singlets with names printed on them.
"By the time I rounded them up at the airport we were last on the plane. The last one on was Paul Jones. He wasn't the party type and hadn't been up all night so he bounded on board as fresh as a bloody daisy. He had done himself up all ready for the press in New Zealand. He really kept up an image -- open neck silky shirt with a cravat, fancy shoes, all spick'n'span."
The plane took off and Blackmore, roughly the same age as the band members, had his head in a newspaper when a flight attendant demanded angrily: "Are you the leader of this bloody mob?" He quickly scanned the rows, ascertained that his charges were largely out cold and admitted he was. "Well I've had them," she said. "We've only been in the air five minutes and they want beer!" He looked around again and spotted three, one being the Who's loony drummer Moon, going "Yeah, beer".
"I won't serve them beer until I've served everybody teas," she insisted. Blackmore thought that fair enough so he stood up, told them all the score and received the general response "Terrific. We'll have a cup of tea then." He then returned to his paper.
The urbane Oxford-educated Jones, the former lead singer of the group Manfred Mann, who had sung their global hit Do Wah Diddy Diddy and had previously toured Australia with them, picks up the tale. "It was a scene of people asleep, reading newspapers or, in the case of Kenney Jones of the Small Faces, playing gently with a baby who was leaning over the seat in front of him. I had been dying for coffee and I saw that the hostess had begun serving from the front of the plane. She came to the four or five rows that our party occupied and stopped serving coffee and then resumed serving it behind us. After I had recovered from the surprise I pressed my call button, twisted around and said over my shoulder, 'Could I have some coffee please? And she said 'You'll get coffee when I'm ready'. I thought that was astonishing so I replied, 'actually no, I'll have some coffee now please', then she said, 'I've never been spoken to in this way in all my life!' So I said, 'My goodness, you've led a sheltered life' and she stormed off."
Blackmore heard her say "I was told not to serve you" so he walked to the servery area and inquired "Excuse me, who's the hostess in charge?" Innocent but obviously inflammatory words. "This bird with her back to me spun around in tears, totally distraught, and she started screaming 'I am!'. I said to her 'Look, I don't understand. I don't know what we've done. I haven't seen anybody do anything wrong, so what's the problem?' But she kept on screaming, 'I'm going to see the captain, I'm going to have you arrested!' 'Fine, but what's the problem, what have we done?' 'You know what you've done!'
"She steamed off to the captain so I turned to the other girls and said 'Look, I really don't know what's upset her, if I knew I'd be down there yelling at them, but honestly, somebody had better give them some tea and coffee or they're gonna pull this plane to pieces. Remember, that's what you told them -- don't make a noise for beer, wait for the tea -- and they've sat there patiently, haven't done a thing and you walked right past them'. She said: 'You're right, you're dead right, we'll serve them straight away but you must remember, we've got to take our instructions from her.' I said 'Look, she's in no fit state to give any instructions, so you're on your own. They're all Poms, bring 'em all tea, don't even ask them, just give it to 'em.'
"They started pouring the tea and I was sitting in my seat totally confused but thinking that I'd sorted it all out. Then I looked up to see the captain coming down the aisle checking off the seat numbers. He walked up, looked at me and said: 'Are you Blackmore? I'm the captain.' I said 'How do you do, sir?' He didn't waste any time being polite. 'I've just come here to inform you that on arrival in Melbourne I have arranged for the Commonwealth Police to meet you and you will all be taken into custody.' 'What have we done?' 'I'm not prepared to discuss it; I have one of my girls in the cockpit hysterical.' Then he started to march back down the aisle. I just couldn't believe it was happening, I was spluttering 'Whaa but why ... who ... how ... uh ... uh, wh ... wh ... what ya talking about?!', then one of the Who's roadies jumped up and said: 'Hey don't you want to hear our side of it?' The captain turned his head, said 'I'm not interested' and kept walking. So that was it, these guys started yelling 'You ...', y'know."
As the aircraft taxied at the old Essendon Airport in Melbourne, an increasingly apprehensive Blackmore sighted from his window what he estimated to be 40 Commonwealth Police on the tarmac. "One of them started up the stairs and I looked over at Pete Townshend, who was packing death.
"This guy in a suit was standing in the doorway just watching us and he looked right at Townshend and said, 'you're coming with me'. Pete asked him 'am I under arrest?' and the cop said he wasn't. 'Well I ain't going anywhere with you pal, cause the last pig that said come with me when I wasn't under arrest kicked the s**t out of me in Germany. So I'm not going anywhere with anybody unless I'm formally charged in front of witnesses and at this point I can't understand what you could possibly charge me with'.
"The policeman huffed a bit and said: 'Be it as it may, you will all have to get off this plane and you will go into the VIP lounge where you will be under close surveillance. You will not be allowed to ring or contact anybody, you will not be able to leave the room, and you will not be continuing on this flight."'
Airport manager Allan Trail had been rung at home about the "massive problem" and dashed in wearing gardening shorts. He knew Blackmore and persuaded police to let him use a phone, though not an Ansett one. The Commonwealth Police let him out of the room on the condition that he would not speak to the waiting media. As he walked past a row of phone booths outside the airport he overheard reporters talking to their editors. "Because nobody had told them anything they started making up stories, things like 'they're all under arrest, it seems they stripped naked and ran up and down the aisles' or 'they had a fist fight with a couple of passengers and three people have been taken to hospital' and on it went."
The flurry of calls began but being Sunday, everyone had gone fishing, or to the beach. Blackmore demanded to speak to airline owner Reg Ansett. "Oh no, it's Sunday, he's at home, can't get him ..." As a last resort Blackmore asked to speak to the captain again.
Blackmore apologised for whatever it was the bands were supposed to have done.
Blackmore recalls: "Then, I'll never forget this, I extended my hand and said 'Incidentally my name is Ron Blackmore'. He [the captain] put his hand behind his back, said 'I'm not going to touch you mister, you're s**t', turned to Trail and said, 'if they're on the plane it doesn't fly, that's all there is to it', then stormed off with Bawling Bertha [the flight attendant] in tow.
"When I got back, the Who and Small Faces wanted to tear the place apart. Stevie Marriott [Faces singer] was just lovely to control. He wanted to kick a wall down and I was holding him in the corner saying, 'shut up man, cool it'. There wasn't even a beer to calm him. Paul Jones was simply dumbfounded, he just didn't believe it was happening. He was running around warning the rowdy ones, 'no, no that's the worse thing to do'."
