Scoop (album)

Scoop
Compilation album by Pete Townshend
Released	April 1983
Recorded	1965-1982
Genre	Rock
Length	74:48
Label	Atco (US)
Producer	Helen Wilkins (as "Spike")
Pete Townshend chronology
All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982) Scoop (1983) White City: A Novel (1985)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Rolling Stone	[2]

Scoop is a compilation album by Pete Townshend containing 25 demos of various released and unreleased songs by The Who, as well as demos of entirely new material. The album has liner notes written by Townshend.^[3]

History

The album was the first in a series of three Scoop collections: Another Scoop was released in 1987 and Scoop 3 in 2001. All three albums were 2-disc sets, and in 2002 a pared-down compilation of them all was released as Scooped. Remastered versions of the original albums were released in 2006.

Album liner notes by Pete Townshend

For many years it has only been the people close to me who have heard the music I made for myself or by myself. I have always called these recordings 'demos.' Demos they have been whether made for my amusement, for film sound tracks, for experimentation purposes or to submit material to The Who. (I have rarely written for anyone else).

When I have come up against any kind of problem in the past, I have always dealt with it through music, either through writing a song or literally recording the problem away therapeutically. I have recorded alone at home or more recently in my own or other pro-studios for pleasure, for catharthism, for solitude, for fulfillment and most of all for fun. For many years, recording was my one and only hobby. I didn't get into sailing until a few years ago; that was preceded by a brief and fulfilling sortie into 35mm still photography, until my cameras were stolen. I then mucked around with 16mm film production, ran spiritual centres for Meher Baba aficionados, rowed a skiff, then recently set my heart on getting totally wasted by over-drinking, over-doing night clubs and over-doing everything.

Recording is a hobby once again. On the road with The Who, as I write this in San Francisco [October, 1982], I carry a TEAC portastudio for diversion. Since I bought it in August (1982), I have recorded nearly forty pieces of music, all without words. Making demos is where I find peace and sometimes even a feeling of prayer. Right now, words are still something I am newly grappling with on a day to day basis, trying hard not to let too much of myself get in the way. I am trying to isolate my music and lyric writing, and once again recording becomes both a hobby and a creative outlet.

In the past, people have stolen, copied, and bootlegged a few of the tapes I have made at home. Those enthusiasts of Who music and the part I played in it will probably welcome this record to add to their stockpile of obsessive memorabilia. But the best thing about this collection to me, is that compiled as it is by someone who is in no way a Who fanatic, it emerges as being a fine example of how home recording produces moods and music, innocence and naivety that could be arrived at in no other way. Music that was never intended to be heard by a wide audience, notes and scribblings take on a new value assembled in this way. Away from sophisticated studio techniques and repeated soul destroying takes the real joy I get from playing and writing comes through, and that joy is something I want to share. I have hundreds of such demos; this isn't meant to be a definitive collection, just a scoop.

Pete Townshend's 1982 notes on his demo studios

Pete Townshend in home studio 1968

Studio One Ealing 1964 Above parents home. 2 Vortexion mono tape machines, 1 microphone (A Reslo).

Studio Two Belgravia 1965 Vortex ion CBL stereo machine and some more mikes.

Studio Three Chelsea 1965/1966 2 Vortexion CBLs enabling me to bounce in stereo. I also had a Grampian spring reverb - luxury.

Studio Four Wardour Street 1967 Upgraded to REVOXES 15ips., built a rough patch bay and met Pepy Rush in Soho who built me my first limiter and 'loaned' me an eight channel mixer, old fashioned but superb.

Pete Townshend in home studio 1969

Studio Five Ebury Street 1968 Started to use piano and drums a little. Experimented with tape editing, music concrete, and sound effects recorded on an old NAGRA. Purchased two TANNOY monitors. (Up to now had been using modified MARSHALL 4x12 cabinets with tweeters nailed in).

Studio Six Twickenham 'Home' 1969 Built my first separate control room/studio in two tiny adjacent rooms. Bought Dolby A301s for my REVOXES and later a small NEVE desk and a gorgeous 7'4" BOSENDORFER grand piano. The Who did some work here when I went 8-track in 1971.

Pete Townshend in home studio 1970

1971 Discovered synthesizers!

Pete Townshend in home studio 1971

1973 Opened my studio in the country which I rented out to people. Bought a large NEVE desk, 3M 16-track and two echo plates and some STUDER B62s.

1974 Moved my 'Home' studio to the top floor of our house - upgraded to 16-track, so I could take tapes out to the country to work on them. Stupidly sold my 3M M23 8-track which is probably still running smoothly somewhere.

1975 Worked 23 hours a day on TOMMY film soundtrack at home, and swore I would never have a home studio again and tore it all out! For a while I did all my demos in the country but soon...

1976 Bought OCEANIC, my current commercial studio in Twickenham. It was a Meher Baba Centre for 5 years with 16mm film dubbing and editing suites, a cinema and 4-track studio. OCEANIC has been through vast experimental upheavals and is now (1982) equipped with a computerised SOLID STATE DESK and two STUDER A800 24-tracks with video interlock.

1979 Leased a studio building in Soho (central London) and equipped it with some of the stuff from my country studio which had a leaky roof. Purchased a custom built NEVE rack mounted mixer and 3M 24-track for home use and have used this semi-portable set up in various locations for demos in the past three years.

1982 Built a tiny studio in our new family home using the NEVE rack system. I have difficulty getting free time in either of my 'real' studios and recent advances have made it possible for me to make demos and masters on 1/2" 8-track or even Portastudio cassette systems. This year I did my first few demos on a 120 foot long Dutch canal barge on the Thames with temporary equipment. Next summer I hope to be making my demos on the beautiful French canals.

On tour with THE WHO in the USA this winter, I will be doing demos on my suitcase Portastudio system, today anything is possible. Now if the Portastudio had been invented in 1965, think how much trouble (and money) I'd have saved! But the fun I'd have missed?

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Pete Townshend, except where noted.

Demo notes

So Sad About Us This song was originally written in the living room of the home of my friend Speedy Keen's parents in Hanwell, West London. At that time in 1966, he was driving me in my Lincoln Convertible to shows around Britain. He was a talented drummer and emerged as a great writer as soon as I opened my ears to him properly. (He wrote the song SOMETHING IN THE AIR which I produced for the band THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN, it got to number one in Britain). I recorded the demo a few months later to play to our manager Kit Lambert who was producing a band called THE MERSEYS. They had already had a number one hit with SORROW in the UK and their version of my song did quite well. The Who recorded the song later in the year for their second album, A QUICK ONE. The demo was made straight onto a Vortexion machine at my home studio in Chelsea.

Brrr This instrumental was recorded just for fun. 16-track at home in Twickenham.

Squeeze Box Obviously recorded for fun and intended as a poorly aimed dirty joke. I had bought myself an accordian and learned to play it one afternoon. (That is not meant to be flash, I don't mean I learned to play it properly, just to manage to work it without falling over!). The polka-esque rhythm I managed to produce from it brought forth this song. Amazingly recorded by The Who to my disbelief. Further incredulity was caused when it became a hit for us in the USA.

Zelda This is a recent one recorded when The Who were making the FACE DANCES record in London's ODYSSEY studios. It was engineered by Bill Szymczyk's assistant Allan Blazek, a great engineer in his own right, in the tiny Odyssey studio two while Bill edited Master tapes in studio one. Much has been said about FACE DANCES, especially by the band, some of it to the irritation of Bill Sz. He is a great producer and the slight detachment of the album he made with The Who on Face Dances is no doubt partly due to me coming up with songs like this! I have no idea what it's about except that ZELDA is my young niece; the day I wrote it she had waved at me from the back seat of her father's car. From little acorns... The string sound is made by flutter echo added to my furious bow-ing of two viols. (The baroque instrument that preceded the violin family).

Politician Recorded on Revoxes at 15ips stereo, this has a sound that only I could get at that time. Influenced as I was by Tamla Motown, the rhythm is like HEATWAVE by Martha and the Vandellas, but the sound too is as fundamentally home grown as the Tamla sound; obviously not as good. Listening to some of the old Motown cuts, I feel sure that the beauty of the sound comes from the fact that a lot of love and listening went into operating very simple machinery to capture the performances. There is rarely mystery in recording, but even knowing how I got the weird sound on this cut doesn't mean I could do it again today.

Dirty Water This song is another professional studio recording. Not all of the songs herein are 'home' studio selections, but when I recorded this song, AIR studios in London became my home for two weeks as I assembled demos for FACE DANCES. Kenney Jones played drums on this and it was engineered by John Walls who probably wondered what was happening when I sang the vocal lying flat on my back on the studio floor. The Who didn't record this song as it was too ordinary, but here, as is, it doesn't sound ordinary at all; it sounds nuts. It sounds like someone having a ball - even if they were lying on their back.

Circles A very early demo recorded in Belgravia very close to 'MY GENERATION'. The only thing in my life at that time was Who gigs in Europe and my tape machines. I became reacquainted with an art school friend called Karen soon after this song was written and found some other hobbies outside of tape recording; cooking, kissing Karen, restaurants, making love to Karen, buying beds and curtains, marrying Karen. And so on. In fact, my life with Karen enriched my output as a writer. We made lots of friends and as a couple were more social than I had ever been on my own; my demos had a bigger audience. We were organised; the studio I built in the first house we shared together was a real step up for me, the first I had constructed with any consideration for the neighbours and guests who had to live with my midnight recording sessions. We were very careful to find a place where the studio could be isolated. This care was not exercised when we purchased our first family home in '68. In that house, the studio was slap bang in the middle of the building and when I worked, nobody slept. A musician's studio is a far less natural extension of a family home than a writer's den or a painter's atille. It's a pity that the new technology that has brought multi-track recording into the reach of every musician with some spare cash hasn't produced a simple way of sound-proofing a practice room or studio.

Piano: 'Tipperary' Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Unused Piano: 'Quadrophenia' There were several pieces I wrote for Quadrophenia that were left off the completed album. One or two of them were incorporated into the film soundtrack album. This them was never finished, yet somehow it still captures the atmosphere of triumph and futility attempting to co-exist in the heart of the hero I created. Part of this theme was eventually used as a chorus on CUT MY HAIR from Quad.

Melancholia Recorded at my Ebury Street studio; this is a pre-TOMMY demo written around the time the band were facing a void in their career. It's a tremendously haunting song, but was obviously totally wrong for the band at a time we had just failed to get a hit with the glorious I CAN SEE FOR MILES. I suppose I was really melancholic when I wrote it. My first attempt at tape phrasing or 'flanging' can be heard on some elements of the track. I'm pretty sure The Who didn't even hear this song. [Note: The Who actually recorded a version of this song. It was released on the 1995 reissue of The Who Sell Out].

Bargain The demos I made to accompany the LIFEHOUSE film script I wrote in '71 are among the best I have ever produced. I had come fully to grips with working multi-track rather than bounce from machine to machine a la Phil Spector. I had managed to get a good tight drum sound in a room only ten feet by fifteen that was crammed with synthesizers, organs and a seven foot grand piano. Joe Walsh had just presented me with an old Gretsch Chet Atkins guitar and it more or less played me on this track. At this time, I was still coming to grips with the incredibly rich harmonics that my ARP 2500 synthesizer produced, even with a single voice and here one part seemed enough. I still think that WHO'S NEXT is one of the best sounding Who albums because the demos for that record were so good. There were good songs, and good ideas, but Glyn Johns our producer stuck his neck out to enhance and evolve not just the songs, but also the sounds I had produced at home.

Things Have Changed A song written in 1965 that was probably considered too lightweight for The Who at that time. Kit Lambert, our producer then, might even have prevented me from playing it to the band. I can't remember.

Popular This was a last minute demo recorded at my Soho studio by Chris Ludwinski for the FACE DANCES album. The band reaction was luke warm; we were close to ending the album and were all unsure of what was happening. I later removed the 'Popular' chorus, replaced it with 'It's Hard' and managed to sell another song!

Behind Blue Eyes Another LIFEHOUSE song - I remember my wife saying she liked this one from the kitchen below after I had finished the harmony vocals. The band later added a passion and a fire that really made it blossom from the sad song it appears to be here into the proud self-exposé it became on WHO'S NEXT. Not a personal song at all, or at least not intended to be. It's about a villain in the story feeling he is forced into playing a two-faced role.

The Magic Bus What is there to say? The one man band version, a voodoo-dub-freak-out of a nothing song that was destined to become the most requested live song for The Who along with BORIS THE SPIDER by John Entwistle. Sometimes it was hard to do announcements for numbers in The Who show for people shouting 'Magic Bus' or 'Boris The Spider' at the top of their lungs. It's the silly songs they like. Daft punters.

Cache, Cache Recorded in Soho by Chris Ludwinski between drinking bouts with John Lydon and his brother Jimmy one night. I had written this about a very screwed up time in Europe, a time that from my point of view still seems strange. The Who too long on the road, me totally schizophrenic and everyone simply reacting by saying that I was schizophrenic. The song is a jibe at them, the band, the managers, the hangers on, asking them if they know what it's like. It's a bitter piece, but powerful. Roger saw immediately what it was about when I tried to get him to do it on FACE DANCES and made me sing it myself. By the time I came to do The Who version, I had forgiven everybody, or realised that they hadn't really been guilty of anything in the first place. When I sang this demo, I meant it.

Cookin' An early attempt at playing pedal steel, an instrument I finally abandoned. I used a secret open tuning on the acoustic guitar, (which I then gave away in a music book called DECADE OF THE WHO) and invented a drum sound that I hoped would sound like a stream train. It sounds like a wash-board. A chauvinistic little ditty, but I'm chauvinistic towards men as well so it's OK, isn't it?

You're So Clever Recorded 24-track in my studio at our country place; this song was written for my first solo album EMPTY GLASS. I first put the lyric together at the same time as AND I MOVED for submission to Bette Midler. Neither song ever reached her. It didn't seem to impress the producer CHRIS THOMAS; maybe it was ahead of its time. It sounds a little behind it now, but I still think it's great. The electro-pop sound was all done in a single pass (performance) on a Yamaha home organ with the bass pedals, drum machine, upper and lower keyboards and arpeggio units all laid onto separate tracks. Modern home organs are really very complex computer synthesisers that are a damn sight easier to 'program' than the so called real thing. I love 'em and will buy more as soon as I get enough space.

Body Language Recorded by Mike Pela at my Soho studio for CHINESE EYES, this song impressed neither record company or producer. The drum effects are by the inimitable Mark Brzezicki. At least his name is inimitable. This attempt to fuse streamed poetry with straight lyrics was probably as successful as the other examples on CHINESE EYES, and is still something I enjoy doing. A lot of people think it's 'pretentious.' Yeah, it is, isn't it, like lots of people.

Initial Machine Experiments This piece was played on my Yamaha CS-80 synthesiser to test a TEAC half-inch eight-track machine. This is very much indicative of the kind of meandering I get into when locked away with a synthesiser. Someone once said that when you play around with synthesisers, you end up suffering from a disease called 'synthesiseritis.' I suffer happily.

Mary A track from LIFEHOUSE; this was a song intended to bring some romance into the sci-fi plot. Mary was a character in the script. The song wasn't recorded for WHO'S NEXT by The Who as we decided to make it a single album rather than a double.

Recorders This piece was intended as an atmosphere merely to link a couple of tracks on Quadrophenia. It was never used. I borrowed one of my children' plastic whirling tubes - it was a popular toy for a few months in England, like the hoola hoop. I also strummed away on some cello strings.

Goin' Fishin' This song is really an impressionist piece. The lyric is simply about my abhorrence of fishing, but the music was very carefully structured and recorded with three stereo bounces on Revox tape machines. I think I was trying to create the kind of atmosphere The Beach Boys had achieved on SMILEY SMILE. Home organ creates a lot of the pure tone colour here, a very basic LOWREY with only about six tabs. I used a nearby bathroom as a chamber to create the cold ambience on the vocal and drums.

To Barney Kessell A simple guitar chord chart I worked out and dedicated to a great guitar player. I knocked this onto tape in one take while doing some demos at my country studio for the WHO BY NUMBERS album. I always intended to add a lead guitar part and did try bass and drums, but it's nice as it is. I play a lot like this, it isn't really exploratory jazz as I work with fairly well tried chords, but it's a style of guitar I enjoy.

You Came Back This is a real favorite of mine about, you guessed it, reincarnation. The fact that I never got around to putting drums on it makes the exchanged guitar rhythms, played on an inexpensive CORAL guitar, more effective. Lead guitar solo also missing I'm afraid.

Love Reign O'er Me The piano part from this demo was used as the basic track of The Who version which was recorded by Glyn Johns and later used as the finale for 'QUADROPHENIA'. I still glory in the fact that the piano reveals new things me every time I sit down to play. I am still a poor player, but in a sense, as a writer, that helps. This is composed almost entirely on the black notes.

References