“The Pete Townshend Page #1”
Written for Melody Maker, Aug. 22, 1970, Townshend wrote 9 articles for the magazine in 1970 and ’71.
I’ll be posting one each day…
I’m beginning my first page of this bulky Journal in particularly strange surroundings. On holiday I am, far away from the sounds of London’s traffic and Keith Moon on an island in the Blackwater estuary called Osea, or “Ozee” as the locals pronounce it. There are so few locals in fact that they could all be counted on one ordinary hand.
The main figure is Jim Cricket, the village’s only all year round resident as far as I can make out. Osea Island was originally inhabited (so I gather) by the owner of some brewery in the 1900’s as a rehabilitation resort for inebriates (drunken wrecks similar to Keith Moon in most respects, excepting stamina). His conscience got the better of him one night as he stood watching his clientele pouring out of one of his pubs getting run over, falling In the canal, wounding one another with broken bottles and all the other enjoyable activities people get involved in on the way home from the boozer.
Jim Cricket lets our daughter Emma, who he insists on calling “him “- ride on his tractor and generally is very helpful showing me where to collect the cockles and muscles (sic) and oysters for tea and giving me historical notes.
The most exciting thing about Osea Island is probably the causeway that you have to drive over to reach it. It’s over a mile long and is just about revealed for a few hours each low tide for the milkman and postman to make a mad dash across, make their rounds and get back again. As you drive over the sea splashes over the front of the car and you feel a bit like a sea captain at the bridge as starfish and crabs come hurtling through the windows.
I’m hoping that the messenger who comes all the way from Melody Maker to collect this trivia doesn’t throttle me when he realises he’ll have to spend twelve hours looking at a ten acre caravan site before he can get back home again.
When we tour England this October we will be working with an American group called the James Gang who could do fantastically well over here. We did several shows with the Gang on our last U.S. visit and have built up an addiction for their music. They are a three piece, Joe Walsh on guitar, Jim Fox on drums and Dale Stevens on bass. Jim the drummer formed the group about two years ago.
Joe Walsh is definitely one of the best guitarists in Rock that I’ve come across. His playing makes my neck tingle like only Jimi Hendrix has affected it before. He doesn’t move much, except to snake a lazy foot over from the fuzz box to the wah wah pedal, but his playing reaches heights that to my mind have only been reached before by the Claptons, Pages and Hendrixs of this world, and there are only three of them. I hear through the grapevine that Jimmy Page has seen Joe play and also rates him highly. It could be fair to say from the way I’m ranting that he’s one of your guitarists’ guitarists, but then most of the top players are universally dug by audiences and other musicians alike.
Joe Walsh and I spent many hours playing in the States, his style on the acoustic guitar is free and flowing with a lot of the characteristic country “drone” notes vibrating steadily in the bass strings like Eastern music. The James Gang have two albums available in the States, the first has been out here for a few months called Yer Album. It’s on Stateside, and I hope they are quick to release their second, The James Gang Rides Again soon.
Pete Townshend
The Beat Patrol 
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