THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

"Most rock films are pretentious. They're made for the sole purpose of making Robert Plant's dick look big.
This is totally the opposite. Within the first half hour we're made to look complete idiots."
- Roger Daltrey 1978

A version of the film cut to 100 minutes premiered at the Cannes Film Festival May 13, 1979. The full-length version premiered at the Plaza Theater in New York June 14, 1979.
On September 30, 2003 the restored full-length version was released in the U.S. on DVD. The European edition was released by Sanctuary April 26, 2004.
 
 

The photo featured on the film poster and front cover of the soundtrack was taken by Art Kane at the Carl Schurz Memorial in Morningside Park, New York City on the morning of April 5, 1968. Kane: "They were great. They made me think of Dickens' Oliver Twist, Fagin's gang. Irreverent, lovable. I had the flag made from 2 Union Jacks. I was influenced by a Cartier-Bresson photograph of a vagrant asleep under a statue in Trafalgar Square." The Who photo originally appeared as a two-page spread in Life magazine June 28, 1968. Supposedly the four are actually asleep, having been kept up all night after being kicked out of their hotel due to Keith's activities.

Liner notes by Brian Cady
 
 

Jeff and his editor Ed Rothkowitz compiled a 17-minute reel of every scrap they could find and brought The Who and their wives to a special screening. Jeff: "I've never seen such a reaction. Pete was on the floor, banging his head. He and Keith were hysterical. Roger's wife was laughing so hard she knocked over the coffee table in the screening room."  Now with The Who's approval, Jeff spent two years raising the funding and uncovering film in England, the U.S., Sweden, Germany, France, Australia, Norway and Finland. By July 1977 Jeff was ready to begin filming the new segments at Shepperton studios. First came a band rehearsal, then a week of following Keith around Los Angeles before returning to Britain for further interviews and segments with Pete, Roger and John. With all the footage compilation, however, Jeff discovered that The Who's ban on film cameras during their post-1970 concerts had left no high-quality material of Who show-stoppers such as "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again." On December 15, 1977 The Who held a free afternoon concert at the Gaumont State Theatre in Kilburn performing to 800 that got in after an announcement of the show on Capital Radio that morning. However, Pete and John were both too drunk to play well and Keith had gained so much weight that he got easily winded. The footage was scrapped (with two exceptions; see below) and On May 25, 1978 The Who tried again before an audience of Who fan club members at Shepperton Studios.Fortunately this went much better.

The film came out in May 1979 to great acclaim not only from Who fans but from rock critics as well. Whenever lists are made of the best rock films of all time, The Kids Are Alright almost always rates #1 and it caused "the kids are alright" to enter standard English phraseology. One would have thought that, with all the accolades and having finally produced a film that everyone could agree was excellent, The Who and Jeff Stein would have the rosiest of relationships. Unfortunately, this is not the case. They had a falling out, probably over Stein's insistence that additional concert footage had to be shot at Shepperton after the disastrous Kilburn concert. The Who disagreed and supposedly refused to pay for the additional costs. By the time of Keith's death, relations between the band and their fan/chronicler had begun to sour. By November 1979 Roger and John were both trashing the film with Roger calling Stein an "amateur" and John claiming that many of his segments were edited out after Keith died so that a greater emphasis could be put on Keith. Jeff has adamantly denied that the film was re-cut after Keith's death (with the exception of one line; see below). Stein: "Keith saw the film before he died and I left every frame the way it was. I didn't want to exploit his death in any way."

John re-edited the film for the U.K. and Europe: "I cut out a lot of the dialogue before 'A Quick One' and I cut out quite a bit of 'A Quick One' as well.  I had to because there was so much dialogue on either side that it tended to make everything drag.  The film is boring. I rang up Bill Curbishley and said, 'the film is a piece of shit. I've got to stop it; it can't come out like that, I'm going to stick an injunction in to stop it.' I got ahold of the long version that was going to go out in Europe and England and cut that. I said we've got to cut down on the dialogue because it's getting boring and Stein was saying that we got to put that in because it's really important. And the music section started to get smaller and smaller and smaller. He didn't really know what he wanted in the film all the way through."

Until the 2003 released of the U.S. DVD, all videotape and videodisc versions except one on the long-defunct RCA Selectavision system were John Entwistle's cut-down version. Fans had to do with tapes of the complete version that ran occasionally on cable channels VH1 and MTV in the U.S. and MuchMusic in Canada. Far worse than the cutting of the movie, however, was that some of the music tracks were sped up, some to a ludicrous extent. The DVD of The Kids Are Alright released in Europe by BMG in 2000 was the same sped-up, cut-down version that was previously released on videotape and was of no better quality than the older videotape version.

For these liner notes I will list the material as it appears in the film, discussing the tracks from the soundtrack as they appear in the film, followed by the soundtrack selections that are not in the film.
 
 

Only a small charge was supposed to have been used, but Keith bribed the stagehand into using a huge amount of explosive. When it went off it caught Pete right in the ear and set his hair on fire (you can see him patting out the sparks) and sent a shard that cut Keith's arm. Roger tells the story that Bette Davis, backstage waiting to go on, passed out in the arms of Mickey Rooney although the Smothers Brothers deny it. This was The Who's only personal appearance on any of the U.S.'s primary variety shows. They never made it to The Ed Sullivan Show or Saturday Night Live. Oh, and Keith's actual middle name is John.

Shindig first aired "I Can't Explain" in America October 2, 1965 (nine months after the release of the single). The introduction by host Jimmy O'Neill comes from a replay on the last episode of Shindig January 6, 1966.

Russell Harty Plus 1
Shot at the London Weekend Television studios on the South Bank, London, January 3, 1973
Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg
1'04 in film

This interview with The Who was first broadcast on ITV in the London area three days after shooting. The Who had just finished a mimed performance to the song "Relay" when this clip opens. That performance was later included on the laserdisc of Who's Better Who's Best. The one cut made in the film after Keith's death, according to Jeff Stein, was after Pete says "Who decayed?" He then turned to Keith and said "they didn't all survive."
 
 

SHOUT AND SHIMMY (RICHMOND JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL)
Shot at the Richmond Athletic Grounds, Surrey, August 6, 1965
2'02 in film

This favorite of The Who's early live set was filmed at the Richmond Jazz & Blues Festival by the same Shindig camera crew from "I Can't Explain" above. The 30 Years Of Maximum R&B video contains a live version of "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere" from this same evening. Only a snippet of "Shout and Shimmy" appears here as it ran for over five minutes on the original Shindig program. Both this presentation and the original broadcast in the U.S. were shown in black-and-white despite having been shot in color.

Question 2: 'Who writes the words and who the music?' Question 3: 'Are you big in America?' and so on. I hope you will spare me the embarrassment of rehearsing the fretful litany. The Who were clearly thinking to themselves that there must be better ways of spending an evening. So they did what any high spirited, rich, young band would do. They tried to make it more interesting. They ripped off each other's designed shirts and shredded them in front of a delighted audience. Droning on in the background was this still small voice: Question 10: 'What are your plans for the future?' Their plans were to liven things up a little. When they had reduced each other to bare essentials and high laughter, they turned their attention to me, pulled me to the floor and started to divest me of my chaste Jaeger. The clock, which is often an enemy, developed a friendly aspect and put a timely stop to this madness. Time also put a stop to The Who. Keith Moon died. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend were encouraged to explore other paths to salvation, via entertainment. I learnt two things. The first was to jettison the clipboard if the ship appeared to be sinking. Such an object lacks buoyancy. The second was that if your body should become a battleground, it is better to lie back and pretend to enjoy it. You may lose the sympathy vote, but you might get a new suit from it."
 
 

YOUNG MAN BLUES (LONDON COLISEUM)
Shot at The Coliseum, Covent Garden, London, December 14, 1969.
Directed by Chris Stamp.
3'42 in film, 5'46 on soundtrack (track 8)

"I'm Free" from this show appears on the Who's Better Who's Best video and "Happy Jack" on the 30 Years of Maximum R&B video. More is expected in Murray Lerner's forthcoming new film My Generation: Who's Still Who. The film, from which all of this comes, was discovered by Jeff Stein in a garbage dump outside the offices of Track Records. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, owners of Track Records, dumped all their material on The Who after losing management rights to them in the mid-1970's. The print, depending on which copy you see, is either very dark, or has had the image pushed in developing with low contrast and many apparent spots on the film. Insufficient lighting for filming was the reason this material was originally rejected by the band. The performance is faded out earlier than on the soundtrack.

Portions of these were released in 1996 on the Tommy CD-Rom. This version, both in the movie and on the soundtrack is identical with the Tommy album except for an extended ending with a surprise appearance by Keith.

 

Keith and Ringo 1
shot at Keith's home in Malibu, California August 12, 1977.
'33 on video

PINBALL WIZARD (WOODSTOCK)
Shot at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, New York in the early morning of August 17, 1969.
2'25 in film, 2'48 on soundtrack (track 14)

What is unfortunate about this clip is what is missing from the end. Immediately after the final chords of "Pinball Wizard," Abbie Hoffman ran onstage, grabbed Pete's mike and started a harangue about the meaninglessness of the festival while the leader of the White Panthers was in prison for possession of two joints. Probably an apt sentiment but bad timing. Pete gave him a shot with his guitar in the back of the neck and sent him off the stage. Although the audio for this has been unearthed and appears on the 30 Years Of Maximum R&B boxset, no photos or film has ever surfaced. Jeff Stein dug through the Warners Brothers vaults in Burbank where the outtakes were kept and was heartbroken when he couldn't find it. He wasn't helped by the loss of the storage logs for the clips in a fire several years before. The same version of "Pinball Wizard" also appears on the Who's Better Who's Best video.

Beat Club question
Shot at Radio Bremen studios in Hamburg, Germany, August 27-28, 1969.
'48 on video

Pete is asked what seems to be an interminable and pretentious question about Tommy to which all he can say is "Uh...yeah." The editing creates this effect. Practically the entire interview surfaced on a 1996 CD that was sold with copies of Chris Charlesworth's The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Who. In context the interview zeroes in on problems others have had with Tommy (in "Sensation" isn't Tommy declaring himself to be the messiah?) and Pete is his usual loquacious self.
 
 

Melvyn Bragg 2
Shot at BBC Television Studios in London, August 29, 1974
'33 on video

Pete, Roger and John all said that they hated the Woodstock Festival. They hadn't wanted to play it, they had a rough time getting there, they had to hang around for hours waiting to be paid and they were dosed with LSD against their wishes. Pete has softened on this in recent statements recognizing what a boost Woodstock gave their careers, but there was always something about "3 days of peace and love" that seemed un-Who-like.

A Whole Scene Going filmed interview 1
Shot in London, August 1965.
Directed by Nat Cohen.
'31 in film.

Originally aired January 5, 1966 on the BBC1 program, this was part of a prepared interview with Pete shot in his Belgravia flat.
 

According to Jeff Stein, this is the only old clip in the movie which has an overdub. The original had very low bass so while preparing the mix in 1978, John got the bass on which he is seen playing in the film and recorded a new bass line, then blended it in seamlessly. The original version showing the entire song was released on the 1983 video Ready Steady Go! Volume 1. Volume 2 has The Who's performance of "Shout and Shimmy" from the same show. This clip is also the one Jimmy watches in the movie of Quadrophenia. Nothing else but photographs remain of The Who's many performances on Ready Steady GO! as ITV wiped the tapes not many years after their broadcast. Most surviving performances from this show have been discovered in archives in Canada and Australia.

A Whole Scene Going filmed interview 2/Russell Harty Plus 3
1'40 on video.

Part of Pete's interview is covered with video from later in the 1960's. The original had Pete in his flat in Belgravia showing off the Union Jack jacket and film of The Who performing at The Witch Doctor at St. Leonard's-on-Sea August 4, 1965. Pete and Keith's talking-at-the-same-time routine was one of their favorites for impromptu performances.

 Similar scenes were to be shot with Pete and Roger but were canceled. Whether intended as such or not, this scene does parody the outrageous fantasies in Led Zeppelin's 1976 concert film The Song Remains The Same. The soundtrack is the studio version of the song. John lived in this house until his death in 2002.

A Whole Scene Going live interview 1
Shot at Studio 7, BBC Television Centre, London, January 5, 1966.
'39 in film.

Pete always had a love-hate relationship with The Beatles and the hate side never more famously presented than here. Could the album he is referring to be the recently released Rubber Soul? This was shot live during the afternoon and broadcast that evening.

This was the premiere of Roger's open shirt look popularized during the Tommy tours. All three performances are lip-synced. It was Jeff Stein's original intention to make this a six-song medley of "Substitute"/"I'm a Boy"/"Heatwave"/"Pictures Of Lily"/"I Can See For Miles"/"Magic Bus." Unfortunately, it was cut to only three before the film's release but after the printing of the end credits. The soundtrack LP and original issues of the CD feature the standard mono version of "Magic Bus" but a stereo version was used for the 2001 reissue.  Complete versions of "Substitute" and "Pictures of Lily" appear on the Who's Better Who's Best video.

All My Loving 1/Keith interview/Pete 1977 interview 1/Pete 1971 interview 1/All My Loving 2
1'44 in film

The scenes of The Who riding on a bus through the U.S. come from a 1968 Tony Palmer special called Omnibus: All My Loving which aired on BBC1 November 3, 1968. It was shot around March 10, 1968. The Keith interview was shot September 1975 at Keith's Sherman Oaks home for another Tony Palmer television special. The 1977 Pete interview was filmed at his home in Twickenham for the BBC series Tonight which originally aired October 31, 1977. The black & white film of Pete talking that follows it is from a film made by Richard Stanley on either the first or second weekend of September 1971 of a "summit meeting" of The Who at Roger's house. Richard Stanley was the cinematographer on the Isle Of Wight movie and Yessongs. It was shot in color but Jeff Stein used a black-and-white work print for the finished movie.
 
 

Director Lindsay-Hogg got The Who's attention as the house director for Ready Steady GO! and went on to direct The Rolling Stones' Rock & Roll Circus, Let It Be, and Roger's 1994 Celebration: The Music Of Pete Townshend and The Who video. The "Happy Jack" on the soundtrack LP is a live version from Leeds University February 14, 1970 running 2'12 (track 3). It was later re-released on the 1995 edition of Live At Leeds.

A Whole Scene Going live interview 2
'31 on video

Jeff Stein: "We have a sequence from an 8mm film taken by a friend of theirs of them putting on their make-up backstage in '67, including a great shot of Pete powdering his nose! Roger Daltrey fixing everyone's hair, that sort of thing." The person having their hair fixed in the first shot is long-suffering Who sound man Bobby Pridden. It was shot in 8mm by Chris Morphet backstage at the Granada Cinema, Kingston-On-Thames, Surrey, November 3, 1967.
 
 

Melvyn Bragg 3
1'49 in film
Pete's description of the recording of the A Quick One LP and the birth of the mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away" was cut from the movie by John Entwistle outside the U.S. and was only restored with the 2002 DVD.

Pete got Mick Jagger's permission for the use of this clip for The Kids Are Alright, which, for a long time, was the only circulating material from the TV special. The Rolling Stones and Allan Klein, who owned the film, finally came to an agreement and gave the film an official release in 1995. The same take used here also appears on The Rolling Stones' Rock & Roll Circus videotape but edited differently. The blinking lights were put around the image as a way of presenting the full frame when masked for a movie house's "widescreen" image. One of the other takes appears, in part, on The Who's boxset 30 Years Of Maximum R&B. The original film of The Kids Are Alright featured the complete performance including Keith Richard's introduction (he is wearing an eyepatch and a ringmaster's uniform. The lights around the picture during his intro say "The Rolling Stones" at the top and "Rock 'n' Roll Circus" at the bottom) The first 4'41 of the sequence was removed in the Entwistle edit and was restored in the 2002 DVD. However the image was cropped to a 16 X 9 image removing the original's flashing light border.

Pete 1971 interview 2/A Whole Scene Going live interview 3/Keith and Ringo 2/Melvyn Bragg 4
1'35 in film
Pete's admitting on A Whole Scene Going that The Who were taking drugs was shocking at the time. Pop groups just didn't say such things in January 1966. The Beatles didn't admit their drug use until mid-1967. And yet, The Who never had any drug busts. Keith's saying he's just "been sittin' in" with The Who refers to the story that Roger, after Keith's audition for The Who, came up and asked him whether he could make it for their next club date with no formal acceptance into the band. Oddly, according to Tony Fletcher's book on Keith, no one of his bandmates in The Beachcombers, the band Keith was in at the time of his audition with The Who, can remember Keith ever dyeing his hair ginger.

All the film of Keith with a beard was shot by Jeff Stein near Keith's Malibu, California home August 8-12, 1977. The shots of Keith lying on the floor covered in cake trying to get his trousers off are from a preliminary birthday party held August 11, 1977 at the Trancas Restaurant and Bar in Malibu. Keith's pirate imitation comes from his fascination with Robert Newton's Long John Silver from Treasure Island (1950), a character Keith would assume at the drop of a tricornered hat. His friend and Monty Pythoner Graham Chapman tried to make Keith's dream a reality by writing a movie for him to star in called Yellowbeard, but Keith died before filming started.

Russell Harty Plus 3/Keith and Ringo 3/Pete 1977 interview 2
2'55 in film
The first two segments (Keith's "I survived all the major earthquakes" and Keith and Ringo's "we're getting old now and have to take our medicine") are more than a little eerie considering the circumstances of Keith's death. Pete's feeling that he lost the rational part of his mind during performances which he blamed in part for his hearing loss and drinking problems.
 
 

Pete 1971 interview 3
'26 in film

Keith was certainly at his heaviest here but had managed to lose a good bit of the weight by a year later. Many songs were given such impromptu jams over two days of filming but so far only a cover of The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" with Keith on lead vocals has turned up on bootleg videos.

Roger 1975 interview
Shot in London, March 27, 1975
'15 on video

This short clip of Roger speaking is from the same Russell Harty show interviews as the Ken Russell above. It's also one of only three short times that Roger speaks in The Kids Are Alright. No wonder he doesn't like the film! Jeff Stein had originally planned to have a Roger-only segment taken from a 1975 U.S. children's show called Wonderama where Roger demonstrated how to swing a microphone. Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain rights to the clip.
 
 

Pete 1966 interview/Pete and Keith at Shepperton/Russell Harty Plus 4/A Whole Scene Going live interview 3/Pete 1977 interview 3/Pete at Kilburn/separate statements from The Who 1977
2'59 on video
Pete's discussion of his hearing problem with Keith comes from the same day as "Barbara Ann." Pete's harangue ("I've got a guitar up here") is, along with a clip in the closing credits, the only footage salvaged from the December 15, 1977 Kilburn concert. More is included in the 2007 DVD Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who. Stein's insistence that another performance had to be shot later at Shepperton and The Who's refusal to pay for it, led to the rift between Jeff Stein and the band. John Entwistle has said he was upset by the inclusion of Keith's remark here ("you couldn't afford me") thinking it made Keith look bad. It was shot at Keith's Malibu home August 8, 1977. The offscreen questioner is crewman Pete Nevard.

Russell Harty Plus 5
1'09 on video
Keith's dig at Russell Harty ("how long have you been happily married?") gets an odd grimace from Harty, probably because he was keeping secret a sexual orientation that didn't come out until years later. Wonder if Keith knew?

The final statements
'56 in film
These additional four final remarks from the members of The Who were excised in the Entwistle cut and were restored for the 2002 DVD.

 We had twelve hundred people drunk out of their skulls, and it was very difficult to film. I didn't have people roped off, and we didn't tell anybody to sit down or anything, and it was crazy. When they hit the stage, there were people all over the place. The Who played great. I was backstage, and the people were roaring for an encore, and carrying on. You know the Who hate to do encores, and they had really beaten themselves to death doing this show. It was really tough, and I went back and said, 'Pete, you gotta go out and give 'em an encore. We've got to get a definitive version of "Won't Get Fooled Again." We need the definitive end.' And he said, 'Jeff, what do you want me to do? Go out there and fall asleep playing? Maybe I should go out there and just die during my last solo? Or maybe I should hit that guy who's been yelling for "Magic Bus" over the head with my guitar.' Anyway, we do have a great ending.  They did go back out and do it. It was very complicated, because I wanted to film the lasers that accompany 'Won't Get Fooled Again' and it was very hard to shoot those, but that was one of the main reasons we wanted to film them at Shepperton, to get the lasers right, which we did."

According to eyewitnesses, The Who returned the next day to do additional filming of the lasers section of the performance. It is believed that the film version is made up of pieces of both performances while the soundtrack version is of only one. Keith also went into the recording studio shortly before his death to play some new drum parts that were dubbed over sections of his performance here. John was always proud of his mixing job on this track.

7) Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, June 18, 1967.

8) Circus Krone, Munich, West Germany Apr. 13, 1967.

9) Madison Square Garden, New York, June 1974.

The version of "Long Live Rock" under all this features a different mix from the version on Odds and Sods. It was released as the single from the soundtrack backed in the U.K. with "I'm The Face" and "My Wife (Kilburn)" (reaching #48 in the charts) and with just "My Wife (Kilburn)" in the U.S. (reaching #54 in the Billboard charts and #66 in Cash Box). The mix used here was later released on the 30 Years Of Maximum R&B boxset.

TRACKS ON SOUNDTRACK BUT NOT IN FILM:
 
 

I CAN SEE FOR MILES
4'17 (track 4) 
Originally included in the Singles Medley but excised before the film was released. The video was probably from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour where The Who mimed to it (see "My Generation" - Smothers Brothers above). Part of it later appeared on the Who's Better Who's Best video. This is a stereo version remixed and remastered by John Entwistle.

MY WIFE (KILBURN)
6'08 (track 9) 
Recorded at the Gaumont State Theatre, Kilburn December 15, 1977. The only official release of a track from the Kilburn concert. There is no record of where it was to have been in the film. It might have been included here so that the LP's producer could have at least one title with his authorship. This is one of three live versions of "My Wife" that The Who have released, the other two being on Two's Missing (San Francisco 1971) and the 30 Years Of Maximum R&B boxset (Swansea 1976).

If you want to contact me about something on this page, click on my name. I want corrections! Brian Cady

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