Opening this Friday at two local theaters, the 2014 documentary Lambert & Stamp looks at the pair of aspiring filmmakers who, in 1964, adopted a fiery but directionless R&B band in North London and molded it into the guitar-smashing pop-art sensation we know as the Who. Kit Lambert, son of classical composer and conductor Constant Lambert, encouraged the band’s creative ambition, eventually taking over as the Who’s record producer and prodding guitarist Pete Townshend to create the career-transforming rock opera Tommy. Chris Stamp, younger brother of actor Terence Stamp, steered Townshend, singer Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon through a chaotic period when they were often at one another’s throats and their inclination to destroy guitars, drums, and hotel rooms far exceeded their ability to pay for the damage.
James D. Cooper: I met Chris Stamp around the time that he began trying to get [a biopic] made on Keith Moon. I was a young cinematographer that had had some success with cinema verite features, and we connected over an unorthodox view on filmmaking that we shared. He had a lot of discussions with me about how he saw that film being made and shot, and a friendship ensued from there. But it wasn’t until ten or 15 years later that my partner Loretta Harms and I brought the idea for Lambert & Stamp to him.
Also, because Chris Stamp [knew] what was immediate to the street and to the Who audience, he brought a lot of creative things himself. It was Chris Stamp who suggested that Roger Daltrey do the stuttering on “My Generation.” He was aware of the effect of amphetamines on the young kids in the audience—they would stutter when they took too much amphetamine.
That’s hard to say, because I think it was hard to tell what John Entwistle was thinking at any point. We know that if Keith Moon were still alive, the papers may have never gone through to instigate the formal removal of Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert. So we might have a very different story.
There wasn’t too much about The Who Sell Out in the movie. What role did the managers play in the conceptualizing of that record?
From the point of view of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, because they came into the industry sideways, they recognized that there was an audience in England at the time that wasn’t being spoken to or represented or identified with in the greater world of pop. They saw that this was a different type of audience than was listening to the Beatles or the Stones, a group of people—initially, maybe, in the mod culture—that wasn’t being reflected. And they recognized a synthesis or a synergy between the band and its audience. Lambert and Stamp realized that the Who could harness the power of the audience by mirroring its rebelliousness. I think you’re talking about playing songs for the people in the audience, the songs they want to hear, so it’s maybe a different concept.
Directed by James D. Cooper
