Kit Lambert
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Christopher "Kit" Sebastian Lambert (11 May 1935 – 7 April 1981) was a record producer and the manager for The Who.
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[edit] Early life
Kit Lambert was the son of noted composer, Constant Lambert. Constant Lambert was the son of George Washington Lambert, a sculptor and painter who was an official war artist for the Australian government at Gallipoli during World War I.
[edit] Career
Lambert served in the British Army after studying at Oxford University. After his service, he returned to Britain and became assistant director for the films The Guns of Navarone and From Russia with Love. He and fellow director Chris Stamp decided to make a film that would feature an unknown pop group; the group that they chose was The High Numbers (previously The Who), who later became The Who once again. Lambert eventually abandoned the film and became The Who's manager. He replaced Shel Talmy as the group's producer in 1966. While with The Who he also worked with other bands, and produced Arthur Brown's "Fire" in 1968.
Lambert convinced Pete Townshend to move away from simple songs on their earlier albums and to produce more mature fare. This encouraged The Who to progress from the more quirky sound of The Who Sell Out to the deeper themes of Tommy. Pete Townshend has acknowledged that it was Lambert who influenced The Who to combine rock music and opera with the rock/opera Tommy as the result.
The Who's success led to differences between Lambert and the group. He was replaced as their producer in 1971, and went on to produce some early punk bands, but his drug abuse led to little success in the late 1970s. During the peak of Lambert's success he owned a house in Knightsbridge, London and a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice. In Italy he was called Baron Lamberti.
[edit] "Ward of the Court"
Lambert's excessive drug taking brought him to the attention of the police and he was arrested and charged with drug offences. As a defence, and one rarely used, a lawyer convinced Lambert to become a Ward Of The Court whereby he would avoid charges and a prison sentence while the Official Solicitor would take charge of his affairs and give him a stipend out of his own money to live on each week. Meanwhile royalties from the albums Lambert produced for The Who and Jimi Hendrix were steadily increasing each year. When Lambert died in 1981 his estate was worth over £490,000. Since he died the royalties that have flowed in from his various works to his inheritors have been over a million pounds.
[edit] Book, demise and death
In 1980 Lambert and journalist Jon Lindsay began writing a book on his life, of how he found The Who and with many never told stories about his contemporaries The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Brian Epstein, Jimi Hendrix and friends like Princess Margaret and Liberace. Just as a publishing deal was about to be signed, the publishers were contacted by the Official Solicitor who was in charge of Lambert's life, and who said all monies must be paid into the court to be doled out to Lambert. This was the beginning of a downward spiral for Kit Lambert. On the night of his death he was seen drinking heavily at a popular London gay nightclub El Sombrero in Kensington.
Lambert died of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling down the stairs of his mother's house in 1981, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.[1]
The material written with Lindsay was included in a book The Lamberts by writer and poet Andrew Motion, now Britain's Poet Laureate. In 1986 The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award literary prize. The tapes compiled by Lindsay numbered up to 20 hours in length and became an important historical reference of the era of pop and rock music as well as Lambert's own tumultumous life. On the tapes Lambert dispelled some of the popular rumors that he had purposely perpetuated himself to generate publicity about his charges, only to reveal the real truth for the first time. Ironically,in reality Lambert's methods in promoting groups like The Who were far more eccentric and strange than popularly believed, marking him out as one of the most gifted and original showman of the era.
Some material apeared briefly in a Fleet Street one week series shortly after Lambert's death with Napier Bell and Lindsay eventually planning to make a film of Kit Lambert's life. It was decided to shelve the idea of the film for a number of years until the idea of Lambert's life would appeal to a whole new generation of young bands and their fans.
[edit] References
- Allmusic.com Kit Lambert biography. Accessed on March 5, 2005.
- The Knitting Circle: Kit Lambert. Accessed on March 5, 2005.
