Michael Caine’s surreal connection to The Who: “It was typical of that time”
Few actors warrant the term ‘living legend’ as much as Sir Michael Caine. The cinema icon made his film debut as an uncredited extra in 1950 and went on to become a gigantic star in the 1960s through movies like Zulu and The Italian Job. Caine epitomised Britain on-screen, either playing a rough-and-tumble Cockney or a well-dressed man of action. He’s never been out of work, and good work at that, as he’s received an Oscar nomination in five different decades. In 2023, at the age of 90, he put out The Great Escaper, touted as his final film, but never say never with someone like Michael Caine.
Being famous in the 1960s certainly had its perks. Caine hobnobbed with the biggest stars and enjoyed romances with starlets like Nancy Sinatra, Jill St John, and Natalie Wood. A fan of music, he also enjoyed close friendships with John Lennon and Elton John and had a very strange connection to one of the biggest bands of the era.
When talking with The Arts Desk, Caine reflected on the decade where he reached his peak, particularly his friendship with fellow actor Terence Stamp. “Terry had a brother called Chris; he was just a young Cockney lad, and he didn’t want to be an actor or a painter,” he said. “And then one day he said, ‘I’m gonna be a rock ‘n’ roll manager,’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah yeah yeah – have you found a group?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, me and my mate found this group called The Who.’ It was typical of that time.”
Chris Stamp met future business partner Kit Lambert while working on a film set together. The pair first encountered The Who, then known as The High Numbers, when they played a gig in a London pub. Stamp and Lambert produced a short film about the band, which gained some serious traction and eventually became their managers. They oversaw the group’s rise to stardom and the release of albums like Tommy and Who’s Next.
Caine shared an apartment with Terence Stamp at the time, which is why he was privy to his brother’s various business interests. He would have taken notice when Chris formed Track Records in 1966, one of the first independent labels in the country. Their first single was a song called ‘Purple Haze’ by some chap named Jimi Hendrix.
The Stamp-Lambert partnership came to an end when the latter’s drug habits got in the way of business. Lamber, also known as ‘The Baron’, passed away from a brain haemorrhage in 1981. As for Stamp, he eventually got out of the music business, settling on a career in psychodrama therapy instead. He remained closely associated with The Who, contributing to various documentaries about the band and various remastered editions of their albums, before his death in 2012 at the age of 70.
This fascinating connection between two of Britain’s biggest cultural exports of the 1960s shows how vibrant and interconnected the country’s art scene was during this era. Actors and musicians regularly mingled and collaborated, informing each other’s work either consciously or otherwise. As Caine was such a big name, it’s no surprise that he had links to pretty much everyone who was anyone at the time – another reason why he is still held in such high regard.
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