Chris Stamp, Former Manager of the Who, Dead at 70

Chris Stamp, a former co-manager of the Who and founder of the Track Records label, died on Saturday at the age of 70, Billboard reports.

A native of London’s East End, Stamp met the Who in 1963 while working with business partner Kit Lambert on a documentary about the British rock scene. Stamp and Lambert became friends with the band and soon became the Who’s co-managers. In 1967, the two launched Track Records with the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze” single and the album Are You Experienced? Stamp worked on the production of the Who’s 1968 album, Magic Bus and was the executive producer of Tommy, Who’s Next, Quadrophenia and the soundtrack for the 1975 film Tommy. After a split with the Who in the mid-1970s, Stamp and Lambert moved Track Records to New York, where they produced records for the soul group Labelle.

Stamp gravitated away from the rock world after entering rehab in 1987, later becoming a therapist with specialties in psychodrama and addiction counseling. He died of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

At a concert in Detroit on Saturday night, Roger Daltrey paid tribute to Stamp, calling him a man “without whom we wouldn’t be the band we were.”