The Who : Classic or Dud

Classic. Join the cult of the band, won't you?

Search: all boots from 1969-1976. You only really understand how good this band was by hearing them live. Search specifically the Rock Circus vers. of A Quick One, Dreaming From The Waist from 1976 Swansea, Live At Leeds Complete and Woodstock. Quadrophenia.

Destroy: All post Keith material, the 'complete' BBC sessions, 'cause they're not complete. The Tommy movie.

The film of "Quadrophenia" is great. The album "Who's Next?" is great, with its total yeow! rock antics. And "Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy" has all your old Who favourites. I don't know anything else.

I find what I've heard of the later stuff ("Who Are You", "You Better You Bet") obviously tedious and banal, like any other plodding rock band.

The Who are classic for their Keith-era work. The best of it is completely untouchable raw power. Their post Keith work is patchy (mostly bad - no, GODAWFUL - patches), and some of their reaches didn't quite make it (Tommy is ridiculous). But as I always say, no great band has ever not made something, or many somethings, of complete toss. Being the greatest makes you more likely to fall because you reach too far, IMO.

Search: Who's Next. Okay, scratch that cos if you haven't already searched that you're just completely behind. So, instead: He's a Boy, for being the funniest song.

Destroy: The belief that the Who were still the Who without Keith Moon.

Always thought Who's Next was overrated though -- "Won't Get Fooled Again" is great, "Baba O'Reilly" is very good, but all the other songs on that album underwhelm me. I guess I just don't like classic rock enough.

Search for Live at Leeds and Quadrophenia and all the early singles.

Destroy Tommy in its many incarnations.

search: A Quick One, Sell Out, My Generation: The Very Best of... (which hits the mark more than most 'best of's'), Who's Next

destroy: the other compilations (Sheesh, are they the most overly anthologized group ever?), all films and film-related music (except the r'n'r circus performance), Squeeze Box (NOW!), hell, most anything post-Who's Next, and even Live at Leeds (*checks watch* Still playing that one guys?)

Apropos to nothing, I once worked with a guy who insisted on a dramatic reading of the lines "She comes to me with open arms (preganant pause) / And open legs" every time You Better, You Bet came on the radio. Yes, yes, it's very clever. Now go away. Please.

IMHO, the Who are the most problematic of the Sixties acts. As indisputably great as they were, there was always someone better at some element of their game. Lennon/McCartney, Jaggers/Richards, and Ray Davies were better songwriters than Townshend. The Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds did more with feedback and distortion. Townshend basically stole his earliest songs from the Kinks and his early guitar sound from Dave Davies, while Ray Davies wrote funnier lyrics and better rock operas (he even beat Townshend chronologically since Arthur was written, though not recorded, before Tommy). Hendrix, Beck, Jimmy Page, etc., were better guitarists than Townshend. Barrett, early Jefferson Airplane, the Mothers of Invention, and countless others did psychedelica better. Jagger, Lennon and McCartney were better singers than Daltrey. Charlie Watts was at least as good a drummer as Keith Moon. And the Stones (who were the Who's real competitors) were just flat out better.

That said, their early stuff was still pretty damn great.

As for the Watts v Moon argument - it's kinda pointless. Both of them contributed perfectly to the kind of material that their band was playing. Sure - few drummers could've played like Moon, but does that make him *better*? Just different, I'd say. Keith could never have complemented Keef n' BJ like Charlie did, but without Keith The Who wouldn't have had their explosive impact.

As for Watts vs. Moon...well. I'm with da Mod, yo. Moon could've kicked Watts ass from here to Whoville, but the point being made that they were both perfect for their band is true too. Just look at the Beatles versus the Who. Ringo wasn't really the greatest drummer ever, but if Keith was with the Beatles, he would've absolutely destroyed (which some might say is an improvement, but that's a different story) their sound.

My favourite Kinks single, "See My Friend", seems to get virtually no airplay whatsoever in the UK, so well done to Scott, though I suspect he was referring to a radio format that doesn't exist here.

Of course I would be very interested in what David the Huntsman could say to this thread since as some of us know he was very much the childhood Who obsessive.

2) wasn't 'see my friend' the first psychedelic song or something?

i think tad hits upon something when he implies that there was always something second-best about the group, moon and the great songs notwithstanding. was it reynolds who said that there's something unloveable about them?

give me "i can't explain"; the rest of those early singles might as well have been performed by the later kinks, which means that they can take a flying leap. and then give me "baba o'riley" and "won't get fooled again" and any of their really hard-rocking moments, their CLASSIC ROCK moments, if you will. at their core, they formed a great rock band and so it's a shame that they didn't indulge that side more.

I know what you mean Robin. Their early singles were more pithy, r&b- ish. As they went on, the hyped-up guitar powerchords came more and more to the fore, to the point of deliberate self-pastiche by the time of tracks like "In A Hand Or A Face" (1975).

Having said that, I have to disagree with you about their best period, preferring the years 1970-75. My favourite album is "Who's Next" which I think you should check out because, apart from anything else, you may find the background to it interesting. For what it's worth (nothing), it's probably my all-time favourite album (by anybody). "Quadrophenia" is also quite good, although over-repetitive musically. "The Who By Numbers" has some good songs on it, but you can hear Townshend's guitar playing changing as he starts to incorporate slightly funky American styles (rather derivative and dreary to my ears).

The worst thing about the Who, and something that worried me slightly even at the time, is the sense that everything is incredibly male- centred (and verging on the thuggish at times eg glorification of Moon's antics).

I've always wondered why the run of singles from "I Can't Explain" to "Pictures Of Lily" did very little in the US at a time when the American charts were at their most open ever towards British acts. My glib guess would be that, in the sense of irony and sexual innuendo and various allusions in the lyrics, they were very "English" in a sense that didn't really appeal to mainstream US audiences and radio programmers (as opposed to the stereotypical sense of Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, or Paul McCartney in "When I'm 64" mode). There's something slightly camp about the high-pitched backing vocals on "I Can't Explain", and it didn't have the undercurrent of de-ironised rockism that I can always detect in Mick Jagger (who is always a terrible disappointment to me when judged by the "campness" criterion).

David, given that I once constructed an entire email to you around the *context* of "Won't Get Fooled Again" (an awesomely brilliant song BTW) rather than the song itself, I can see what you mean about my finding the context of "Who's Next" interesting. And you are right; I feel extremely guilty that I haven't heard it.

Ihave no problems with Townshend's need to break free from conventional song and album structures - in the main it works, but I strongly disagree that Who's Next is their best work. IMHO the middle of this album is as weak (from My Wife to Going Mobile) as the rest (Baba/Bargain/Love ain't.../Behind Blue../Won't Get...) is monumental. If pushed I could let My Wife through for the wierd brass stabs, but I can't accept that The Song is Over/Getting in Tune/Going Mobile are worth anything. Townshend seems to be trying to wrestle the sons away from Daltrey - either by taking over the vocals, or by chucking in key shifts that aren't needed (The Song is Over). It feels like he's still trying to get to whatever "Lifehouse" was supposed to be Also, two songs *about* songs or using songs as metaphors is pretty damn close to bands writing songs about being in bands. Daltry's leather-lunged vocals get pretty close to unpleasant also, again the tension between him and Townshend seems to come to the fore - it's like he's trying too hard to outdo Pete's reedy whine when he really doesn't need to try AT ALL. I much prefer Rog's R+B voice of 1964-7. So "Who's Next" is fatally flawed in my book, but still clearly essential for the 5 good tracks. My Search would include all the singles mentioned above, Live At Leeds, Who Sell-Out, BBC Sessions (Fantastic!), and I'd Destroy everything after Keith. The truth is that the rot set in in 1971 though.

Well it depends if you like Townshend's vocals or not. I do, so I have no complaint. In fact Townshend's demo of "Pure & Easy" (on his solo album "Who Came First") is much better than the Who's version, sung by Daltrey (to be found on the "Odds & Sods" compilation and the remastered/repackaged CD of "Who's Next"). I have often wondered though what the criteria were for lead vocal parts being assigned to Townshend.

...or by chucking in key shifts that aren't needed (The Song is Over). It feels like he's still trying to get to whatever "Lifehouse" was supposed to be...

Of course "Who's Next" was something of a rescue job after the failed attempt to make a coherent double album/conceptual work of "Lifehouse". So "Song Is Over", which I love btw, is very much a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and can seem confusing because its intended context is missing.

>>> IMHO the middle of this album is as weak (from My Wife to Going Mobile) as the rest (Baba/Bargain/Love ain't.../Behind Blue../Won't Get...) is monumental.

But... well, that's quite a bit of Monumentality. For me the first two tracks alone justify the enterprise. Monumental indeed.

>>> If pushed I could let My Wife through for the wierd brass stabs,

Hey - those weird brass stabs!! And what about that vast menacing undercurrent of brass as the song heads out?

>>> It feels like he's still trying to get to whatever "Lifehouse" was supposed to be.

Well - it was Daltrey (!) who said that the greatness of the LP maybe came from the unrealized 'conceptualism' behind it - from the failure, but residual presence, of Lifehouse. Interesting, I think - more perceptive than I'd expect from the old trout.

>>> Also, two songs *about* songs or using songs as metaphors is pretty damn close to bands writing songs about being in bands.

This ought to be a thread: songs about songs - search & destroy...

And the absurd lyrics.

Plus, they rock. Live at Leeds is just so fun for the power chords and crazy drumming.

The one post-71 thing you should definitely check out is Odds & Sods. There singles/B-sides thing that has some great moments, many dating from the period you like best (also some more classic rock stuff like "Long Live Rock," but hey.)

As for "A Quick One" - it seems fairly fashionable to riducule the Moon songs and Daltrey's "See My Way", all of which are in fact ace and a nice counterpoint to Townshend's 'before your very eyes' transformation from Mod-man (Run, Run, Run, So Sad About Us) to concept-man (A Quick One). That makes "The Who Sell Out" the best next step, IMHO.

But my god, the remaster of My Generation sounds perfect to me. It pops and cracks whereas the crap mono version clanged and fizzed. It sounds so good cranked up, and having all the B-sides together is revalatory (some of them were actually meant to be released on the original album, until they were encouraged to write some more originals). "Heat Wave," "I'm A Man," "Shout And Shimmy," "Anytime You Want Me" are all great. Check out Daltrey's a-capella version of "Anytime You Want Me." He was already a really strong singer, rivalled only by The Small Faces' Steve Marriott. I'd go so far as to say it's the ONLY Who album that's listenable all the way through. Later singles are generally perfect, but otherwise, Townsend over reaches and loses what made The Who so exciting -- the immediacy of their hooks, the surprisingly pretty melodies that were always given an explosive beat-down by Moon before they've overstayed their welcome.

I didn't know there was a special edition of My Generation. I think I only have the Mono one, and haven't played it in about 10 years.

Never bettered "The Who Sellout" though.

Any one of youz up in this bitch down with the Mike Post Theme, from Endless Wire? If not, Who fans are in for a treat. that is one heckuva song, people. Geez.

What a perfect song that is. Best thing they've done since...yeah, I'll say it, best song they've done since "Who Are You."

You're being too conservative. Best song since Quadrophenia.

I'm not yet ready to rank it above the stuff on The Who By Numbers...but I will say it's easily as good as anything on there.

There comes a time in every little punk's life when he has to write a song for his common law wife...

...reads almost as a continuation of some of the stuff off Quadrophenia. I would have preferred more fleshed-out songs on the "Wire and Glass" section to the sketchy "mini-opera", as some of the themes were pretty engaging. This song is one of the keepers, though.

I just got out of the hospital after five days cuz of a stupid and irrelevant leg infection and treated myself to the "Who at Kilburn Live 1977" DVD. Damn, is it awesome. The bonus 1969 disc is the "Leeds" boiler suit Who, fresh off Woodstock and on fire. Any idiot who doesn't think Townshend can play has to hear "Young Man's Blues" which is essentially the Who trying to kill the audience. Moon is utterly ridiculous and awesome, it almost feels like his drumming is digitally edited in with CGI because it is so fucking unreal. But there is a reason it is named "Kilburn '77"...

Fast forward 8 years. They hadnt played together in a year. What you get is every dude in the Who hating every other guy (not including Keith, who wanted the other 3 to love him). It's prime Townshend, who literally wants to shut the show down midway through, because he thinks it sucks. He's wrong of course, because the Who at Odds is the Who in top form, and the Who is even better when Townshend is pissed off, which he takes to Blackmore-esque extremes here. Check "My Wife" when he throws an equalizer and 3 cups of brandy at his guitar tech. He is unbearably pissed, which leaves the other 3 to react in their typical ways: Daltrey is preoccupied about thinking where he is going to file for unemployment in the morning; Moon is trying to be Pete's puppy dog and not get in trouble; and a totally wasted Entwistle (RIP Ox-you were the best) doesnt give a flying fuck and plays his ass off and plays possible the greatest bass solo in recorded history on "Dreaming from the Waist".

What a fucking awesome DVD. I hope Sara Sara Sara, the biggest Who fan on these boards, has this.

Wow! I actually managed to find a decently titled Who thread in the search engine. What a miracle! I thought about starting a thread for this song, but I held out and searched some more. Hope you're happy mods that I didn't start a new thread. God forbid I override the stupid search engine which doesn't actually work all that well for Who threads, let me remind you. I already started a thread awhile back about how much it drives me crazy when I can't find Who threads on ILM when I want to freaking talk about this band, okay? In fact, the only sane way a person can even find that thread now is if they put "bimble" in the search, and I fixed it that way because I just didn't know how else to fix it. But I rest my case. Good luck finding the "Endless Wire" thread, though! God, that one is impossible to find. I'd love for anyone to prove me wrong, though, and tell me exactly how they did it.

Now here's what I want the topic of my pretend thread to be, this song "Who Are You?" right? The album this comes from is the only Who album I've never owned, no lie. Why? Because I tried to listen to it in the store when I was in the midst of my big Who buying spree, and I didn't much like it. But I still like this song, and I've heard the earlier demo version of it somewhere on my Townshend boxset thing or other and it seems to me he'd hit an unexpected pot of gold here in his songwriting at the time. As good as earlier Who? Probably not, but I love it anyway, for what it is.

Is it this one. Bimble? I did it by typing "Endless Wire" and searching for posts.

"The Who to release new album in umpteen years."

If not, here are all mentions of "Endless Wire" on ILX. There are only a few pages of them.

Oops: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/FullTextSearchControllerServlet?terms=%22Endless+Wire%22&offset=0&searchtype=text&startdate=&enddate=&artefact=messages&idtype=null&sortorder=Relevance&boardid=41

Also, you want SISTER DISCO

Bimble is so happy right now he's out of words to express it.

No, see, I feel I should be able to search the words with quotes around them "Endless Wire" and come up with at least something, but it gives me nothing at all. As I said before, if you don't remember that word "umpteen", you're fucked.

How did you get the next set of results exactly?

That is what I did... Maybe you're missing changing "Threads" to "Posts". Threads just looks for thread titles with "Endless Wire" in it, posts looks in the text of individual posts.

To get the next set of results, go to the bottom and click "Next".

The reason you're getting no results for Endless Wire threads is that there aren't any thread titles with Endless Wire in them.

Hahahhaha but DUDE don't you think there should be a THREAD with Endless Wire in the title? I mean thanks for the advice, I understand, I've taken this advice to heart, and I won't forget it, and I'm not being ungrateful, but REALLY...shouldn't there be a thread? Haha.

Look, I've just decided I have to rip a very old goth LP from vinyl now that has nothing to do with the Who. So I must leave for awhile. Thanks very much for your help.

i love this song so much and can't really find anything else like it in the who back catalogue (can't believe i posted to this thread in may 2001 jesus):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7SliN-82P0

The Scoops and Rough Mix veer more into this territory, if memory serves. Also half of all Yo La Tengo songs sound like this as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0duuXQPi0

The picture of the Who Sellout is a bit misleading on this, as it only came as an extra on the CD issue. It dosen't really fit in with that LP. Nevertheless, one of their finest moments.

I saw the Who in '89. Always loved them.

This is a song I'd somehow overlooked until quite recently (also a bonus track on the CD):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkibmgLoRa0

the bonus tracks on that cd are super great. some of my favorite who moments

this is awesome! live at tanglewood 1970. whooooooooooooweeeeee. guitar heaven, man. for realz.

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-who/concerts/tanglewood-july-07-1970.html

stormy and gorg need to listen to this show. "water" will slay you.

"Apologies mean nothing when the damage is done
But you can't switch off my loving like you can't switch off the sun"

The way they pull off this line is fantastic. Until that point the song remains kinda hazy: there's been a break-up and the narrator is sad about it. But there's something out of whack: why just say that you're sad in such a majestic way? And then this coupled comes, and it's the payoff: it's not really a break-up, because his love is cosmically strong: that's how how strong his love is. But that won't get you back again. I love how the bass swells in the last third of the song after the payoff couplet (I guess it's a bridge?), as though with articulation his love is growing stronger yet. There are lots of little touches to love about the song: the weird way the voices are mixed together: I guess it's Daltrey on lead vocal but it's mixed with at least one other voice, sometimes a little out of time with each other. And after the payoff line, the fusing is done in a way that their individual identities are clouded (whose love are we talking about? not just a person's but a band's, a multiplicity's? no wonder it's so strong!). And the guitar harmonics, just little flourishes here but to be able to use hooks so great as just a flourish reveals such confidence.

just a q: did they play this song on the 1970 tour? I'll look it up but if any of you have recommendation of boots where they pull it off I'm all ears.

So Sad About Us is my favorite Who song. So epic, so orchestral, so wonderful!!

It's my favourite Middle 8, ever. The final 8 bars, with the harmonies, are also astounding

"this is awesome! live at tanglewood 1970. whooooooooooooweeeeee. guitar heaven, man. for realz."

Video exists of the Tanglewood show, parts of which Ive seen. And yes, its incredible.

"Go To The Mirror Boy": this redeems ten minutes of "Underture" and then some: the "ooh, I wish I knew" singing in particular is stunning.

this is awesome! live at tanglewood 1970. whooooooooooooweeeeee. guitar heaven, man. for realz.

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-who/concerts/tanglewood-july-07-1970.html

stormy and gorg need to listen to this show. "water" will slay you.

Listen? Fuck man, I want to SEE it - check this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbk5xXHqShI

A very young Who turn up in this 1965 French documentary about the Mod scene in the UK. http://www.ina.fr/video/CPF86651489/les-mods.fr.html

If anything, you owe it to yourself to fast forward to the 18 minute point.

http://www.uncut.co.uk/pete-townshend-issues-statement-on-one-direction-twitter-storm-news

"No! I like the single. I like One Direction. The chords I used and the chords they used are the same three chords we've all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry made it clear that fancy chords don't mean great music – not always. I'm still writing songs that sound like Baba O'Riley – or I'm trying to!. It's a part of my life and a part of pop's lineage. One Direction are in my business, with a million fans, and I'm happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I'm just relieved they're all not wearing boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets. The funniest thing is that in Canada this year I met with Randy Bachman once the leader of GUESS WHO who told me that he not only copied Baba O Riley for their hit You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, but he even called his band after us. Why would I not be happy about this kind of tribute?"
Read more at http://www.uncut.co.uk/pete-townshend-issues-statement-on-one-direction-twitter-storm-news#YZFzc4jqGk7Qbg8w.99

Fine by me. Whatever. But who is he talking about re "boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets"?

http://www.citizenthought.net/images/SGandPete.jpg
http://lynnrockets.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/who_union_jack.jpg

Oh, ok. So he was talking about himself. I thought he was talking about like, I dunno, Devo and maybe Oasis or someone ultra-British like that.

I think he's being general. Like, "it's fine if One Direction's song sounds a bit like my song, at least they're not also dressing like us, too."

It kinda sounds like he's making fun of his own younger self's sense of fashion too.

I'm happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I'm just relieved they're all not wearing Nazi uniforms and dying in Vegas hotel rooms after cocain binges.

I'm sure One Direction's manager is relieved as well.

was that pic above taken with some kind of special nose-elongating lens?

what is "baba o'riley" about "you ain't seen nothing yet"? the two-note chorus riff?

Yeah the verse riff in "Baba" is the same as the chorus riff in "Ain't Seen Nothin Yet". More of a three-note riff. Always wondered who copied who (I'll see myself out)

The One Direction song is a direct rip of Baba O Reilly, even down to the drums. Its so close that i assumed that had been done with Townshend's consent

50 years! new album on the away, and a long goodbye?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-who-reveal-first-dates-of-50th-anniversary-tour-20140630

"more prog rock than pub rock"

I'm a little dubious that they'll come up with a new record, but yeah, I'll totally go see them again.

"Let's not kid ourselves. We will always sell more tickets if we play the hits…There might be 40,000 total people in America who want to hear 'Slip Kid.' That won't be enough to put us on the road. That's the problem."

If you can play 'Sea and Sand', you can play Slip Kid, guys.

At yesterday's press conference, Pete said "We could do 'Dogs Part 2,' we could do 'Dogs Part 1,' we could do 'Now I'm A Farmer'..."

Pure bullshit, just for laughs.
Seriously, just weave in a couple- at $100/ticket and beyond I'd love to hear something unexpected.
Water, Naked Eye, even Athena for god's sake

They still did "Naked Eye" at a handful of '06 shows.

In '99-'00 they really opened up the catalog: "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere," "The Relay," "I Don't Even Know Myself," "Happy Jack," "Getting In Tune" and a few others.

But yeah, if it's just the early hits, and the usual suspects from Tommy, Who's Next, and Who Are You, I'll be pissed.

And at yesterday's press conference they played "The Kids Are Alright"!

Maybe I'll dummy up a wishlist playlist just for fun. I mean, It's not like I need to hear nothing but the deepest of deep cuts, and god know's I'd be pumped for Won't get fooled again over a stadium sound system, but yeah, I just don't see the point of a hits and nothing but tour.

yeah it's pretty frustrating that someone with that much money and cultural capital can see the end of their career on the horizon and not feel like they have the option of playing whatever the fuck they want in some context or another. at this point i feel like all they really owe anyone is to make whatever album they want, play whatever setlist they want.

Also, if you don't think you can fill a stadium playing deeper cuts, then by all means, don't book stadiums. Cut some of the expense of mounting that size of a production and play a bit smaller of a venue.

looking at the article, it seems like they know they can play stuff like "Slip Kid," that just can't be the whole show.

although, Steely Dan did a 'rarities night' show a few years ago, Billy Joel has bandied about the idea of doing shows based around deep cuts. i'm sure there's a way to do it well, make it a special occasion.

I hope so. In any case I plan to see them. I kick myself for not going to see the Quadrophenia tour, considering how much I love that record.

I'd say Pete might be selling "Slip Kid" a bit short in the US, as I'd say that tune being a bit later recorded has had more of a shelf life on classic rock radio than some bigger 60s hit standards.

I know it's easy to take shots at these things, but honestly, didn't they already have a couple of farewell tours long ago? I saw them in '78, I think, at Maple Leaf Gardens, and even without Moon, that was special; saw them a second time four years later, and that was less special.

"Also, if you don't think you can fill a stadium playing deeper cuts, then by all means, don't book stadiums. Cut some of the expense of mounting that size of a production and play a bit smaller of a venue."

No doubt. Allman Brothers over the years have done those type of shows on and off at the Beacon Theater to stretch out and do different things. Clapton has also done some theme shows like that over the years at the Royal Albert Hall, which included the Cream reunion.

there's definitely a part of me that wishes they'd completely stopped after the drummer died just like Zep. but they didn't, and i'm ok with that, go ahead and be a band for 50 years, that's awesome. xp

Another vote for "Slip Kid."

didn't they already have a couple of farewell tours long ago?

There was only one tour that was specifically billed as their "last" or "farewell" tour, and that was in 1982. They did an awful "reunion" tour in 1989, with a 15-piece band, and they've been consistently active since their 1996 tour.

there's definitely a part of me that wishes they'd completely stopped after the drummer died just like Zep. but they didn't, and i'm ok with that, go ahead and be a band for 50 years, that's awesome. xp

― some dude, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 9:42 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the key difference is that Moon had become a liability. He could almost cut it live -- the imagination was there, the approach was sluggish -- but was nearly useless in the studio. As good a record as Who Are You is, it's not a standout Moon performance. When he died, it was seen in part as an opportunity to branch out in ways they couldn't have with Moon (and then Pete signed a solo deal, got overworked, became a heroin addict, yadda yadda). With Bonham, while he may have been down on himself near the end, he wasn't dragging the rest of the band down.

do they acknowledge the fact that roger daltrey has no voice anymore? they don't consider that an impediment?

I think if he literally had no voice whatsoever, if he opened his mouth and no sound came out, and yet he was still twirling the microphone around and mouthing the words, I would think they'd consider that to be something of an impediment.

But since his voice has aged better than those of his peers, it fortunately hasn't been an issue.

really? you think so? yeeesh, I think he sounds like a parched warthog.

I think if he literally had no voice whatsoever, if he opened his mouth and no sound came out, and yet he was still twirling the microphone around and mouthing the words, I would think they'd consider that to be something of an impediment.

the obligatory response must be: "I'd consider that an improvement"

I'll grant that if the most recent thing you heard Daltrey sing was "Athena," and then heard him in 2014, yeah, the difference might be a little jarring. But what he's lost in range he's gained in depth/breadth.

Slip Kid and Sea and Sand are both better than anything on Who Are You.

Would love to hear "Dogs" and "Now I'm a Farmer" and those silly 60s rarities live. But not sure I'd want to see an Entwistle-less Who...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFgqKbu2Fo

On that note, gonna repost the wonderful "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" that someone clued me into on a Who thread (maybe this one?) last year. Sounds very proto-Mercyful Fate this morning...

Slip Kid and Sea and Sand are both better than anything on Who Are You.

Slip Kid is probably my favorite in studio Townshend guitar performance

Always have to be clear about "in studio" vs. "live" with the Who because they were almost two different bands.

I was listening to "Slip Kid" this morning and yeah, what a tremendous Townshend performance on that.

Also, a fair amount of the demo ended up on the final record: the handclaps/percussion and piano are all Townshend.

New 50th-anniversary comp (yawn)...but it's got a new hat!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-who-record-be-lucky-their-first-new-song-in-eight-years-20140925

"Dogs"! That's a first for a non-box hits comp.

Good point! "Dogs" never gets enough love.

And in all honesty, I'm tremendously excited about the new song.

Ah, here it is:

http://youtu.be/7K_CGq-1u1E

I'd somehow never heard 'Dogs' until a couple of weeks ago - it really is a lovely song (xposts).

It features prominently on http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.co.UK/ "Who's for Tennis"

But you knew that already, right?

Stupid spelling corrector..

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.co.uk/

ooh hadn't seen that -- looks totally good.

Thanks for that link, Mark G. It's often claimed that the Who weren't as prolific as the Stones or Kinks in those days; they were, it's just that little of it was released at the time (and they were also on the road more than both of those bands combined).

Would love to see that blogger reconstruct the aborted 1972 Who album.

tbf nobody was as prolific as the Kinks in the late 60s

Lifehouse?

Look deeeeeeeper.......

I'd seen his Lifehouse reconstruction, and it's pretty spot-on, though I'd quibble with the inclusion of "I Don’t Even Know Myself," as it was originally earmarked for the aborted 1970 7 Foot Wide Car, 6 Foot Wide Garage EP (along with "Postcard," "Now I'm A Farmer," "Water," and "Naked Eye"), and wasn't part of the Lifehouse concept.

But they started work with Glyn Johns on a record in 1972 that was to include all the Lifehouse leftovers, plus "Long Live Rock," "Love Reign O'er Me," "Is It In My Head?" "Can't You See I'm Easy," and "Riot In The Female Jail" (the latter two of which may not have been recorded by the Who).

That new song is okay. Not great, but far from embarrassing. The main thing is probably that Daltrey isn't shrill.

Ha, yeah, but I don't think Daltrey is physically capable of being shrill at this point. I'm really digging the new one, and production-wise it's streets ahead of anything on Endless Wire.

His voice sounds strangely muffled. The song is actually quite catchy -- I played it twice last night and I can still remember the chorus this morning.

I wish Mike Post Theme was on the greatest hits

Yeah, seriously; apart from "Who Are You" (the song), that's the best thing they've done since The Who By Numbers.

I downloaded that Who's for Tennis? LP (link a few posts above). How did I never notice "Glow Girl" before? The Who at their most brilliant. I bought Odds & Sods on vinyl 15 years ago, but I probably only played it once, and somehow "Glow Girl" slipped by me. Is it just the end of the song that makes its way into Tommy, or the whole song under another name?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH6se_YY8f0

yeahhh that who's for tennis thing is a perfect follow-up to the who sell out imo.

here's what townshend said re: glow girl and tommy

"I tried to write an archetypal rock single; the Shangri-Las type thing, the Jan and Dean type thing. The car crashes, the motorcycle goes over the cliff, 'Oh no! and then there's a little spoken part: 'and then I went to the cemetary and I prayed over his grave'. Well, it was a reincarnation song and it was about a plane crash and two kids on an aeroplane and they realize that the plane's crashing. The reincarnation ploy comes at the end, where you hear 'It's a girl, Mrs. Walker, it's a girl. When I came to write Tommy, I picked up that phrase and used it as the opening. Thats how Tommy became Tommy Walker, just because in this song which was worked on two years before, we had a little girl."
--Pete Townshend

otm, Who's For Tennis? would've been great. But the fact that it was never completed/released is typical Who: "Yeah, we could be like CCR, just constantly churning out brilliant singles/albums, but we're gonna hold this back, because instead, we're working on this HUGE STATEMENT that will CHANGE EVERYTHING AND/OR FALL FLAT ON ITS FACE." (Ditto their aborted 1972 album.)

They were fearless. Who's For Tennis? (and/or the planned-but-unreleased Fillmore East '68) likely would've raised their profile enough to have gotten them out of crippling ($500,000) debt at the time, but no, better to scrap those and spend six months recording this "rock opera" thing.

That was my guess, just a snippet, like how "Rael" is incorporated. Tommy's an album I never warmed to (except for "We're Not Gonna Take It"), so I don't know it well.

definitely prefer clever pop songwriter townshend to rock opera genius townshend.

I dunno, I don't think that distinction is necessary: his genius rock operas were constructed out of clever pop songs.

So much so that reversing your wording describes him perfectly: genius pop songwriter Townshend vs. clever rock opera Townshend.

otm

"Be Lucky" is embarrassing

definitely prefer clever pop songwriter townshend to rock opera genius townshend.

― tylerw, Saturday, September 27, 2014 7:20 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I prefer boiler-suited, amps to 11, blood on the stage and an 18 minute "generation" followed by Naked Eye and a massacre of the first three rows of patrons. Also: courvoisier

First performance of "A Quick One, While He's Away" in 44 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2vYqIssV8M

Haha, whoops, wrong clip...(happy birthday, Jimmy Lyons!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgrmcNCe4Ok

Lol

New Pete interview:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/whos-done-pete-townshends-ambivalent-farewell-20150507

I always feel very sad when I say this because I think I'm unusual in this respect. People don't really believe me. But I don't enjoy performing. I don't feel uplifted on the stage. I rarely have moments these days onstage when I go into what jazz musicians call "the zone." I rarely lose myself on the stage.

...

To wrap this up: Every night you begin the show by blasting into the opening notes of "I Can't Explain." It sure looks like you're enjoying yourself—

[Laughs] You don't believe me, do you! Nobody believes me. The best way to enjoy it is to laugh at it. It's fucking absurd, isn't it? It was absurd when I was fucking 20, it's even more absurd now I'm 70.

Complaining all the way to the bank.

He enjoys being on tour but he doesn't like playing, which at the very least is an original take.

Also the weird calling out/not calling out Robert Plant in equal measure.

Also the fact the Pete even kind of knows who Henry Rollins is (enough to causally mentioned him in an oft-hand way) blows my 16 yo mind

That is a great interview! Thing is, the musician doesn't necessarily need to enjoy performing or having that "in the zone" moment to give a good performance. In fact if he is bored w it he may end up playing/performing in an even more interesting way than otherwise.

I like what he said about John Paul Jones, wanting to hear him do cool keyboard stuff on a new Led Zeppelin album.

One would have thought 30 years ago that Townshend, no matter what depredation the act of recording and playing music for $$$ had undergone, would continue to be creative as it had been commonly understood during his peak era. I went to a press conference in 00, when JE was still alive, and when asked he said "how do you know I don't have any new music? Maybe I don't want you to hear it!" Fair enuff.

But after all this time, it is also fair to say that it appears that the only thing that he shares with the public, never mind his fans, is to go on tour as "the Who." that's it! doesn't he have anything else on his mind? so what if you don't make as $$$ when you make a record as 30-40-50 years ago! wouldn't you think he of all ROCK artists would consider such concerns to be irrelevant? (nine years ago was Endless Wire, which I invite anyone to say was really good, but when I heard it, it seemed a transparent and uninspired effort to do shit for Roger, who truly is not the brightest bulb and unlike Pete has nothing except for the Who.

(nine years ago was Endless Wire, which I invite anyone to say was really good

Endless Wire was really good -- better than It's Hard, better than Face Dances, better than Who Are You (with the exception of the title song there). "Mike Post Theme" is as definitive/defining a Who song as anything they've recorded (as the Who or otherwise) since 1973.

I think Psychoderelict and Endless Wire are the only new albums Townshend did after the Who first reformed in 1989. He of course did the work with the Tommy musical, which was a pretty big success in an arena where few rock musicians would ever venture to follow. While novel, it wasn't new material.

It's kind of a shame that Townshend never did more work with Gilmour, I think they could have probably done each other some good in such a project. White City is a pretty good record and whose sound has held up quite well I think.

I think Psychoderelict and Endless Wire are the only new albums Townshend did after the Who first reformed in 1989.

Don't forget The Iron Man! Although, that actually came out at the same time as when the 1989 tour started.

He of course did the work with the Tommy musical, which was a pretty big success in an arena where few rock musicians would ever venture to follow. While novel, it wasn't new material.

Townshend doing Tommy as a Broadway musical was basically a "No, like THIS, you idiots!" to the Broadway establishment that had been pooping out nothing but awful "Rock" "Musicals." Townshend lent the form (such as it was) some depth (such as it was). Unfortunately, a pit orchestra of Professional Session Musicians is, by definition, going to completely miss everything that made Tommy great (and Tommy was only great in its 1969-1970 live performances).

It's kind of a shame that Townshend never did more work with Gilmour, I think they could have probably done each other some good in such a project. White City is a pretty good record and whose sound has held up quite well I think.

Yeah -- not only is White City underrated, but it's aged a lot better than The Iron Man or Psychoderelict. Townshend should've had Chris Thomas produce those two as well.

I suspect that Townshend is secure enough that he doesn't need/want whatever validation might result from releasing new music. He seems pretty content to stockpile. And unlike, say, Jimmy Page, whose interviews are always teased with, "Oh, just you wait! I have so many mysterious, interesting, fog-machine-esque projects in my cauldron!", I actually believe that Townshend has a massive stockpile of unreleased new work.

Gonna see (for too much money) the 50th aniv tour gig near me (cuz wife has never seen them before)

whaddya know, Townshend just recorded some new stuff:
http://petetownshend.net/news/pete-townshend-records-new-tracks-in-nashville

i really love their almost motorik take on "dancing in the streets" from the bbc sessions. is there other stuff like that out there?

There is!

Their version of "Under My Thumb":
http://youtu.be/wIjO2x2Js9g

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-roger-daltrey-pot-smoke-who-concert-20150522-story.html

By MIKAEL WOOD
contact the reporter

The kids are alright, according to Roger Daltrey, unless they're into marijuana.

That seemed to be the message, anyway, Wednesday night at New York's Nassau Coliseum, where the Who frontman, 71, reportedly threatened to stop a concert by his band after smelling pot smoke near the stage.

Saying he's allergic to the smoke, the singer told the crowd his voice was shutting down, according to Newsday, and that he wouldn't go on unless the smoker stopped.

"It's your choice," Daltrey says in an expletive-laden YouTube video that appears to have been shot at the show. "I can't do anything about it. I'm doing my best."

Then Daltrey's bandmate, Pete Townshend, suggests another way of ingesting the drug.

The Who is on tour commemorating the 50th anniversary of its debut album, "My Generation." It's scheduled to play Anaheim's Honda Center on Sept. 16 and Staples Center on Sept. 21.

here is more for that Newday link:

There were tense moments at Nassau Coliseum Wednesday night, as The Who's singer Roger Daltrey threatened to walk off the stage if someone smoking marijuana near the stage didn't stop.

Daltrey has a well-known allergy to marijuana smoke that affects his throat and singing voice, a condition the band even emphasized during the informational slides it projected before its set.

The smoke's impact was almost immediate on his voice, which went from crystal clear and potent for the opening "I Can't Explain" to something rougher and more limited during "I Can See for Miles." "My voice is shutting down," he said, apologizing.

A few songs later, though, Daltrey had seemingly recovered. He hit the towering notes of "Love Reign O'er Me" with no problem and his voice got stronger from there, matching Pete Townshend's inventive, ferocious guitar playing.

If "The Who Hits 50!" really is The Who's farewell tour, Daltrey and Townshend are certainly going out rocking, with a two-hour set that traces their journey from jangly mod-influenced pop to ambitious artists crafting detailed rock operas to rock standard-bearers. Each had his moments to excel. Daltrey powered his way through the selections from "Tommy." Townshend crafted new approaches to "Eminence Front," which picked up a jazzier vibe, and "Squeeze Box" (now with more banjo).

But the biggest moments came when they were both pushing hardest -- the powerful one-two punch of "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," with Townshend in all his windmilling glory, and Daltrey playing every bit of the mic-twirling frontman.

They seemingly have more backup than ever, with help from guitarist Simon Townshend, bassist Pino Palladino, drummer Zak Starkey, keyboardists John Corey and Loren Gold and musical director Frank Simes. All that musical firepower made "A Quick One, While He's Away," which Townshend described as their first rock opera, an unexpected treat, starting with the four-part harmonies and winding through a dizzying range of rock styles.

Townshend's stage banter was also in rare form, noting that he had made some decisions since turning 70 on Tuesday. "From now on I will only tell the truth," he said, adding that he had a very English sense of humor. "How do I feel about you? I'd better not say."

informational slides it projected before its set

WTF?!
Monty Python instructor voice: "You are about to see a rock band. Do not be alarmed."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug8nHaelWtc

lol

When I last saw them, in 2012, Daltrey joked about it near the end. "Bring brownies instead!" He said that his pot smoke allergy was new, and had taken him by surprise (and I think said something like, "Good thing I wasn't allergic in the 60s!"). But sounded fine during the show.

The Who 3-28-81 Rockpalast

That is a prety good show if you find it. It's got really good production. The Who Mk. II put on a pretty energetic performance some of the performances of less popular numbers like The Quiet One and Drowned are highlights of the gig.

I was at this show — seats behind the stage, unfortunately. I remember being stunned when they kicked off with "My Generation."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QACpLZUuzs

Sunday's show was wonderful. Daltrey sounded fairly gravelly, but didn't struggle with pitch too much, at least in the mid/lower registers. He even nailed the "best I ever had" line once or twice in Bargain, to everyone's astonishment. But he also did the "sing this line!"/holding-the-mic-out-to-the-audience thing a lot -- he didn't do that at all on the other 10 Who shows I've seen. And the scream at the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again" was a recording of the original paired with whatever he could muster live.

Townshend and Starkey were on fire, particularly on "Bargain" and "Sparks." Pete's been into this insane fingerpicking thing, with distinctly Coltrane-esque phrasing, since around 2000 or so, and it's never less than thrilling.

Interesting, last I saw the Who looked like Pete delegated a lot to Simon and had trouble getting his own fingers to do the tough stuff, like the solo in Fooled Again.

Simon was barely audible, at least from where I was sitting. Pete clearly enjoyed all of his solo moments, particularly on "Eminence Front."

Daltrey has viral meningitis, tour postponed:
http://thewho.com/postponed-2015-north-american-tour/

The live mentioned above seems to be coming out in a couple of weeks.

Any live Who pre-Tommy that is recorded well would be cool to have. I guess the My Generation is even longer than the Live at Leeds one.

The Who - Live at the Fillmore East 1968

Disc: 1
1. Summertime Blues
2. Fortune Teller
3. Tattoo
4. Little Billy
5. I Can't Explain
6. Happy Jack
7. Relax
8. I'm A Boy
9. A Quick One
10. My Way
11. C'mon Everybody
12. Shakin' All Over
13. Boris The Spider

Disc: 2
1. My Generation

Sounds rad. They do "Little Billy!"

It doesn't get talked about so much anymore, but 'You Better, You Bet' really is classic.

I concur, along with "Eminence Front".

'Eminence Front' is maybe my favorite Who songs and is definitely among their best.

You look at their discography and the tunes that came out on Odds and Sods and live records, there definitely is a lost Who album in there.

It probably would have been a good release valve for the band to have put out some other records that were just collections of songs that didn't have to be tied to a big theme. Entwistle's tunes recorded by the Who would have been even better. Those tunes mixed with some of the more acoustic music Pete did outside the band could have made a couple of interesting LPs.

the fillmore east bootleg is a super classic. i don't think my copy had "my generation" but "shakin' all over" and "relax" are monsters.

Been listening to the new Fillmore East set since I got it last Friday, and it is indeed a monster.

First, the bad points: Moon's drums are very poorly miked. Sometimes you can hear one bass drum, sometimes two, sometimes none, and sometimes the bass drum sounds like the snare drum. Apparently, this was recorded to 4-track and not monitored at all during the show/recording. From photos I've seen, and the recording backs it up, there's mics on each bass drum, one under the snare (which means you get a wax-papery snare sound, with none of the crack -- Papas Fritas did this same thing on their first record), and one overhead. The problem is, with the toms unmiked, most of Moon's playing has these awkward holes. His toms were integral to his approach to orchestration, and with them missing, the drum sound is anemic. This is reinforced by a moment about 2:33 into "Shakin' All Over," where Pete and John drop out and you can hear Moon's kit distantly, but clearly -- it's an incredible and frustrating moment where he is completely raging, and his full power is briefly on display, but soon gets swallowed up again by the lack of proper miking.

So why was the Who so poorly served by a live recording while Cream -- with a similarly huge drum kit -- flourished? Cream sold vastly more records than the Who, and crucially, Atlantic knew what they had in Cream and weren't averse to spending a few bucks to get good live recordings. Decca was still run by, as a Who associate put it at the time, "guys with crew-cuts who looked like they were in the CIA." The idea of spending a couple thousand dollars on a live recording for a band with one top 10 single and one top 50 album was likely a non-starter with Decca.

All that said, the 33-minute "My Generation" here is like John Fahey, Charles Mingus, Keiji Haino, and Milford Graves covering "Sister Ray." I am only slightly exaggerating.

spies they're come and gone
the story travels on
the only quiet place is inside your soul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFPC1leh4LI

How I'd rank their hits.

Great list — “Dogs” and “The Relay” never get enough love. (And while I’d rate “You Better, You Bet” slightly higher, I much prefer Townshend’s demo.)

As for By Numbers, I dunno if I can convince you to give it a concentrated listen, but my take on it is that he/they have given up. They tried to bring the audience to this state of interaction that went beyond the usual audience-performer relationship (Lifehouse), it failed, and they witnessed the devolution of concerts (particularly in the US) into celebrations of firecrackers and quaaludes. By Numbers was originally intended to be their final album, signaling defeat. In doing so, they found their feet as an ensemble in the studio for the final time, sounding as confident and focused — arguably moreso — than on Quadrophenia.

Who Are You, on the other hand, feels like a forced last gasp, overstuffed arrangements trying (and failing) to mask the deficiencies of the writing. “905” is one of Entwistle’s best songs, and I’ll rep for the title track, “Sister Disco,” and even “Love Is Coming Down.” But replace “Guitar and Pen” and one of the other Entwistle songs with “No Road Romance” and “Empty Glass” (both recorded in ‘78 by Pete, Keith, and John, but rejected by the band for inclusion on the album), and it’d be a much-improved near-classic.

Good post

I kinda think the Who might have been served by doing some other projects in-between the big rock operas. Never quite understood why Daltrey was not interested in singing some of Entwistle's tunes, which I understand was the case. Tommy kind of overtook everything and then it was trying to one up that record, which was really kinda impossible. Maybe with a more modern sensibility about putting out records, they might have done a bit more low key and just different.

They definitely left a decent LP of tunes behind between Tommy and Who's Next, even beyond some of the other Lifehouse tracks.

Then again, I think the money got so big and it got going so fast, it was probably just hanging on to keep going on.

As for By Numbers, I dunno if I can convince you to give it a concentrated listen, but my take on it is that he/they have given up. They tried to bring the audience to this state of interaction that went beyond the usual audience-performer relationship (Lifehouse), it failed, and they witnessed the devolution of concerts (particularly in the US) into celebrations of firecrackers and quaaludes. By Numbers was originally intended to be their final album, signaling defeat. In doing so, they found their feet as an ensemble in the studio for the final time, sounding as confident and focused — arguably moreso — than on Quadropheni

You're not the first person in the last few days on social media to urge me to listen to By Numbers. I'm surprised -- I loathe "Squeeze Box."

"Squeeze Box" is an outlier.

I bet I haven't listened to By Numbers in 25 years and I still think of "How Ever Much I Booze", "Success Story", and "How Many Friends" as some of my favorite 70s 'Oo tunes

What a great and utterly fucked up band

Or that wonderful Townsend ukulele gem on Numbers, The Blue, the Red and the Grey

i've always kinda looked over by numbers, but slip kid is great and i got new appreciation for imagine a man when i saw em play it in concert a few months back.

slip kid is also very obviously what prince was thinking about when he first played the riff for 'let's go crazy'

Relay and Dogs are fantastic. But while there are obviously more gems to be found in the Who's first six albums as opposed to those that came after, there's still the odd masterpiece - I especially adore Eminence Front (which didn't make Alfred's list).

this revive made me think of how all these huge boomer rock acts - the Who, the Kinks, Pink Floyd - were all on the same page in terms of thinking of what is essentially musical theater as being the future of rock. What a weird idea to take hold, kind of backward-looking rather than forward-looking ie let's incorporate rock into this existing format (which imo is actually kind of lame), and also an idea that turned out to be very wrong.

Well, I think when it starts with, say, "A Quick One (While He's Away)," it's very much in the vein of just general interest in an expanded songwriting artistry. When it evolves into Tommy, I think of it more in terms of just the realization of "Hey, maybe I can do this." I'm not sure the impulse itself to do a full, theatrical-length project as being backward - there are plenty of times throughout history where someone's taken an old idea and done something modern with it.

Though I agree that with something like the Kinks' Soap Opera, it feels like a stale reliance on a very old formula.

sure, and "doing something modern" with an old idea (in this case, a story told in song, onstage, with characters) sure looks like what these guys were trying to do. But at the same time it seems to me that musical theater in general was *not* something that held much appeal to rock audiences. Like, most of these projects were not successful for one reason or another ("The Wall" and "Tommy" being the obvious big exceptions). In my head I wanted to link this resistance to what it turns out audiences actually wanted - which in the modern age has morphed into popular musicians as cult-of-personality avatars, audiences like to think they're following the real life of Taylor Swift (or whoever) and that her career is essentially about granting us voyeuristic insights into her shenanigans.

like, it turns out we didn't want rock stars to tell us a story, we wanted them to LIVE the story

or to put it another way: the story/legend of the weirdos in the Who is more interesting/engaging than the story of Tommy.

For me, the story of Tommy is not so much the point. The point is the artistry. Nevertheless, the appeal of it at its best, things like "1921" and "Go to the Mirror!" and "Sally Simpson," totally relate (for me, anyway) to these songs' relationship to the narrative! I don't care so much about the appeal of the narrative in total - these songs move me anyway.

well, I'm not discussing their relative quality as works, more of how these acts were charting a course that pop/rock didn't really follow

and they *really* tried to make it happen - especially Townsend and Davies, who wrote, what three or four of these kinds of things apiece (at least)?

Boy, The Who By Numbers is tough going for me. I think if I were to sit and listen to the whole thing, I'd find quite a few things that are really well done musically, but I mostly leave it at resignation to the perception that the guy who wrote all that wonderful music on The Who Sell Out had taken an aesthetic path that is less appealing to me.

Well, I think when it starts with, say, "A Quick One (While He's Away)," it's very much in the vein of just general interest in an expanded songwriting artistry.

Before that, "I'm a Boy"...

The song was originally intended to be a part of a rock opera called 'Quads' which was to be set in the future where parents can choose the sex of their children. The idea was later scrapped, but this song survived and was later released as a single

Kit Lambert was the son of a classical composer after all.

Criss-crossing with Tommy and such was Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, which at the time was seen as theatre bending towards rock, and was even more popular. Probably a good bit of audience overlap. I think I even recall Evita being called a rock musical.

it is true that the Who, Floyd and the Kinks seemed to go all in with rock-as-musical-theater in the 70s, and I think it was a shitty development (I strongly dislike Tommy and the Wall, only like Quadrophenia and have never listened to any of Davies' works as such in one sitting, only know individual tunes…and I guess Berlin fits in with this concept as well)…but apart from the fact that I am only now getting over my strong distaste for musical theater, it would seem to me that the problem is that one cannot simply listen to any of these records or others similarly inclined, pay attention to it like you would a book, a show or movie, not do anything else, and follow a story…none of these records individually have all the info you need to know what's going on… you need other ancillary/ adjacent/supplementary sources for that… I'm sure Townshend, Davies and Waters thought, "well this would be stupid to include all these plot points in the songs…" well fellas, maybe this whole idea is not so hot! You guys were supposed to oppose Broadway shit, not emulate it!

one cannot simply listen to any of these records or others similarly inclined, pay attention to it like you would a book, a show or movie, not do anything else, and follow a story

I think you just had to be REALLY high

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Gilbeys-Gin-Vodka-Rock-Opera-Mix/release/3328652

I think Townshend, under the influence of Kit Lambert, was definitely thinking in terms of Opera not Musical Theatre as such.

Am I the only one who likes Endless Wire?

I like it. I seem to recall it getting some measure of appreciation here when it was released.

I like it a lot.

Endless Wire is good-to-great. Easily better than the two ‘80s Who records (granted, not exactly a high bar).

I think Townshend, under the influence of Kit Lambert, was definitely thinking in terms of Opera not Musical Theatre as such.

Hair is bad or doesn’t make sense only if you think it it as a strictly “rock” musical. If you think of it more as, say, a funk musical, then you can begin to recognize its greatness, as did all the Galt MacDermot samplers.

I dunno, I can only think of two or three songs on the cast recording that have a toe dipped in “funk” (the title track, “Walking In Space,” “Colored Spade,” “The Flesh Failures/Let The Sunshine In”). And for me, those don’t approach the level of ‘68 Motown, Stax, Sly, the Impressions, or James Brown (among others).

The issue for me is less the rhythm section (which is great when the arrangements let them be great) and more the frantic and clumsy/cluttered orchestrations. Then there’s the horrible vocals and decidedly on-the-nose (to put it mildly) lyrics. A handful of decent instrumental moments in an otherwise execrable musical isn’t enough to redeem it.

revisiting endless wire - this album really is about ‘Mike Post Theme’ isn’t it

Delightful song

xps there's definitely something with many of these bands (most notably the Who and the Kinks but also the Beatles, Floyd etc.) harking back to pre-pop/rock traditions (music hall, vaudeville etc.) that were mainstays of British culture, and would have been part of most of these musicians' youths. Sergeant Pepper's is steeped in nostalgia for what was already becoming a lost world. I think of those big acts it was only the Stones who didn't do something in that line? Also worth noting that in Hollywood and for film audiences musicals were very popular right up until the end of the 60s. So this wasn't happening in a vacuum. But it's interesting that it now appears a cultural dead-end.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3r4byx
It's all here: The classical pastiche with a music hall delivery, a dirty joke that has become an epic. It's complex, thrilling and so much fun - everything the 60s were supposed to be, before people overreached and took themselves way too seriously.

it's a very long time since i listened to it on record (lol like 50 years or something) but iirc the LP version of e.g. my fair lady (1964) doesn't include much of the talking stuff, it's mostly just the songs --renedering it impossible to follow the story (and if not true of MFL this was p standard for musicals on record)

also every song on the my fair lady is better than any song on tommy or quadrophenia obviously and even sexy rexy in mfl >>> sexy rodge as a singer after c.1970

constant lambert didn't actually write any operas and was not -- if memory serves -- particularly enamoured of that kind of composed music (tho kit may have been, i don't think they saw eye-to-eye on the direction music should be taking)

I think of those big acts it was only the Stones who didn't do something in that line?

hah yes! probably best the Stones didn't continue down that particular path!

and another one from Between the Buttons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLAeFyltAdU

good god that is a hideous still

Like, most of these projects were not successful for one reason or another ("The Wall" and "Tommy" being the obvious big exceptions). In my head I wanted to link this resistance to what it turns out audiences actually wanted - which in the modern age has morphed into popular musicians as cult-of-personality

This is a really good thesis. The Sex Pistols ]were an opera, playing out in three acts and ending in murder/suicide and all that. Nirvana, Tupac and Biggie, etc.

ties into audiences valuing perceived authenticity too. they didn't want to witness a performance, they wanted it to *really happen* because they had fully subscribed to notions that privileged authenticity over artifice.

Cincinnati tragedy 40 years ago today.

new album out Friday also, which somehow hasn't leaked yet, even though some retailers got copies two weeks early. The three songs released frankly are the best things they've done in quite some time (certainly the best since Emminence Front) and word is that as an album it's the best since Quadrophenia. We'll see.

A Cincinnati TV station is airing an hour-long documentary about the tragedy tonight. Townshend, Daltrey, and manager Bill Curbishley are interviewed, and I believe this will be the first in-depth interview Townshend has done about Cincinnati since 1980 (when he said some profoundly insensitive things in an RS interview with Greil Marcus).

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/how-to-watch-wcpos-documentary-the-who-the-night-that-changed-rock

and word is that as an album it's the best since Quadrophenia. We'll see.

basically every album after Quadrophenia is 2 great songs and a bunch of shit I never want to listen to (TBF that's kind of true of much of the earlier catalogue as well)

album leaked finally, though it's out officially tomorrow. I spent some time with Endless Wire in anticipation and it's still about 25% of a really good album with some weird weird things on it that I just don't care about; but this is much more succinct and has a lot more of a punch. Really good, certainly didn't expect them to put something with this quality out at this stage.

basically every album after Quadrophenia is 2 great songs and a bunch of shit I never want to listen to (TBF that's kind of true of much of the earlier catalogue as well)

earlier catalogue is only 5 studio albums, and A Quick One is the only one that could plausibly be said of. and "A Quick One, While He's Away" alone counts for more than 2 great songs.

Endless Wire was very much half baked and the new one is a lot better than that but not great. akm is OTM

IMO the Who are an exceptional singles band until Tommy, which is, well, it's Tommy, you either like it or not; Who's Next is a monster of an album as is Quadrophenia, and then they're back to being a solid singles band.

Read the feature in the last Rolling Stone where Roger Daltrey talks about how he had to make the song about Grenfell less 'political' because he's a fucking Tory wanker.

Fuck off.

My main gripe with Endless Wire was the production. It sounded exactly how it was recorded: casually pieced together during occasional spare moments on tour. The least effective songs are the ones that try too hard to be "Who" songs, like "It's Not Enough" and "Black Widow's Eyes." But it's far better than the '80s records, and it's got at least two solid classics ("Mike Post Theme" and "Tea and Theatre"). All of the songs (except, weirdly, for "Mike Post Theme," which was too restrained) sounded much stronger on the late-'06/early '07 shows.

this record is indeed surprising me, its fairly good…but… there has been no Pete solo record since 93. Daltrey sounds better than I thought he would, but he huffs and puffs in such a way that It seems like Pete has to write suitable shit for RD. It seems to me that the people that would want to listen to the first songs Pete has released in 13 years would hold Chinese Eyes and Empty Glass in high esteem; the thick necked yahoos of the sort you saw in the audience for the 9/11 concert aren't gonna fuck with this anyway…Tarfumes, you are the most expert Who person on this board… aren't you a little disappointed that Pete doesn't feel like its worth his time to make a solo record? What is stopping him from doing a record just the way he wants it, not having to deal with RD vetoing references to Grenfell and insisting on these heroic songs that can't measure up to his 70s standards?

I can't blame Pete for being somewhat relieved to play with rhythm sections that don't fill up every possible space…Oh, this song "I'll be back" is Pete singing, it's lovely yacht-rock unlike anything I've heard him do…

I think I would have liked Endless Wire a lot more if it were a Pete solo album.

It seems to me that the people that would want to listen to the first songs Pete has released in 13 years would hold Chinese Eyes and Empty Glass in high esteem; the thick necked yahoos of the sort you saw in the audience for the 9/11 concert aren't gonna fuck with this anyway…Tarfumes, you are the most expert Who person on this board… aren't you a little disappointed that Pete doesn't feel like its worth his time to make a solo record? What is stopping him from doing a record just the way he wants it, not having to deal with RD vetoing references to Grenfell and insisting on these heroic songs that can't measure up to his 70s standards?

I can't blame Pete for being somewhat relieved to play with rhythm sections that don't fill up every possible space…Oh, this song "I'll be back" is Pete singing, it's lovely yacht-rock unlike anything I've heard him do…

of all the guys of his generation, for him to say "I shouldn't release solo music because a few albums didn't do as well as I would have liked several decades ago" seems contrary to what kind of artist he is —or was. He's different than his peers, in that he engages with new forms of popular music. He used to say that having to do use his energy for the Who was something of a prison, which is why Empty Glass and Chinese Eyes were so refreshing (I don't think White City, Iron Man and Psycho were at all refreshing, since he insisted on using the concept album conceit, which had run outta gas and sucked anyway). He can surely figure out a way to make a record that lives up to his previous solo standards and not lose $$$…he doesn't seem like Stevie Nicks or Sheryl Crow, who say "if I can't make tons of $$$ off of big studio productions beffitting my stature, I'm not making records any more."

But…I attended a Who press conference in 2000 where he said "how do you know I haven't made any music since '93? Maybe I don't want you to hear it!"

This song on the new record "Got Nothing to Prove' sounds like a demo from the 60s. Does it ring a bell, Tarfumes?

He's different than his peers, in that he engages with new forms of popular music.

*cough* McCartney *cough* Robert Plant

*cough* Michael Nesmith *cough*

*cough* Neil Young *cough*

I prefer Young's career in toto but Plant has by far led the most fecund life post-band; he's rarely embarrassed himself and us.

I actually haven’t heard the new one yet! I ordered the special deluxe vinyl dealie (because of course I did), and it hasn’t arrived yet. I’m holding off so my first listen can be immediately post-shrink-wrap removal.

And I suspect it was less the commercial flop in and of itself and more the tour and promotional slog he undertook (still his only solo tour) that didn’t seem to affect sales at all. He probably figured he’s just as happy making demos without having to be part of the industry, while releasing the occasional new song on a reissue. And he’s also said that he prefers sailing to making records anyway.

But I would argue that the audiobook of his autobiography (which he reads himself) is his best “solo album” since All The Best Cowboys.

xxxp

fair points re: Plant, McC, less so Young, but it's still Pete that tries to fit Taylor, Sheeran, Ariana and hip hop writ large into a perhaps ill-advised notion of "rock," not those guys (I suspect McC did the Rihanna/ Kanye thing cuz someone told him he should, and it was shitty anyway) Whereas R Waters is almost defiant in being ignorant of anything past 1975, barring Young and Dylan, hasn't even listened to Radiohead, more than anyone the Floyd standard bearers. Or Keef, who sneers with blackish-brown phlegm at anything past, like, Peter Tosh.

not gonna argue about the McCartney/Kanye/Rihanna collab re: quality but Macca and Plant have always struck me as true, dyed-in-the-wool, adventurous music fans, eager to dabble in new technology and approaches. Young eh idk that seems like a stretch, although he does like playing with younger guys from time to time. Waters and Keef are insular jerks afaict.

Jagger otoh probably exceeds Townsend in the "gotta be down with the kids" dept

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTF7T1Nw5OU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIwmJMqrco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV0kr-SASzM

shit is awful, obviously

(couldn't find the Biz Markie song...?)

Wasn't joking: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/monkees-michael-nesmith-vaporwave-714253/

I didn't think you were!

Nesmith is a true weirdo. always been curious about his solo records in the 70s but that stuff is impossible to find.

it's been my impression that Neil has pretty much no idea what's going on in music

including his own lol

NO ONE TELL NEIL ABOUT SOUNDCLOUD

that song on the new album "got nothing to prove" is clearly a Pete demo from the 60s: my friend who is as least a big Who expert as Tarfumes listened to it today, agrees that it must date from the Who's early period (barring some horn parts that must have been added recently) but has never heard of it… it ain't like I've been scouring the innuhnet for info about this record, but it appears that no outlets have mentioned that this thing has a Who curio previously unknown to stans…

This new record is otherwise worth a fair hearing from ILXors and I would be keen to hear what you guys think!

it appears that no outlets have mentioned that this thing has a Who curio previously unknown to stans…

Nesmith is a true weirdo. always been curious about his solo records in the 70s but that stuff is impossible to find.

Yeah, OG vinyl of those albums is pretty tough to find (and most, if not all of it, was pressed on Dynaflex yuck). Sundazed recently reissued the three First National Band albums, and there's also a new-ish import CD box of all six of the RCA albums, which from what I've sampled on Spotify--sound way better than the tinny earlier Cd twofers I have. There's also one of those "Original Album Classics" sets of the first five lps, but those are probably the old masters.

yea it's a 60's demo, I'm pretty sure I read that confirmed somewhere but it's obvious while listening to it that it is. Good song! It does seem like Pete has always had control of his demo vault and things rarely if ever leaked, and he's been fairly generous on putting things out, from the Scoop albums through the deluxe versions. Wonder how many other finished songs like this he has stuck away.

"But I would argue that the audiobook of his autobiography (which he reads himself) is his best “solo album” since All The Best Cowboys."

Maybe I'll give that a listen, I didn't read the book yet. I do like his writing, Horse's Neck is underappreciated. I'm a massive White City fan as well.

Wonder how many other finished songs like this he has stuck away.

I don't know about '60s demos -- there are some that I've only read about but haven't heard, like the rock opera about a rabbit that ruled the world, and the Quads opera, which "I'm A Boy" was part of. But regarding '90s-'10s demos, I understand there are tons. Like, several boxed-sets' worth. Supposedly, one or two new Scoop volumes are coming out next year, mostly of '90s-'10s demos.

I'm a massive White City fan as well.

I feel like that was the last big solo project of his where everything worked. It's not my favorite of his records, but it has its moments, and the film is surprisingly tight and effective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iFtg4JFgzE

Isolated Moon on Don’t get fooled! Insane! Great!

https://youtu.be/KOeAe_LXrt0

Find us the isolated drums for "Bargain." Then we'll talk.

Sadly, the multitrack masters for “Bargain” are lost.

I actually tried the new one from last year. I've had virtually no desire to hear new Who or Townshend music since forever - I didn't listen to them until the late '90s - but I remembered some good word-of-mouth so curiosity and yet-another-pandemic-evening-at-home got the best of me.

There's definitely some bad shit on here ("Beads on One String" and "I'll Be Back" - I'm not alone in my dislike, but I'm stunned to see some reviews lavishing praise on them). But it's actually not a bad album, it's fairly decent, and even two of the bonus tracks are pretty decent. I'm not sure if it's for anyone outside of the converted, but for the most part, it's a nice footnote to their legacy. If it's indeed their last studio LP, it's a respectable way to go out, unlike It's Hard.

Is it actually from two years ago? There is also a deluxe version from last year with a live part.

This album is kind of meta, isn’t it

i like endless wire too

Bird doing the work of the people. Thank you

The new record is about what I expected: starts strong, sags in the middle (birdistheword otm re: "Beads On One String"), then closes on two near-classics. "She Rocked My World" is probably my favorite song on the record, and I realized they really had a knack for choosing album closers. As with Endless Wire, there's a couple of songs where Pete shows he can write arena-ready anthems in his sleep, but probably shouldn't.

The production is much improved over Endless Wire, but the autotune futzing is a little distracting; one of the bonus tracks ("Danny And My Ponies," sung by Pete) is squarely in the uncanny valley between autotun as a tool and autotune as an effect. It's neither, and just sounds wrong.

The live acoustic set from early 2020 on the recent deluxe edition is killer, and as birdistheword said about the studio record, if that turns out to be their last live performance, it's a (more than) respectable way to go out.

The first Who I ever loved was Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy, and these days I find I really only love those early years, I guess up through Tommy. Never need to hear Who's Next again, and apart from "You Better You Bet" and "Eminence Front" I have no use for their post-Moon years at all. Gimme my mods, you can keep keep the sods.

I go back and forth on Who's Next, but basically agree.

I was talking to someone about this shift in recent years, where early Who and early Stones have sort of been steamrolled into relative obscurity compared to the '70s stuff. Like, when people generally think of the Who, I think they're thinking the arena rock sound of "Who's Next." When people think of the Stones, they're thinking of, like, "Brown Sugar," that sort of similar arena, Keith in open G riffing thing. The Beatles might have escaped this, but I'm trying to think of the last time I heard anything from their early records in the wild.

Personally, I'm good with "Live at Leeds" and "Quadrophenia."

It's more pronounced with the Who than the Stones, I feel like, because a lot of '60s Stones is still very much part of their agreed-on canon — "Satisfaction," "Jumping Jack Flash," "Paint It Black," "Sympathy for the Devil." Where with the Who, I feel like you'll very rarely hear anything pre-Tommy except maybe "My Generation." My issue with Who's Next and what comes after is I feel like they largely lost their sense of humor and absurdity, which was a defining element up until then.

(also I said "I feel like" 3 times there, so ... I guess that's just how I feel.)

Hmm, you're probably right about the Stones, though I do think that what people generally think of as a Stones "sound" is the later stuff.

For sure the Beggars-Let It Bleed-Sticky Fingers-Exile years are peak/ur Stones. I just don't think there's as sharp a cut-off for the earlier stuff.

I was talking to someone about this shift in recent years, where early Who and early Stones have sort of been steamrolled into relative obscurity compared to the '70s stuff. Like, when people generally think of the Who, I think they're thinking the arena rock sound of "Who's Next." When people think of the Stones, they're thinking of, like, "Brown Sugar," that sort of similar arena, Keith in open G riffing thing. The Beatles might have escaped this, but I'm trying to think of the last time I heard anything from their early records in the wild.

Personally, I'm good with "Live at Leeds" and "Quadrophenia."

That sounds like a US phenomenon.

You've got all that Classc Rock nonsense to put up with.

For sure. Classic rock radio in its current form pretty much ignores anything before 1970. (Even the early '70s are starting to get squeezed out, though things like Zep and Lynyrd Skynyrd will stay forever.)

Wait, so you don’t have that nonsense? And you hear the early Who singles played upon occasion?

I don't listen to the radio and I'm sure there are classic rock stations in the UK these days but it's not a something with any kind of history in the UK.

Generally speaking, then, how often do you hear those early Who songs without seeking them out?

I don’t want to get too sentimental like those others sticky Valentines whilst my immune system is fighting off the Rona, but I do often feel a sense of loss when I think about the way love the radio used to be when I could hear all the different decades of the rock era going back to the 50s with just a slight shift of the dial.

I don't know where I would hear the Who anyway tbh? The Who are very closely associated with the mod thing in the UK - I imagine that is not the case in the US! So, when I went to see them a couple of years ago, there was a sizable contingent of mod types, of various ages, in the audience.

In fact the only reason I was there was because my sister, who is a member of a (Mod) scooter club, was given the tickets by a guy who'd won them in a competition or something but she couldn't go.

It's worth remembering that, in the late 70s, the most popular band in the UK was the Jam, who were fairly obviously influenced by 60s Who and not at all influenced by the 70s Who, and that association has stuck.

Well I guess I can call myself an honorary U.K. Who fan, then. Because I also love both '60s Who and the Jam.

I thought for years I was sick of Who's Next--I played it to death in high school--but I gave it a listen a few years back and most of it still sounded great. ("Won't Get Fooled Again" is pretty much dead to me.) Live at Leeds I never liked, and with Quadrophenia, even though I think it's objectively great, I can't get past the horns or Daltrey's over-emoting.

Objectively I can acknowledge Who's Next is a solid record, but man, "Behind Blue Eyes" came on the radio the other week and I changed stations. That song seemed quasi-deep to me when I was 15, now it just seems like a lot of whinging.

I stopped listening to classic rock radio a long time ago. It wasn't really a conscious choice - I listened to the radio every day when I drove a car, but once I moved to the city, I stopped driving and had no reason to listen anymore (i.e. it was now an iPod on the subway or bus). But I remember when the Drive and other Chicago stations played the shit out of Who's Next, so I get how fans can grow sick of it if you wind up hearing it all the time in exclusion to any other Who music. I still love it, it's always been my favorite Who album, but I generally don't hear it unless I put it on. (I should add that I don't watch network TV anymore - commercials and TV shows used to license the shit out of Who's Next, and I'm sure that doesn't help matters either.)

I would steer any new listeners towards Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy before anything else though. It's still missing some essentials from the '60s - the Rock & Roll Circus performance of "A Quick One" that's on The Kids Are Alright, "So Sad About Us," some favorites from The Who Sell Out which is arguably their best album - but the Who distinguished themselves with hilariously weird and insane shit that took a back seat to pretentiousness after Tommy, and as much as I love Who's Next, I miss that aspect of their music.

Yep, exactly.

Thirded

Tommy’s pretentiousness is still to some degree laced or connected with that earlier weirdness. Either that or I give it a pass because it is the album I knew best first.

Also, don’t know if I should scratch this itch or not, but there is also the delicate question of whether The Ox started overplaying at some point.

You'll be accusing Keith Moon of overplaying next.

Ha, that’s different

as a teen in Australia in the late 80’s early 90s the only Who i ever heard was 60’s Who - substitute, my gen, i’m a boy, kids are alright, happy jack, all that stuff —- but there are was a lot of early Kinks in the mix too, all that mod/teddy stuff was kinda cool for some reason, mixed w sex pistols & british punk for reasons i am not sure of

i didnt really encounter late Who ~in the wild~ until i moved to the US, radio was always playing Who Are You or Eminence Front which seemed v weird to me, like why do they play THIS and none of the cool stuff

maybe the 60’s stuff just hit better in Australia bc of british invasion Easybeats & all that idk

Tommy is completely absurd, being about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who becomes a messiah via pinball. I can see how Who’s Next might be seen as lacking in humor, but then there’s “Goin’ Mobile” and “My Wife.” Quadrophenia has “Bell Boy,” but the inclusion of “We Close Tonight” and/or “Four Faces” would’ve taken a big chunk out of that record’s heaviness. By Numbers has “Squeeze Box” and “Success Story,” and while Who Are You is probably their most po-faced record, “Guitar And Pen” is certainly absurd (and doesn’t quite work), and “Who Are You” has some funny lines.

But there wasn’t going to be another “I’m A Boy” or “Dogs” after Tommy, it’s true. And “classic rock” radio has all but erased that side of them for US listeners. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve played “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” or Sell Out for friends who only know The Heavy Seventies Hits; the reaction is always, “That’s the Who?!”

I'm totally a '65-67 Who lover (extending to some songs from '68) these days, and have been for quite some time. But one thing that keeps Who's Next alive for me are the songs that aren't one of the overplayed three (and for some reason, I've never gotten tired of "Baba O'Riley"): "My Wife," "Going Mobile," and "Bargain" especially. I think the only song I've never cared for, not now and not back in high school, is "The Song Is Over."

In addition to The Jam there were also other explicit and implicit connections between the punk/New Wave and Mods/British Invasion.

xp 2 VG

The punkfox

i didnt really encounter late Who ~in the wild~ until i moved to the US, radio was always playing Who Are You or Eminence Front which seemed v weird to me, like why do they play THIS and none of the cool stuff

Yeah, “I Can See For Miles” you would hear quite often on US radio. Whereas for “My Generation” you really needed an edgier show or station.

A lot of the music on Tommy still sounds something like the earlier stuff. “Rael” and “Sparks” obviously, but even beyond that.

a guy in my year 10 art class had I WAS BORN WITH A PLASTIC SPOON IN MY MOUTH scrawled on his pencil case in white-out

the who were fkn cool as shit to us 90’s teens lol

i still love their 60’s stuff the best

I would suggest that the erasure of the '60s era Who in the US mostly happened after the mid '80s. Yes, US Decca famously mishandled the early Who records and they weren't the hits they should've been, but in the late '70s you could find those double album reissues of their pre-Tommy LPs in every record store; they'd been reissued in that form in '74 but were still in print into the early '80s. Also both Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy and Odds and Sods sold very well in the '70s and The Kids Are Alright soundtrack went platinum. I guess it was the increasingly exclusionary AOR/Classic Rock playlists plus the lack of mod tradition in the US that eventually buried that early material.

One thing is that, apart from “I Can See For Miles,” none of the early Who singles were big hits in the US. Some, like “Anyway,” didn’t chart here at all, and others, like “Dogs,” weren’t even released in the US at the time. That said, I do remember hearing some of the ‘65-‘68 songs regularly on the radio in the late ‘70s - mid ‘80s but haven’t heard them in the wild in at least 20 years.

I was going to mention the fact that they 9 Top 10 hits in the UK so they were a pretty successful pop group.

.., in the 60s that is.

Their US label, Decca, had no idea how to promote them (or any other rock band, for that matter) here. Their early singles got a lot of airplay in the industrial Midwest — Detroit embraced them immediately — but they didn’t make a national splash until they’d done a couple of coast-to-coast tours and appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show. And even then, Sell Out’s chart peak in the US was #48.

The interesting thing is that — as Dave Marsh has pointed out — in the US in the ‘60s, the Who were seen as part of a nebulous “UK underground” scene, with Cream and Hendrix; but in the UK at the time, they were a pop singles band, and no threat to the Heaviness of Cream or Hendrix.

I count "Substitute"/"Circles" as the greatest two-sided single ever.

Nice interview by Kenney Jones on his time with the Who, which makes it a rarity. Some very sweet anecdotes:

From the last time he saw Keith Moon, who was a close friend:

Afterwards, we met each other in the lobby, and I said, “See you later, Keith. See you soon.” And he went, “Yeah, great, see you Kenney my friend, bye-bye.” That was it. In the morning, the news came on straight away on the television and reported he died of a drug overdose. I thought, What’s he up to now? He’s playing another bloody joke. He can’t be, because I’ve just been with him. Sure enough, it was true and I could not believe it. Absolutely could not believe it. It’s only when I joined the Who when I found out exactly what happened...He went home, took his nighttime pill (Heminevrin), which was prescribed to Moon by his doctor., and went to bed. He woke up a couple of hours later and thought it was morning, so he took another pill. If you take too many pills close together, it slows your heart down. That’s what happened. It’s terrible. It all happened so fast. I’ll never forget the next few days. Near my home was where he was cremated, and I wanted to get to the crematorium before anyone, no press or anything, so I went earlier in the morning with a little wreath and a note, and I said good-bye to him on my own.

His friendship with Roger Daltrey - even though Daltrey has criticized Jones's drumming, Jones was friends with all of them, long before he joined the Who:

I used to see Pete a lot. Roger, not that often because he was living in the countryside that was outside of London. I went to see him a few times there. He had a fantastic trout farm...Every time I visited he would go, “Get in the boat,” and we went out in a row boat and fed the fish. I remember one day we boated out to the middle of the water with food and a bunch of piranhas circled the boat. He just went, “Don’t fall over the edge, they’re going to bite your leg off.” How the hell did they get into the trout farm? [Laughs.]

On Zak Starkey:

I was already doing stuff with Paul Rodgers and various other bands. I’d made my break from the Who and that was that. We were moving on. I wasn’t surprised that Zak joined. I virtually taught him how to play the drums when he was a little kid. I was great friends with Ringo StarrOne of the most amusing rock facts (to this writer, anyway) is that Ringo, noted famous drummer for another band, is Zak’s father. and his wife, Maureen, even though they were separated when Zak was young. When I joined the Who, I got Keith’s white drum kit out of storage and gave it to Zak. He had told me as a little boy that Keith had always promised him that drum kit. So I put it in a van and surprised him after school with it one day. I did my bit for him. I like him. I think Zak’s done a wonderful job with the Who. It’s a great thing and I think it’s lovely. They needed a young drummer, someone fit.

Didn't realize this, but some of the pop-up footnotes in that interview actually got copied into the main body of the text.

Great drummer; I'd pick Ogden's Nut Gone Flake over any Who album except Quadrophenia.

Yes, he's a fantastic drummer.

Dunno how to link to it, but there’s a great new Townshend thing on Audible called Somebody Saved Me. It’s focused on 1978-2002, bookended by the deaths of Moon and Entwistle, and includes solo re-recordings of some ‘80-‘82 songs.

Thanks for the tip!

Re: 80-82 songs, I've actually grown to like Empty Glass quite a bit, which seemed to have a good number of fans anyway. But I've also come around to the idea that Face Dances could've been a good and commendable album. The 1997 remix actually rectifies the soft, muted sound of the original mix - Kenney Jones's drums really did sound like "pudding" on the original LP (his words at the time) and that alone is a big improvement on the remix. Better still are the bonus tracks included with the remix, and at least a couple of them should have made the album - I would replace "Cache Cache" and "Did You Steal My Money" with "It's In You" and "Somebody Saved Me" respectively. Throw in the Pete Townshend B-side "Dance It Away" to open side B, and the final 10-track album would have been a good one to go out on. (Even though "Dance It Away" was released as a Townshend B-side, it may have been a Who outtake - notice that Jones and Entwistle are the only players besides Townshend, and from what I can tell there were no sessions for Townshend's solo recordings back then that had the three of them booked.

“Cache” is one of my favorites on Face Dances, and “Steal” has really grown on me over the years — a weird Police/Steely Dan pastiche that I can imagine Donald Fagen singing. The weakest song for me has always been “You” — I don’t know if it’s on this or another Who thread, but I wondered why/how Entwistle’s writing went from wry and funny to crushingly generic.

That said, yeah, Face Dances would’ve been improved by the inclusion of a couple of the then-unreleased songs (“I Like Nightmares” is my favorite of those). But apparently the rest of the band made the decisions about what should or shouldn’t be included (they had previously rejected “Empty Glass” and “No Road Romance” for Who Are You). If Daltrey was the one who rejected “Somebody Saved Me,” I’d be surprised, since he sang it on solo tours.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with Face Dances is the horrible production. Bill Szymczyk made some comment along the lines of, “Entwistle needs to understand that he’s the bassist, not a lead player.” I mean, had Szymczyk even heard the Who before?

The “Dance It Away” that came out as a Townshend b-side is a different recording from the Face Dances outtake, and was recorded with either Mark Brzezicki or Simon Phillips on drums, and Tony Butler on bass. Here’s the Who version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDJtJp359dY

Interesting, where did you get that info on "Dance It Away"? I know that version posted in the YouTube link, it was shared on the Hoffman forum, and in the same thread the consensus seemed to be that the personnel for the Townshend B-side had Entwistle on bass and Jones on drums.

I'm still searching, but while there are a ton of blog posts and a reddit thread that credits Entwistle and Jones to that B-side recording, I still haven't found a definitive sessionography. I know it was included as a bonus track to the 2006 reissue of All the Best Cowboys since it was a B-side to one of its albums tracks - for that reason, it would make sense for either Mark Brzezicki or Simon Phillips to be on drums and for Tony Butler to be on bass, but there doesn't seem to be credits that confirm this either.

Honestly, it just doesn't sound like Jones and Entwistle to me. It sounds too slightly-ahead-of-the-beat for Jones, and I don't hear any of Entwistle's trademark fingertaps/slaps. And the 16th-note figure on the bass drum that I hear in the verses (starting at 0:23) has much more pop than any recording of Jones' bass drum that I've heard. Also, what would've been the occasion for the session/recording? The Who were waiting around for Pete to get out of rehab, and actually started It's Hard without him ("It's Your Turn" has Andy Fairweather-Low in Townshend's place). So why would Pete have recorded "Dance It Away" with John and Kenney during the Cowboys sessions (it definitely sounds like a Chris Thomas production) in lieu of a Who session?

To be sure, I could be completely wrong about this, and Kenney had played on Townshend solo records before -- he's on "Rough Boys," but compare the drumming and sound on that track to "Dance It Away." They don't sound like the same drummer to me.

Further muddying the waters, there are supposedly tracks on the 1980 McVicar soundtrack that have everyone in the Who, but a) I've never done a serious dive into that album to try to find out, and b) I haven't seen any documentation saying who's on which tracks on that record.

Also, what would've been the occasion for the session/recording? The Who were waiting around for Pete to get out of rehab, and actually started It's Hard without him ("It's Your Turn" has Andy Fairweather-Low in Townshend's place). So why would Pete have recorded "Dance It Away" with John and Kenney during the Cowboys sessions (it definitely sounds like a Chris Thomas production) in lieu of a Who session?

It sounds like those who say it's Entwistle and Jones are arguing that it could very well have been another take from Face Dances. Honestly can't say myself, I just put my trust in their judgment since they seem to know the Who far more than I will ever know.

(the Face Dances sessions that is)

Unless there's anecdotal evidence and reliable documentation (and I have no idea if there is or isn't), I'm inclined to go with your argument just from past experience on these matters. If no one remembers recording it with those three and there's not even documentation of a session with those three (especially one that produced more than that recording), it's likely they didn't record the B-side. But the fine details of that era of the Who are virtually unknown to me beyond what I'd read on a record sleeve.

Given how different it sounds from the Daltrey-sung version, I don’t think it was recorded at the Face Dances sessions. And the production styles are almost the opposite of one another (the flumpfiness of Face Dances vs. Chris Thomas’s sharp, vibrant sound on Cowboys/the b-side).

First show in Cincinnati last night since 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELtzqT53DBk

They last played this 40 years ago, when the oldest member of the Who was 38:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9_GrVqL7fc

I do enjoy them as late as Quadrophenia the original lp and did enjoy the film .
NOt sure what I've really heard of them after that point. THink I never got a copy of By Numbers.
Love them mid 60s to early 70s. Love the Pop Art take on mod and so on. & the psychedelic stuff.

Semi wish they'd quit before they got old.

Do have a special place in my heart for those 8 years though.
& the MC5 seem to be close to them plus another guitar plus more overt jazz influence. Seemed that Townshend was working with a lot of influence from jazz after inheriting a record collection from an upstairs neighbour who was being deported in the mid 60s.
Wonder waht would have happened if Eddie Phillips had joined on 2nd guitar.
& the pre Who or at least Pre High Numbers band had been stretching numbers out live in like 64 which I'd love to hear more of.
& see more of things like the Batik button down Pete was wearing in presumably 64 photos of which were circulating a few years ago. JUdging by their hair must have been pretty early. & I think they had settled on the name The Who prior to being renamed the High Numbers for their first single.

Incredibly, even Zak Starkey is 57.

Heard the "Live at Leeds" version of "Magic Bus" on the radio yesterday and realized in the end that may be all I really need from the Who, that live record, but I do put on "Quadrophenia" now and then. And I rarely turn off the radio when something from "Who's Next" comes on.

For UK residents

On Sky Arts tonight:

20.00 Classic Albums: The Who Sell Out (seen it)
21:00 Live At Kilburn 1977 (can't remember if this or Live At Charlton is supposed to be not very good)
22:25 Classic Quadrophenia (Townshend with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra et al. No interest in this I'm afraid!)

Seemed that Townshend was working with a lot of influence from jazz after inheriting a record collection from an upstairs neighbour who was being deported in the mid 60s.

That was actually Townshend's art school roommate Tom Wright, who passed away in July. He later went on to manage the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. Wright was a US expat, and was deported when busted for pot possession. According to Townshend's art school friend Richard Barnes, the record collection included “…all of Jimmy Reed’s albums, all of Chuck Berry’s, all of James Brown’s, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Snooks Eaglin, Mose Allison, all of Jimmy Smith’s, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Slim Harpo, Buddy Guy, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Joe Turner, Nina Simone, Booker T., Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, the Isley Brothers, Fats Domino, the Coasters, Ray Charles, Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, John Patton, Bobby Bland, the Drifters, the Miracles, the Shirelles, the Impressions and many jazz albums including Charlie Parker, Mingus, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Giuffre, Dave Brubeck, plus albums by Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman and particularly Lord Buckley. There were also about thirty classical albums.”

That was in 1962-63, I believe. My understanding is that very few people in the UK, outside of a handful of hipster collectors, had a collection of that size and scope at the time.

Townshend was also a Sun Ra fanatic, citing The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 1 as his favorite, and a big influence on the My Generation album ("You can't hear it in the music, but it's there somewhere.")

21:00 Live At Kilburn 1977 (can't remember if this or Live At Charlton is supposed to be not very good)

Ha, they're both considered -- mainly by the Who themselves -- a little sub-par, but the Who's "sub-par" is most other bands' "career highlight."

Kilburn was set up so there'd be some post-'75 footage for The Kids Are Alright. But everyone in the band hated the gig, so it was shelved. In mid-'78 they made another attempt, filming just the two songs ("Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again") that would be used in the film.

But I and many other Who fans feel that Kilburn is a far superior performance to the later show. Moon especially is in exponentially better shape on this show than on the '78 songs, and it has the only live performance of "Who Are You" (in a slightly embryonic state) with Moon.

Good, I was definitely going to watch it anyway!

Townshend was in a foul mood which seemed to affect the rest of the band - apart from Moon who was doing his best to jolly things along.

The Isle of Wight 1970 show is worth finding, but mostly if you watch it. It's not a candidate for their greatest show like Leeds or the Fillmore in 1968, but it's a great show nonetheless and aside from the abbreviated sets at Monterey Pop and Woodstock the only show from that era that was properly filmed for almost all of it.

Newly-discovered footage of the December 3, 1979 Cincinnati show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Nv-MUVgTU

The Who were unaware of the tragedy until after the show. Five days later, their Chicago show was broadcast via closed-circuit to local theaters, and parts of it were released. The difference between Townshend's demeanor here and in Chicago is stark (he said in 2019 that he remembered it being a particularly good show). Here he's focused, enjoying himself, energized; on the Chicago show, he's hammered, coked to the gills, distracted, and vacillates wildly between wanting to soldier through the show and seemingly wondering what the fuck the point of it all is, given the tragic events days earlier. As he said years later, the Who should've cancelled the rest of their tour and broken up immediately after Cincinnati.

Man, that's a band even Arthur Carlson could love right there

that baba o'riley vid is stellar!

kinda deserves an xpost to a who thread

― corrs unplugged, Monday, July 31, 2023 3:37 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hit the "marimba repeat" switch on a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1, and you get this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgPtksNqbCk

^^^This video kinda blew my mind, I guess the oral legend I was told/read was the above part was a bit more edited/tape-loop/spliced etc.

That said, does anyone know if Nico's "Frozen Warnings" (song) uses the above technique or something similar?

Cool! But the little image of Don Knotts spooked me a bit.

I don't hear any electric organ on "Frozen Warnings". It sounds like Cale's violas overdubbed on Nico's harmonium, maybe with some kind of gate giving the tremolo effect. Some of the viola is also being played backwards, apparently with the same effect.

Sounds like some "repeater"/stuttering effect (like in the Baba vid) processor being applied to Nico's Harmonium, to my ears at least.

Apparently the Who's organization is working on a Who Are You Super Deluxe set. (That and A Quick One are the only two remaining Keith Moon-era albums without a super deluxe box set.)

It's usually cited as the least of the Who's Keith Moon-era albums, and I would have to agree even though I actually enjoy it. I think it's a fine album, but I rarely listen to it. I'm guessing there's at least one enjoyable live recording in the vaults, and the demos might be fine, but I can't imagine any great, lost outtakes beyond what was already included on the expanded CD reissue from the '90s.

(That and A Quick One are the only two remaining Keith Moon-era albums without a super deluxe box set.)

Ah forgot that one! Nope.

Should feature 275 alternate takes of "Success Story"

I'm enough of a fan that that is maybe unfair, but I've never owned it and never had any interest in owning it (Who Are You?), that is).

There's a Hoffman thread that gets into track speculation: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-who-who-are-you-super-deluxe-edition-speculation-and-wishlist.1182711/

Haven’t listened to that album in decades but just looking at original track listing makes me want to revisit.

The 1996 remix of the song “Who are You” always sounded wrong to me, as the power chords are kinda buried compared to the original LP.

Daltrey's memoir is about as gritty and pugilistic as I expected it to be.

Yeah

"Jimmy the dip and Johnny the squirrel came backstage at the Capri Club in Stepney one night and they brought Electric George with him who had a big stick on the end of a chain, he was mouthing off about some mandrax that Moony stole from him last week in Ladbroke Grove, but that was still well out of order and I told him so, but Pete was all 'Don't hit him'."

^^Best "Wang Dang Doodle" verse.

To celebrate his 60th anniversary at Abbey Road, the studio interviewed Ken Scott, at one point asking him what was the most outrageous session he worked on:

“…there was the time Keith Moon guested on a track on the Truth album and upon leaving the car park at around 11:00pm almost ran over a little old lady walking her dog. Most people would have wound down their window and apologised, not he. He swiftly turned on the PA system built into his Rolls Royce and proceeded to curse her out with the most foul language at a VERY loud volume. EMI received more than a few complaints about that the next day.”

He was more successful at running over chauffeurs.

.

holy cow the "my wife" on here. pete is nuts. 2nd song. about 3:10 in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G1FqWPcO-k

nice and crunchy in 1975. they were trying to save us from punk rock.

for some reason youtube started recommending me clips of the who live where all you hear is entwhistle's bass

it is florid! i don't really like the who after "sell out" (blame the singer) but you have to admit JE had super-nimble fingers

he really did. he was one of a kind. i think. maybe there were others. he played that thing like a flamenco guitar sometimes.

In the last month, I’ve bought both a Hiwatt amp and a 20” cymbal.

The Houston show from that tour was officially released on DVD as Live in Texas 75 and it's pretty great. Cheap too - you can buy a new copy for $10 from Amazon. I feel like it's the kind of thing that would've been a bigger deal 30 or 40 years ago but it kind of got lost in the shuffle when you had a million concert DVD's flooding the market in the '00s. (I didn't even know about it until several years ago.)

^^Terrific DVD, taken from the camera feed for the jumbotrons at the first concert held at the Summit (now Lakewood Church).

Moonie had some fun afterwards:
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/keith-moon-houston-party/

The article is pretty thin about what actually happened, but I remember back when Entwistle died, our local Classic Rock station took listener calls all night, and a woman who was there called in with a version of events. She said the label had a big afterparty and -- in honor of "Squeeze Box" -- they hired several strippers as entertainment, dressing them in accordions (and nothing else!) and staging them on a dais in the middle of a hotel ballroom. The group & their entourage show up, Keith is like, "Right on!" and hops up on the dais with the girls and begins stripping himself.

Meanwhile, the county sheriff's department is also on the hotel grounds, hoping for an easy drug raid and headlines aplenty. They bust in moments after Moon joined the girls on the dais, and...they just stopped, freezing at the sight they never in a million years could have predicted that is now in front of them.

Supposedly there was some palm greasing once everyone came to their senses, and no arrests made or charges brought up.

Pete just donated all of his synthesizers to the University of West London
https://www.uwl.ac.uk/study/study-facilities/the-townshend-studio

Cool.

The Who's Roger Daltrey told a London audience that, in addition to losing his hearing, his vision is going too.

Daltry’s announcement comes six years after the rocker made his ongoing hearing issues public. In 2018, he told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he was “very, very deaf” and reads lips and uses monitors for each ear on stage to keep up with the music. “The trouble with these ear things that I wear is that I am very, very deaf. And I advise you all—all you rock-and-roll fans—take your fucking earplugs to the gigs,” he said on stage in 2018. “If only we had known when we were young​ … we ​are lip-reading.”

(AV Club missing an "e" in his last name.)

That is very sobering. (Hearing loss I've gotten used to; blindness terrifies me.)

Townshend's name is misspelled in that article as well. The death of copy-editing really pisses me off; if I'd done anything with my journalism degree, it would have been that.

I just assume half the stuff on that or other sites is written by AI.

Dummies firing Zak Starkey after 30 (!) years. His own cheeky pre-confirmation post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DIXFvfGxnmB/

Appreciate their commitment to being unpleasant & moody weirdos until the very end, stay golden

lol

News Flash! Who Back Zak!
He’s not being asked to step down from The Who.

There have been some communication issues, personal and private on all sides, that needed to be dealt with, and these have been aired happily.

Roger and I would like Zak to tighten up his latest evolved drumming style to accommodate our non-orchestral line up and he has readily agreed. I take responsibility for some of the confusion. Our TCT shows at the Royal Albert Hall were a little tricky for me. I thought that four and a half weeks would be enough time to recover completely from having a complete knee replacement. (Why did I ever think I could land on my knees?) Wrong!

Maybe we didn’t put enough time into sound checks, giving us problems on stage. The sound in the centre of the stage is always the most difficult to work with. Roger did nothing wrong but fiddle with his in-ear monitors. Zak made a few mistakes and he has apologised. Albeit with a rubber duck drummer.

We are a family, this blew up very quickly and got too much oxygen. It’s over. We move forward now with optimism and fire in our bellies.

As for Roger, fans can enjoy his forthcoming solo shows with his fabulous drummer, Scott Devours, who it was rumoured might replace Zak in The Who and has always been supportive of the band.

I owe Scott an apology for not crushing that rumour before it spread. He has been hurt by this. I promise to buy him a very long drink and give him a hug.

Pete Townshend
19 April 2025

Hah, still messy as ever.

As mentioned before, they're clearly really old now and while it's enjoyable how much Roger and Pete have embraced their advanced age onstage, I do wish I saw them during the few years Entwistle was still alive and Starkey was drumming for them. Would've been 1999-2001 I think. The DVD of the Teenage Trust show at Royal Albert Hall in 2000 is great - I could do without one or two guest stars, but otherwise it's the best release to feature that configuration of the group. The CD edition has a few bonus tracks but the DVD actually sounds better and can be found for peanuts.

Should say Teenage Cancer Trust

Yeah. Time does none of us any favors going forward, but looking back ... wow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dlN55SoF4Q

I can't remember if it's the 2000 Royal Albert Hall show or one of the U.S. shows from 1999/2000 that you can find on YouTube, but when Townshend introduces Starkey, he openly credits him for "breathing new life" into the band, which seems uncharacteristically generous of him.

i saw them in 1999 with Entwistle, and Starkey on drums, at Bridge School Benefit. They were magic - and they did Boris The Spider which sent me to the moon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSlk0G3aGhk

I kind of wish Townshend would do a solo acoustic show but I feel like he’s no longer interested in touring alone.

when i saw them in the early 2000s townshend doing ‘drowned’ acoustically was the highlight by several miles and miles - he had a bit of a chat and talked about writing, ‘i’m free’ (? Or maybe ‘sensation’)) in Sydney and played a snippet

Ok it must’ve been Sensation

"Sensation" was written about a girl Townshend had met on the Who's tour of Australia in early 1968

For a while at least I had seen both Townshend solo acoustic *and* Roger Daltrey solo before I ever saw the Who!

I saw The Who on their first farewell tour in 1982. In my mind they are a band that is perpetually saying farewell.

*Joan Jett & the Blackhearts and the B-52’s were the opening acts when I saw The Who, two other acts who have difficulty saying farewell.

I actually think every album by the B-52’s had some top-shelf tracks, even the last one. Their debut is still hands-down their best, but most of them are thoroughly enjoyable and even their worst isn't terrible.

Re: Zak's temporary "firing," I wonder what Ringo was doing during all of this? Consoling his son - maybe telling him how he dealt with the reality of never playing in the Beatles again - or maybe getting on the phone with his peers and be like "wtf man, that's my boy you fired!"

zak was probably preparing to be one of the four drummers in the all-starr band

https://giphy.com/gifs/the-godfather-coda-u6EiPNT9dLDrU7ZQuF

oh pff, stupid link

Townshend has been pretty open about the fact that Daltrey runs the band. Pretty obviously borne out by dopey tour formats like symphonic accompaniment, doing Tommy and Quadrophenia over and over…or even continuing touring at all… he can't face life without the Who, even though he's quite deaf.

And the reason Townshend continues to do Who tours, which he is also open about, is that he manages his $$$ poorly, and playing these dumb tours entertaining Who shitheads is easy money. Three years ago, there was a longform interview in which he talked about how he blew all his money in the 70s away very quickly, and he sold his publishing in 2012, many many years before the gold rush that saw his peers benefit far far more than he.

He not only doesn't care about doing a solo tour, but he doesn't bother to formally release new music, and until the mid 90s, you would have thought that he above all his peers would continue to have a creative drive he would want to share with an audience who would be receptive to new Townshend material. But he's satisfied to only go through the motions.

Zak Starkey is the Billy Martin of the Who.

it’s all getting rather silly at this point. cmon lads

They're gonna hire Josh Freese!

Daft band

Fool me twice, won’t get fooled again

meet the new drummer, same as the old drummer

They're gonna hire Josh Freese!

too funny

Appreciate their commitment to being unpleasant & moody weirdos until the very end, stay golden

― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 16 April 2025 19:07 (one month ago)

I thought this revive would be about Townshend turning 80. So anyway, Happy Birthday, Pete!

ok now hire him back again

I'm Freese, I'm Freese and I'm waiting for you to follow me

Happy birthday, Pete!

Will they die before I get old?

I learn from the Daily Mail that Zak Starkey is a member of a supergroup called Mantra of the Cosmos, whose members include "Happy Mondays vocalist Shaun Ryder, 62, Oasis guitarist Andy Bell, 54, percussionist Mark 'Bez' Berry, 60, and Noel Gallagher, 57".

Which raises the question of how all these musical figures who were in their twenties when I was a teenager can now be in their fifties and sixties unless I too have aged along with them unless I too have also aged, breathe in.

Zak Starkey should release a bitter, musically monotonous concept album album war, and then sue the other members of The Who to stop them using the name The Who.

I wonder what Ringo was doing during all of this?

Per Zak, Ringo said to him, 'I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band,' apparently referring to Roger Daltrey.