written in 2000 for VH1’s web site. they still give me chills, and even The Who’s post-Entwhisle shows continue to stun - against all common sense.
The Who were - quite simply - the greatest band of the ‘60’s British Beat era. On any given night, they could out-play, out-sing, out-fight, out-fuck, out-think and out-drink any of their contemporaries. Perpetual third-stringers behind the Beatles and the Stones, and with just one guitarist and chief songwriter (Pete Townshend), a bassist (John Entwhisle), a drummer (Keith Moon) and an extra singer (Roger Daltrey), they were the band that always had to try harder, and consequently overshot what was required of a standard-issue pop band in every possible category. The result was a jaw-droppingly powerful stage show, ambitious concept albums and more flops, disasters and sheer bad luck than any idealistic rock band ever deserved to endure. But their most striking achievement was a long string of brilliant, enduring singles, turning what was traditionally a cheesy, transitory form of disposable pop commerce into a platform for heroic ernestness. The marketplace just wanted catchy love songs…they made anthems.
Flashback to London in 1965…it’s boom times after years of slow,
painful recovery from World War II…the UK has become the center of
world popular culture…and a quartet of bumpkins from up North have
captured the pop charts.
But The Beatles appealed mostly to teenage girls and worse - their Mums.
London’s young sophisticates preferred ‘pure’ American Rhythm & Blues,
and if there was anything left from the weekly pay packet that hadn’t
gone to clothes, amphetamines or lager they’d buy 45’s from King (James
Brown), Chess/Checker (Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry) and
Tamla/Motown (Martha and the Vandallas, The Marvellettes, Marvin Gaye).
And the hippest of the hip called themselves Modernists (a/k/a “Mods”) and their personal house band was The Who. Bootleg audio tapes and film clips of their early live shows present them as a competent if sloppy bar band attacking R & B covers like “Heat Wave” and “Shout” with incredible volume, guitar feedback and extended drum solos, then closing their shows with an instrument-smashing orgy…a faux art/dramatic piece of show-biz shtick which guaranteed them both weeks of front-page notoriety and years of crushing debt.
But the currency of the music business—then as now—is the hit song, not just a spectacular show. There is nothing in this early documentation to indicate that they had any kind of mainstream pop potential. They were not Beatle cute or Stones sexy, none of them gave a shit about writing songs, plus each of them had a chip on their shoulder the size of Big Ben. And getting that unruly stage sound within the context of a pop song seemed impossible. Reluctantly, Townshend tried anyway, and his first attempt at serious songwriting yielded their first single (“I Can’t Explain”). A very un-R & B-ish tune - fresh, cool, taut (2:02!!) and even a little gawky - it captured what they looked like better than the way they sounded. Their second single (“Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”) was more like it…a defiant lyric with a solo section that demonstrated just about everything you can do with an electric guitar short of playing it properly. But it’s with the stunning “My Generation” that they finally get it right - a stuttering ‘talking blues’-style vocal spread across multiple key changes, a bass solo where a guitar solo ‘should’ be…all ending in a shower of incredibly fast drum rolls, bass runs and huge open guitar chords. Here was a band made up of a former sheetmetal worker, an ex-tax accountant, a stoner art school layabout and a hyper-kinetic lunatic (and all still under age 20!) packing all their teenage frustrations into a single pop tune for an audience who felt EXACTLY LIKE THEY DID. The result was and still is absolutely amazing - “My Generation” remains the most exciting 3:14 ever committed to vinyl.
More extraordinary singles followed. “The Kids Are Alright”, “Substitute” and “Pictures of Lily” were majestic, less frantic and more musically confident, but lyrically stayed with themes of desperation and alienation. The two-chord “I’m A Boy” had a bizarre gender-bending theme, really crappy production values but a beautiful, classically- influenced guitar break that saves the song. Even the goofier singles were still goofy-brilliant: ”Dogs” mates greyhound racing and British Music Hall corn with Beach Boys harmonies. “Happy Jack” was more lightweight fun than comprehensible, yet surprisingly was the tune that finally broke them in the USA.
Their streak stumbled with the thunderous “I Can See For Miles”. Culled from The Who Sell Out (a concept album that was a cynical take on pretentious concept albums) and with it’s doubled-up rhythm section, double-entendre lyrics and 20,000 leagues of reverb, “Miles” also marked the end of The Who’s career as ‘only’ a singles band. So confidant that they’d recorded a masterpiece that was guaranteed to become smash hit, the band moth-balled the tune. Big mistake…for the marketplace shifted gears while the song sat in the vault. The Beatles with Sgt. Peppers and The Beach Boys with Pet Sounds had raised the humble album to the status of high pop art, and though audiences and the music business still demanded hits, there was now an expectation that a band’s recordings should also make a unified ‘creative statement’. This must have driven them crazy…all they’d ever recorded were ‘creative statements’, that had become successful only by sheer force of their stubborn, collective will. They made ‘concept singles’ that could be recorded quickly, and unlike the studio-sequestered Beatles and Brian Wilson, the constantly cash-strapped Who were a working band and couldn’t afford the luxury of taking months off to record. To make matters worse, Townshend had again over-compensated and dreamt-up a cumbersome operatic story/song-cycle about a traumatized kid’s spiritual journey that purposely contained no tune with “single” potential.
The song-cycle, of course, was Tommy and late in it’s creation, even Townshend realized that his current pet vision was shy a hit. Tommy’s fuzzy-headedness also lacked an anchor in reality, something that a certain influential (and pinball-loving) rock jounalist would not be shy about pointing out. The solution to both these problems was “Pinball Wizard”. Amazingly, the song got it’s real power from an acoustic guitar (shades of “Substitute”) and an overdriven bass rather than Townshend’s patent electric guitar crunch, and was probably the last great Who single. Other albums and singles followed—Who’s Next yielded “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (edited down to anemic 3:37) and Quadrophenia spawned “5:15”, but these were written more for the arena, not the radio or a home phonograph. We all could have done without “Squeeze Box”, thank you, though “Who Are You” was a mighty effort at returning to form.
That ‘probably’ in the previous paragraph needs qualifying…because despite break-ups, reunion tours, re-reunion tours, much publicized rancor between members, Keith Moon’s death (and maybe even despite reason and common sense), The Who are hitting the road this summer as a four-piece (plus keyboards) with a set list built around these marvelous singles. There’s also rumors of a record in the works. Is there another brilliant song in them? If it were anybody else, the smart money would bet on “no”…except this is The Who and they’ve made a career out of doing the impossible.
REFERENCES/INFLUENCES
Who’s Better, Who’s Best/MCA - In someone’s misguided opinion, but still contains most of great singles. Or better yet…forget the CD…get the video with live and lip-synch performances.
Best of Bo Diddley-20th Century Masters Series/MCA - great songs with a primal beat that’s hard-wired into the human brainstem
Best of Mose Allison/Atlantic - the essence of cool, great lyrics
James Brown Live at the Apollo/King (?…maybe Polygram now) - still the best live album ever made…except for The Who’s new, improved Live At Leeds
The Who Sings My Generation/MCA - The Who as bar band + key early singles
The Who Sell Out/MCA - a concept album that loses its way, but is still their best LP. and who would’ve thought this surly bunch could come up with songs as poignant as “Tattoo” and “Sunrise”?
Tommy/MCA - sounds thin on record (they ran out of money before they could overdub the strings, but was awesome live.
Quadrophenia/MCA - an ambitious musical retelling of Mod history that was lost on American audiences when first released…but if you saw the recent revival of this masterpiece in concert and weren’t moved to the very core of your being…you’ve wasted your time reading this article.