The Who

[Sporting]

Is there a dedicated thread? Can't find one so please merge if necessary.

I've always been a fan (saw the classic line-up once, in Swansea back in 76). Bought the compilation album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy when a young teen and loved those singles. Didn't get the lyrical references in Pictures of Lily but I was wet behind the ears.

Anyway, lately while in the gym I've been training along to Tommy and Quadrophenia. The latter is much better, isn't it, despite a few rather treadmill (my gym metaphor) songs? It's more complete and the lyrics are much better and Moon is on fire. I've read that the rest of the group found Townshend's storyline somewhat confusing but for me it works much better than the frankly daft Tommy. Though it's true that Tommy has some great songs; and I never get tired of listening to the closing track, We're Not Gonna Take It (plus various others on the album).

I've got nothing particularly original to say about The Who but am interested in how others here view their output, legacy, greatness or otherwise.

[ad hoc]

I could never get into them. There are a few songs I like, but they were one of those "huge" bands that I could never really see why people got so het up about them. I always imagined you had to be there to get them. By the time I was old enough to be paying attention we were down to Who Are You? and You Better You Bet songs which were at best just kind of meh (and meh is charitable I think there). I am guessing if I'd been a teenager when they were releasing things like My Generation or I Can See For Miles or Pinball Wizard or Won't Get Fooled Again, I'd see them very differently.

[Sporting]

By the time I was old enough to be paying attention we were down to Who Are You? and You Better You Bet songs which were at best just kind of meh (and meh is charitable I think there)

On this I completely agree.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Who's Next is a hell of an album though.

[Duncan Gardner]

Bought the compilation album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy when a young teen and loved those singles. Didn't get the lyrical references in Pictures of Lily but I was wet behind the ears.

Meta Beatty was a friend and neighbor of my mother's. Although quite petite actually.

Always enjoyed the singles and Roger's recent album with Wilko Johnson was good

[Benjm]

I'm with ad hoc on this. I was nine or ten around the time of the late '70s mod revival, partly fuelled by the Quadrophenia film. It was hard to reconcile the disconnect between the Who patches on friends' older brothers' parkas and the band of Pinball Wizard and then the proto-dad rock of You Better You Bet. I bought Live At Leeds when I was about twelve and didn't get it at all. The thing I remember most clearly about it was the Home Taping Is Killing Music logo on the inner sleeve (it was probably some kind of Nice Price type reissue).

[Benjm]

Daltrey was on a celebrity version of Gogglebox the other day, with John Bishop as his viewing partner.

[RobW]

Who's Next is a hell of an album though.

Fuckin' A.

Used to listen my dad's LP of Meaty, Beaty, Big n Bouncy a lot when I was younger. Never really got into the rock opera stuff, though I think the last time I saw them was when they played Quadrophenia live at Hyde Park? Can't be certain, Primal Sceam were supporting iirc, this must have been 15 years ago. Did see them play the MEN Arena as a student with Entwhistle still playing. Don't think my dad got to see them until after I had - it was always one of his regrets, not seeing The Who in the 1960s. Think he saw The Beatles.

[kokamoa]

I always think part of the attraction with the Who is the story behind the music. They were such combustible personalities that they really should have disintegrated by mid 1966. Townshend had an extended 20 year nervous breakdown once they became famous, Moon was a star first and a musician second but managed to keep the difference down to the width of a cigarette paper until around 1973, Entwistle always gave the impression of someone who had more talent in his little finger than 95% of his contemporaries but kept it dampened down because he could see the price it was extracting on Townshend, while Daltrey was the necessary bully that was needed in order to keep the show moving forward and keeping everyone as grounded as possible. Maybe because he genuinely seemed to believe for a lot of the Who’s career that if it ended, he’d be working in a sheet metal factory again by the following week.

[Satchmo Distel]

I heard 'See Me, Feel Me' on the radio yesterday and really liked it (it was in the Billboard Hot 100 fifty years ago this week).

I also have a fondness for "You Better You Bet" which I taped off the radio in 1981. 'I Can See For Miles' (1967, LSD?) is probably their best single.

[WOM]

Never been deeply into them, but have always had more than a passing 'like'. Tommy is a wonderful piece of theatre, but much as I like it, I'm not bothered enough to do much work learning Quad. I saw them in October '82, which was meant to be the farewell tour, of course. Then there was the final, final show which was in Toronto. I watched that on TV with my mom, who wouldn't have known a Who song but was cool enough to watch with me.

[MsD]

I love/loved a lot of their work in the 70s, they were one of the first bands I saw live (although I was too overwhelmed to take it all in). I love Quadrophenia and still blast Love Reign now and again, despite it having an unfortunate association with an ex.
Daltrey's grown into a bit of a knob, but whatever.

[WOM]

Also, the stuttering / stammering thing in My Generation is just pure shit.

[ad hoc]

Not as shit as what I see as their "joke songs" (Boris the spider, happy jack, etc)

[Amor de Cosmos]

Ah, The Who. By some distance the most exciting and important band of my mid-teens. Why? I can't explain.

But I'll try.

First, they were the first English band I knew by word of mouth before I'd heard or seen them, and pardon me if I'm repeating myself but it was a seminal moment. I'm 15, sitting in the school library pretending to do homework. There are maybe four others doing the same, two are chatting in loud whispers. There's a pause, then one says. "Eh. Were you at the Mecca the other night? There was a group called The Who. The drummer kicked over his cymbals... on purpose!" Four heads immediately sat up and looked at him. "Why?" One of them asked. "I dunno... But it were great!

Second. A week or so later there they were on RSG miming to I Can't Explain. And the kid in library was right. They were brilliant, lead singer wasn't much, but the others, oh the others! The dead-eyed bass player, the guitarist with massive nose who looked like he wanted hit someone with it (the guitar, not the nose), and the drummer... well the drummer, what could you say? We were used to drummers being the most anodyne and invisible member of the group, but this guy looked as though he'd taken a bucketful of those purple heart thingies we'd been hearing about, waving his sticks around and opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish that's fallen the living room carpet.

Third. Stevenage was a major mod-town. Full of teenage apprentices who had money but nothing to do but buy chrome accessories for their Vespas and new shoes every week. The Who were made for them and they were made for the Who. The last time they played Stevenage was in Spring 1967, it was a muggy evening. I was seriously pissed because I'd had a major blow-up with one of my best friends over a year end exhibition we were both working on. It ended with me throwing a chair through the studio window. It was early evening I walked through the deserted town centre in an un-focussed rage. The sky was growing as dark as my mood. I reached the bus terminus, opposite was the Mecca. The upper windows were open and filled with bodies. Howls of feedback emerged just as the first clap of thunder burst. Large raindrops began to fall, I raised my head to the sky and my anger dissipated with closing screech of Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.
The Who left for the US shortly after that, and I left for Leicester. None of us ever properly returned.

Fourth. Pete Townshend. The first, maybe only, pop soulmate I've had. Why? Because he was unusually articulate and honest for the period. Sure he exaggerated sometimes, but it was usually obvious when he did. Mainly he was clearly, and genuinely, wrestling with what all this pop stuff was about. Most English bands had members who'd been to art school, but Townshend was perhaps the only one who clearly thought about what he was doing, and what was going on generally, as an art student like myself did. Why were The Who's audience mostly male, he wondered? Why did teenage boys go nuts when he smashed his guitars. He was a thinker, an aesthetic and cultural analyst. I "got" him then. Still do probably.

[Bored Of Education]

I love The Who but never delve enough into their catalogue and should probably correct that. I would probably put them above the Stones and certainly The Beatles in bands of that period. Like some on here, I have a soft spot for "You Better You Bet" as that was the first "new" Who single that I heard (which, I think, they played live on TOTP and were the first band to do so). Someone that doesn't get the credit he deserves is John Entwhistle. I realised recently that, through being influenced on the bass by Bruce Foxton, I had also been influenced by Entwhistle. Indeed, for my 50th, we did a load of favourite songs of mine as cover versions and we did "Substitute". This was a bit of a nod to an early band that I was in doing a cover version of it. In truth, we did a cover of the Sex Pistols version and, like all Pistols covers, they distilled it down to the bare elements and the bass there (and, therefore, on my earlier cover version) was just doing the root notes following the guitar. However, I decided to learn the Entwhistle bass line and, fuck me, it was hard but, like all his bass lines, wasn't too flashy but did what was needed, drove the song along and filled out the one guitar sound. It didn't help me that, unlike "Start" which we also covered, I decided to do lead vocals on Substitute. As an aside, I was watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics in 2012 and The Who, of course, closed the show and, bugger me, an old mate of mine was standing in for Entwhistle.

[danielmak]

I'm going to keep the praise rolling and echo AdC and BE at the end here: I am a big fan. The thing about the Who that works so well for me is that I like both Who sounds (if we think about early Maximum R&B Who and then arena rock Who). I'd echo Sporting a bit and say that Tommy didn't really work for me, Quadrophenia does work for me, but it's interesting that the mod rock opera isn't really a mod record. The songs are too big and too long. I still dig it but as a rock n roll record. Oddly, I don't have many of the early records. I've wanted to buy reissues but all of the reviews say that Universal brickwalled everything and the reissues sound like garbage.

BTW, I posted in another thread that I worked for the US office of Beggars Banquet for a couple years in the early 90s. We put out a record from a band called Polyphemus. They sounded a bit like an indie rock band making Magic Bus in the 1990s.

[Sporting]

I'm going to keep the praise rolling and echo AdC and BE at the end here: I am a big fan. The thing about the Who that works so well for me is that I like both Who sounds (if we think about early Maximum R&B Who and then arena rock Who). I'd echo Sporting a bit and say that Tommy didn't really work for me, Quadrophenia does work for me, but it's interesting that the mod rock opera isn't really a mod record. The songs are too big and too long. /URL].

I agree with you about "too long". By "too big" do you mean over-produced?

[Felicity, I guess so]

Quadrophenia is brilliant, as are the early singles and I’m definitely with AdeC on Townshend the self-analysing rocker.

[Duncan Gardner]

[Duncan Gardner]

(Quadrophenian)

[danielmak]

I agree with you about "too long". By "too big" do you mean over-produced?

Early mod songs were often rawer (lacked the same production budget for sure) but also just short and to the point, so to speak. I mean, think about the songs that played when the mods in the film were at parties or dances. Those songs, including the Who's "My Generation" just exploded. Quick, raw, bursts.

Again, I still love Quadorphenia but I do think it's funny that a mod opera wasn't really composed of mod songs. It would be like making a movie about 70s rock but the soundtrack consisted of contemporary top 40 pop singers writing pop songs about 70s rock. I don't know if that comparison is perfect since I still dig Quadrophenia, but when I want to listen to mod Quandrophenia isn't the record.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Again, I still love Quadorphenia but I do think it's funny that a mod opera wasn't really composed of mod songs

Possibly because it wasn't until Tommy and Quadrophenia that Townshend began to consider himself a proper/serious musician. He knew he lacked the musicianship of Clapton et al and was frustrated by that, hence the guitar smashing. Early on, though he didn't really articulate it at the time, Who performances and his songs were Pop events rather than musical statements. Later the synthesiser was huge in his musical development, which is why the songs became longer and more complex. Consequently Quadrophenia is a mod opera in the same way that La Boheme is a Artistic bohemian opera, ie: not very much.

[G-Man]

ad hoc speaks for me. Almost every word of it, except I don't mind "Who Are You?". I rtemember their set at Live Ad boring my to metaphorical tears. Bad sound and it went on forever. It was like watching prog rock.

I see The Who now, and I see that bigoted shithead Daltrey, the obnoxious Keith Moon, and dodgy Pete. I'm too young for them to have been spokesmen for my generation, and today I'm grateful for that (though I'm rather short on good spokesmen for my own generation).

[Lang Spoon]

I couldn't get past Daltrey's 70s hair.