The Who

[Nefertiti2]

Best band I’ve ever seen live without a doubt. The early stuff Is great also like Who’s Next and Quadrophenia is magnificent too. Live At Leeds shows the energy of when mods met blues. The most male British band - with the style and the anxietiesthat involved and also the most intellectual.

Can’t discuss the Who without reference tonGustav Metzger who taught Townshend at Ealing Art School.

[willie1foot]

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

I was told I had a passing resemblence to Daltrey at one time.. when I had the same 70's hair. I'm a fan of their earlier stuff... I can tolerate the 'You Better You Bet' era stuff but it's not in the same class.

I never saw them live but I remember when the played at Celtic Park and we were having a kickabout down our local park about 3 miles away and we could hear well enough to know what song they were playing. Fuck knows how loud it must have been inside Parkhead.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I'm in the pro camp too. I've mentioned recently on here my two favourite Who facts:

Their sequence of live dates in late summer 1969 which went from Woodstock to the Isle of Wight festival to provincial dates in the UK, including a return visit to the Cosmo, a night club on a council estate in Carlisle that would have held 1,000 at a very big push.

That when they had arranged an arena tour in the last ten years or so but hadn't played for a while they wanted some warm up dates in smaller capacity venues, and their management approached the Sands Centre in Carlisle, who turned them down because on the weekend The Who wanted to play they had already booked the hall to either a judo or badminton tournament (I forget which).

Anyway, saw them in the NEC in 1989 and there was a lot wrong with it but, it was very much The Who and I thought that would be it really. Fast forward 20 odd years and I'm back seeing them with my sister and brother in law, not once but twice. One of those was the full Quadrophenia show, with greatest hits as an encore. We had a couple of pints pre gig, then did the "let's get two each and take them in", and then at some point my brother in law wandered off and reappeared carrying more lager. After that I was fit to burst and remember thinking 'at the end of this song I'll go for a piss' and made a dash for it. As I got there and kicked things off I could hear the intro to Pinball Wizard and thought it's OK I won't miss much of it. It was possibly the biggest slash I've ever endured, and by the time I finished the song was nearly finished as well.

I also remember them showing the film of Tommy on ITV in the early 80s, in the school holidays. It was quite a big event and was trailed for a long time beforehand and for some reason a few of us got fixated on this and said we'd all watch it, separately (we were 9 or 10 at the time). I didn't want to be the one to bottle out so sat up and started watching it.

I don't mind admitting it freaked the absolute fucking shit out of me. I think the trouble started with Robert Powell getting all scarred up, but then the sequence of Eyesight to the Blind / Acid Queen / Cousin Kevin / Fiddle About just frazzled my young head and I remember knocking the telly off. I gave it a while and turned it back on in time to see Ann Margaret getting covered in baked beans and that was me out again for a while - I chanced the end just to prove I'd made it through. Back to school after the holidays I felt confident to talk about it and my mates said they didn't bother watching it after all.

So on balance I approve. Daltrey remains an arsehole and there is a lot of "production" going into their shows these days but they can still belt them out, and what they do belt out is up there with the best of the classic rock era. And I'd even go into bat for You Better You Bet.

[danielmak]

I'm a big fan of that Daltry 70s hair. My friend signed a band that unfortunately never caught on but the singer had that look going. I don't think that hair is one someone can try to copy; you have it or your don't.

[Sporting]

dodgy Pete

He was incredibly stupid and naive, but I don't think he's a wrong 'un.

[My Name Is Ian]

I have increasing Daltrey reservations as I get older, but I'll probably still go in to bat for The Who too. They were the first band I properly fell in love with, when I was about 12 or 13. I started playing the drums on account of seeing a clip of Keith Moon on The Rock & Roll Years, and with there being something of a dearth of contemporary music that I was remotely interested in during the mid-1980s, they were the first band about whom I really devoured everything I could find. I bought The Kids Are Alright on VHS when we were on holiday in France and must have watched it a thousand times, evenn though it was on black & white because I'd bought it abroad.

Sonically, they weren't really like any other band, before or since. A lot of that was a reflection of their personalities. Keith Moon was never going to settle for being that guy sitting at the back tapping out a straight four on the floor, and the combination of that and John Entwistle's pretty obvious bass guitar virtuosity gave them an upside-down sound that makes its truest sense when you consider the bass and drums to be their lead instruments and the guitar to be a rhythm instrument.

The best example of this is probably Substitute, which kind of feels half-forgotten, to me. It's Townshend trying to write Motown, basically, but it comes out as this kind of slightly mangled alloy of a song. The bass leads to the point of having something approximating a solo in the middle of it and there are points in it when it sounds like the drum kit is going to explode, or something. And it's one of their best performances, captured in a studio, for once. Even Roger Daltrey (see above and below) is on top of his game. The words are snarled. (Note: they changed a lyric from "I look all white but my dad was black" to "I try walking forward but my feet walk back" for its American release.)

I have problems with their sound, certainly from 1966 to 1970. Their speed freak managers produced them in the studio during this time, and you can really hear it. Shel Talmy produced their earlier stuff, but their management had fallen out with him and were in court by 1966, and A Quick One, The Who Sell Out & Tommy all suffer for it. It's too tinny and trebly for my ears, particularly these days. Once they brought in a proper producer, Glyn Johns, for Who's Next, it made a real difference.

But Roger Daltrey is problematic, and not just for his stupid opinions. I never got on with this voice, and have become less able to tolerate it as I've gotten older. He had the right look by the time of Woodstock, though. When I do listen to them, I have to listen through Daltrey's voice. Like others, I don't consider Townshend to be problematic. Troubled, definitely, and he spent a very long time fighting various addictions and other demons, but I don't think he's a wrong 'un.

(I could blether on about them for hours, if you hadn't already guessed.)

[Jah Womble]

Enjoyed the punchy pop moments of The Who's 'mod' phase - and some of the more bombastic stuff from the early seventies.

Kind of lost interest around 1978, I think.

[Sporting]

Kind of lost interest around 1978, I think.

Hard to find anyone who didn't.

[Jah Womble]

Your diehards stayed with them. Which, among The Who's fanbase, would've accounted for a fair few.

[My Name Is Ian]

Who Are You (the song - the album is a bit all over the place, though it's better than it's predecessor, The Who By Numbers) is probably their last great moment, and that came out a calendar month to be day before Keith Moon died.

I think it's kind of important to remember how much of their early career was squandered thanks to contractual squabbling and scrapping behind the scenes. There was a point at which, for example, their singles were being put out by two record companies at the same time, while they also for a while had a bizarre publishing deal whereby the A Quick One album had to have two tracks written by each member, so you end up with weird surf-style stuff like In The City, which sounds like what you'd expect surf music written by four geezers from Shepherds Bush to sound like (Moon was a surf music obsessive, but I very much doubt he had anything whatsoever to do with writing a single song in his life, with the possible exception of the "comedy" songs on Tommy and Quadrophenia.)

And, of course, the really early stuff had a fair few session musicians on it. No-one even seems to be able to remember the guitar on the single version of I Can't Explain, for example, was played by Jimmy Page or Pete Townshend. There's no doubt that Shel Talmy brought him into the sessions, but whether he actually appeared on the final cut is apparently lost to the mists of time. Almost every song from that early period in their career has a curious little story like that about it.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I think we're forgetting that some of the early stuff was very imaginative indeed, particularly A Quick One While He's Away and the Who Sell-Out LP.

The performance of the former on the Stones' Rock and Roll Circus was really something. So much so, it overshadowed the Stones' own performance and they didn't release it for years.

[My Name Is Ian]

The performance of the former on the Stones' Rock and Roll Circus was really something. So much so, it overshadowed the Stones' own performance and they didn't release it for years.

It really is.

For me, the most notable thing about that particular song is that it has the backing vocal, "Cello cello cello cello" because Townshend wanted that instrument on the original song, but they couldn't afford to hire a cellist.

Their financial position by the time that Tommy was recorded was ruinous. They had to do a lengthy American tour with a bunch of bubblegum acts in 1968 playing these hugely truncated, 15 minute sets, to try and balance the books, which is kind of like Radiohead or someone like that having to tour with S Club 7 and Steps in 1998, or something.

[Amor de Cosmos]

They also, like the Stones and Beatles, had to hire Alan Klein to sort out the money. Never a good move except in the short term. As Ian notes they were an utterly unique outfit, much, much greater than the sum of their parts. This was clear when Kenney Jones replaced Moon. Ian McLagan, naturally biased and tongue in cheek, reckoned Jones was a better drummer than Moon because not only could he do the fancy stuff he could also keep time. But I saw that tour, and in spite of having all kinds of time for Jones and The Small Faces, the lack of Who-ness was massive, it just wasn't the same, couldn't be.

[My Name Is Ian]

I've seen a live recording of their 1982 tour and it's rotten. Kenney Jones was a great drummer, but he was brought in primarily because they knew him rather than because he was the right drummer for that (particularly specialised) gig.

[Bored Of Education]

I was actually quite surprised to see that Moon hadn't played on "You Better You Bet" as he has died three years earlier. Like many, I assumed they didn't do anything of any worth after he died. I was also surprised to see that Daltrey and Townsend have done two "Who" albums with just the two of them (and a load of session musicians).

Here is a great radio documentary about the making of "Live In Leeds" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076q26). However, on a cursory listen to the excerpts of the songs on the album, it confirms what I initially though on listening to it decades ago - that it was full of mangled and/or overlong versions of their own songs and a couple of covers. However, I have never heard the deluxe version of it with all the extra tracks so may have to give that a listen.

[My Name Is Ian]

I really love the version of Summertime Blues on Live At Leeds. It really gets close to what I think they're about. It's kind of mischievous (Entwistle's "no dice son, you gotta work late" is straight out the Boris The Spider book of vocals) and you can feel how loud it must have been. I presume they based their version on the Blue Cheer version from a couple of years earlier, but I couldn't say for sure and they're not identical.

The deluxe version of Live At Leeds is the full show. At the time, this consisted of most or all of Tommy, a couple of covers, and some of their older songs.

[Cal Alamein]

Bordeaux Education - the first edition of Live at Leeds is great fun, but the full show is fantastic. I know you are a fan of No Sleep Til Hammersmith - I seem to remember a member of Motorhead choosing Live at Leeds in his top ten selection of albums. Pretty sure it was Eddie.

The opening track of Heaven & Hell is truly a sonic masterpiece.

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

Got Live at the Fillmore East - a nice live recording PRE-TOMMY. Many of the same songs are on Live at Leeds.

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

[My Name Is Ian]

I'll say this much about Heaven & Hell - it takes some brass neck to chuck in a song that has your bassist on vocals (Daltrey joins in on the chorus, a bit, but it's Entwistle's song) as the opening song on your touring live set list. And for several years too, I think.

[Sporting]

Poking around youtube just now and found this, which I'd never seen before:

[Sporting]

And another: