The Who

The Who have been in the spotlight this week, following their performance at the Super Bowl half-time show. There was a lot of grumbling about that, as the artists chosen for this have lately been musicians whose popularity peaked long ago; it's sort of been a de facto lifetime achievement award. One of my friends posted on Facebook that if she wanted to see geezers perform she would prefer Tony Bennett. Well!

Frankly who plays the Super Bowl is of very little interest to me, but I'll always pay attention if The Who is on television. They are a face on my Mount Rushmore of rock, part of yet distinctly separate of the British invasion acts The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. While those two bands competed and copied each other, The Who, under Pete Townshend's edgy genius, blazed a distinct path.

Following their Super Bowl performance I've listened to the CDs I own by them: Tommy (a full discussion of that record can be found here), Who's Next and a greatest hits collection. I have many more vinyl albums, silently waiting for an opportunity to be played: Quadrophenia, Who Are You, Face Dances, and It's Hard. Today, socked in by snow, I've listened incessantly and right now am listening to Tommy--at the moment the masterful "Underture" is just starting.

I don't remember precisely when I became conscious of The Who. I have a faint recollection of being in a Shakey's Pizza parlor in about 1969 (it couldn't have been earlier) and hearing the jukebox play the "Overture" from Tommy. I liked it, and asked my father what it was. Being a relatively young man for a father of an eight-year-old, he was hip enough to know and told me it was Tommy. But I didn't start to appreciate who they were until, as a top-4o listening fourteen-year-old, Elton John hit it big with his version of "Pinball Wizard." A few years later I gave up top-40 for album-oriented rock, and was became fully cognizant of The Who.

The first album I bought, when I was in high school, was Who Are You, which featured a photograph of Keith Moon, 31 years old but looking at least ten years older, in a chair which has stencilled on it the words "Not to be taken away." He would die weeks after its release. Though the band would never quite recover from his death, I kept up my interest. I distinctly remember being at my college orientation, and my orientation leader, a fellow named Tom Ho, asking us if we wanted to hear some music. I asked, sounding like an ass, I'm sure, to hear some "late sixties British rock." He put on Who's Next, and as I heard the first twittering notes of "Baba O'Riley" I felt like a grown-up.

I dutifully acquired their next two forgettable albums, Face Dances (which as I pull it off my shelf I see was a promotional copy, no doubt received when I worked for the college newspaper--I may have even reviewed it for the paper, but have no memory of it) and It's Hard. The band wouldn't make another record of new material for over twenty years, enduring the death of another band member, John Entwhistle. When the album Endless Wire came out in 2006, I paid it no attention.

I did see the band in concert once, in about 1989, at Giants Stadium. I was in just about the last row, but the show was great. In about a twelve-month period I went on what I termed my "Dinosaurs of Rock" tour, seeing The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Paul McCartney. Mind you--The Who were dinosaurs twenty years ago. I suppose they could be considered fossils now.

So, to paraphrase a line in "Pinball Wizard," what makes them so good? Their early stuff, in the mods vs. rockers days, was similar to the Beatles, Stones, and Kinks, but with a more skewed perspective. I especially liked some of the humorous songs, like the transgendered hero of "I'm a Boy" and the ode to masturbation "Pictures of Lily," as well as the macabre Entwhistle song "Boris the Spider." Of course "My Generation" became their signature song (I guess they can't sing "hope I die before I get old" without severe irony anymore--Townshend orchestrated it for a symphony orchestra, sans lyrics) and some of Moon's best drumming can be heard on "I Can See For Miles."

It was Tommy that changed everything for them, and set the bar high for rock bands everywhere. While all sorts of groups mimicked the Beatles' music hall tweeness from Sgt. Pepper, few followed The Who's lead of narrative through song. Townshend was to do it again with a project called Lifehouse, but that was aborted and the songs scattered on albums to come, such as Who's Next, one of the great rock albums of all time, and then another rock opera, Quadrophenia. I'm not as high on that one, as it brims with excess. "Love Reign O'er Me" is a beautiful song, but the production and Roger Daltrey's leather-lunged vocal is just a bit much.

Following Who Are You, a fantastic record, and the death of Moon, the Who declined. They had a few good songs--I like "Athena," and the pop-py "You Better You Bet" has one of their better lyrics--"I drank myself blind to the sound of old T. Rex." But it was becoming clear that time had claimed The Who, and they were slipping into the realm of nostalgia, to the point where they are known to a new generation as the band that recorded the themes of the various C.S.I. shows.

While they were at their height they exemplified, even more so than Cream or Led Zeppelin, the possibilities of the power-trio, of stadium rock that was loud but at the same time intimate. Sure Townshend's guitar was a battering ram of sound, and Moon played drums as if sitting on an electrified fence, but there was also some beautiful music in there. I think of the lyric from "Pure and Easy": "There once was a note, pure and easy, playing so free, like a breath rippling by."