The Who On The Who
Sean Egan
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Drummer Keith Moon was a clown desperately seeking attention, but on stage, channelled into virtuoso drumming. John Entwistle on stage looked like he wqasa queueing for a bus, but brutal bass style. Pete (big nose) Townsend wrote the lyrics. Roger Daltrey was the stroppy guy who had both looks and ability to fight.
Their first single "I Can't Explain", reached the UK top ten, and was followed by a string of singles including "My Generation", "Substitute" and "Happy Jack" "I'm A Boy" and "Pictures of Lily". In 1967, they performed at the Monterey Pop Festival and released the US top ten single "I Can See for Miles", while touring extensively. The group's fourth album, 1969's rock opera Tommy, included the single "Pinball Wizard" and was a critical and commercial success. Who's Next was a cutdown version of a planned double LP featuring another anthem "Won't Get Fooled Again".
Pop Art influence - particularly the RAF roundel and the Union Jack that featured on most of their imagery.
Despite records' successes, they nevewr had A No 1 hit on either side of the Atlantic.
Decided they'd do a live album by taping every one of the 80 shows they did on US tour, on theory that they'd get at least one good copy of each song. Then they realized that someone wd have to siut down and listen to 240 hours of tapes and said "Fuck it". And to stop tapes falling into wrong hands and getting bootlegged, they put the whole lot onto a bonfire. Then they took an 8 track tape deck down to Leeds and just recorded that. Made it a good show and had a great audience so whole thing worked.
After Tommy, group (mainly PT) decided they'd make a film. But after six months of faffing around, realized wasn't happening, so took bits of the proto-script and made songs out them. So Baba O'Rily's "out here in the fields, we fight for our meals" but the song really has no meaning. ("The lyrics mean fuck-all, you know, but it's probably one of the best vocal performances I've heard Roger do - yet he's singing about nothing." PT)
Keith used to get annoyed at not being allowed to sing bc has a really bad voice. So in middle of recording Happy Jack he kept disrupting by talking in the middle of the take. So they put him in the engineer's sound bnooth, but he kept making faces at rest of band and making them laugh. So they made him crouch down out of sight. But right at the end he popped his head up, and that's when PT said "I saw yer".
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