![]() Beyond its well-crafted story of a “deaf, dumb, and blind” pinball-playing messiah, Tommy showcased the copious talents of all four members of the group. ![]() Townshend’s imagination arguably hit its apex with The Who’s last statement of the 60s. Best heard in its entirety, so as to enjoy the faux ads and borrowed radio jingles stitched in throughout, the record still produced a fantastic single with “I Can See For Miles.” Echoing the vastness of its title with hard stereo panning and Daltrey’s florid vocal turn, “Miles” remains their most epic anthem. The Who’s interest in conceptual music came to fruition with 1967’s The Who Sell Out, a loving tribute to Radio London, a pirate station broadcasting from a boat anchored about four miles off England’s southeast coast. While wonderful in its studio iteration, The Who really brought this song to life in concert, as proven by those renditions found on The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus and Live At Leeds. The mini-epic was six songs in one, with a novel’s worth of narrative baked into its nine minutes. ![]() His scope would get even wider, eschewing easily consumed singles for more conceptual songs and albums, as borne out by the title track to The Who’s 1966 album, A Quick One. The song, which suggests a girl playing with gender expectations, also introduced an expansion of Townshend’s lyrical perspective beyond generational paeans and love songs. The tide is clearly turning on 1966’s “Disguises,” a droning whirlpool of a song released originally on the Ready Steady Who EP. That same year, The Who landed both the best chart position the quartet would ever reach with the 60s youth movement anthem “My Generation.” That stop-start masterpiece would become a mainstay of the group’s live sets, stretching it out at times to as long as a half-hour.Īs the band progressed, their influences grew, with elements of Indian music and psychedelia starting to poke through their R&B-tinged rock sound. Now renamed The Who, with this classic line-up in place and a combustible live show garnering them attention in the British press, the band scored their first Top 10 single in 1965 with “I Can’t Explain,” a charged-up mod pop song sent aloft by Townshend’s chiming guitar chords. It was that year that the core members of a group known as The Detours – Daltrey, Townshend, and Entwistle – hired Moon to replace original drummer Doug Sandom. The Who’s rapid ascent to the top of the charts in their native England began in earnest in 1964. The 60s (I Can’t Explain, My Generation, I Can See For Miles, Pinball Wizard, A Quick One While He’s Away, Disguises, We’re Not Gonna Take It) Listen to a playlist of the best The Who songs on Apple Music and Spotify. Nearly a half-century after their first rehearsal, The Who is still making three-minute rock songs that feel like symphonies and mapping out concept albums that tell epic, and often deeply intimate, stories. The almost ritual destruction of the equipment at the end of every show.Įven as the band has moved from their scrappy days torturing the eardrums of fans at London’s Marquee Club to multimedia spectacles held at arenas around the world – and even as the core lineup has been reduced to two after the deaths of Moon in 1978 and Entwistle in 2002 – The Who’s reign continues. Keith Moon’s whirling movements behind the drum kit. John Entwistle’s stoic presence and fleet-fingered bass work. Roger Daltreyswinging his microphone around by the cord. Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar playing – a signature move he says he stole from The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. The band itself is instantly recognizable. All of their music is reflective of the spirit of the era in which it was recorded, but more often than not it transcends those trends and achieves that rarest of goals: timelessness. Theirs was a fast evolution, moving from the swinging mod anthem “Zoot Suit” (released under their original name The High Numbers) to the heady psychedelia of “I Can See For Miles” in just three years from the muscular defiance of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to the synthpop-informed “Eminence Front” in about a decade. The Who has an almost peerless discography.
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