The Who

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Douglas Cooke

Still regarded in the late 1990s as one of the greatest rock bands of all time, the Who were bold innovators who changed the face of popular music forever. Having planted the seeds of heavy metal, art rock, punk, and electronica, the Who are almost without peer in their range of influence upon subsequent music. The Who boasted a dynamic singer and stage presence in Roger Daltrey, a powerful virtuoso bassist in John Entwistle, and one of the world's greatest drummers in the frenetic Keith Moon. But the guiding genius of the Who was guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, who wrote and arranged each song, and recorded the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals onto a demo before presenting it to the band to learn and perform.

Born in West London in 1945, Townshend attended Ealing Art school, where he learned about Pop Art and the merging realms of high and low culture. When he formed the Who, he found a suitable audience for this background among a youth subculture called the Mods, who wore Pop Art clothing and sought out stylish new music and amphetamine-driven dance styles. The Who's manager, Kit Lambert, encouraged the band to adopt the Mod look and write significant songs that would appeal to Mods. Their early hit, "Can't Explain" (1964) expressed adolescent frustration, followed by the angst-ridden "My Generation" (1965), one of the great rock anthems of the period.

The Who were most famous for outrageous stage performances. Townshend specialized in "windmill" power chords, in which he would swiftly swing his arm 360 degrees before striking a chord. The Who often smashed their instruments at the end of a show, with Townshend shoving his guitar through the amplifier and Moon smashing through the drumskins and kicking over the entire drum set. Despite their commercial success, the Who remained in debt until 1969 because of this expensive habit.

The Who released their first album, The Who Sing My Generation in 1965. Their next album, A Quick One (1967; renamed Happy Jack in America) featured a miniature "rock opera" on side two, a series of five songs narrating a tale of suburban infidelity. The Who Sell Out (1968) satirized commercials, again revealing their interest in Pop Art. Magic Bus (1968) was the best album of their early period but offered no hint of the grandeur of their next project, a full-scale rock opera. The double album Tommy (1969) told the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who, after a miracle cure, becomes a cult leader. The album was influenced by Townshend's involvement with his guru, Meher Baba. If spirituality was an unexpected theme from the author of teen frustration and masturbation, the music was an equally bold advance, establishing Townshend as a versatile guitarist and ambitious composer. Nevertheless, responses to Tommy were mixed, partly due to the difficulty of following the story. Charges of pretentiousness were frequent. The artistic audacity of Tommy left the Who with a formidable dilemma--where do you go from here?

The Who followed up the rock opera with the raunchy, visceral Live at Leeds (1970), but soon Townshend grew ambitious again, formulating another opera, Lifehouse. Eventually the concept was abandoned, and the better half of the songs written for the project were released as Who's Next (1971), which many regard as the greatest rock album ever made. Among its highlights are "Behind Blue Eyes," "Teenage Wasteland," and one of the greatest rock songs of all time, "Won't Get Fooled Again," a masterpiece of overwhelming power, featuring incredible performances by each band member. Who's Next made innovative use of synthesizers and sequencers, anticipating electronic music, and it established the Who as a major creative power in rock. The following year, Townshend released a solo album, Who Came First, devoted to Meher Baba.

Townshend then embarked upon yet another opera, based on the raw passions of youth rather than philosophical ideas. Quadrophenia (1973) told the story of the Mods and their rival subculture, the Rockers. The story was simpler than Tommy but still rather confusing. However, the Who had grown musically since their first opera. Townshend was a more sophisticated arranger and made greater use of piano (played by himself) and horns (played by Entwistle). Quadrophenia was regarded as Townshend's masterpiece, the definitive expression of adolescent angst, combining the ambitions of Tommy with the virtuosity and emotional power of Who's Next. Both Tommy and Quadrophenia were made into movies, the former an awkward musical starring Daltrey, the latter a gritty drama which helps to explain the album's plotline, as well as the cultural milieu in which the Who developed. For most Americans, the movie version of Quadrophenia is a prerequisite for understanding the album.

The triumph of Quadrophenia left the Who in the same quandary that Tommy had: where do you go from here? They avoided the question with Odds & Sods (1974), a mixture of singles, B-sides, and leftovers from the Lifehouse project. For a hodgepodge, it was a fine album. The Who by Numbers (1975) was quieter, with thoughtful, introspective lyrics. Who Are You (1978) found the Who delivering up-tempo rock again. The lengthy title song was a worthy follow-up to "Won't Get Fooled Again." The entire album was reminiscent of Who's Next, packed with powerful songs, and again featuring innovative use of synthesizers. Unfortunately, Keith Moon died shortly afterwards from an overdose of anti-alcoholic medication.