The version released as such renamed it and lopped off the opening section, changing the track from a story of rejection into something more straightforwardly euphoric. Tommy’s episodic seven-minute grand finale We’re Not Gonna Take It was fantastic, but not the ideal candidate for a single. Its examination of why “marrying’s no fun” is more subtle than it first appears, but why it was chosen over its brilliant, previously unreleased B-side Instant Party is a mystery. There was a certain irony about the title of A Legal Matter, an old album track unofficially released by producer Shel Talmy to sabotage the release of the band’s chosen single Substitute. Released in the wake of Substitute and I’m a Boy, however, it sounded pleasantly insignificant and failed to chart.

Yet another track awkwardly promoted to single status in an attempt to milk debut album My Generation for all it was worth, La-La-La-Lies made clear the influence of Moon favourites the Beach Boys on the Who. The sentiment of Let’s See Action – equal parts post-60s free-your-mind idealism and proto-punk get-off-your-arse agitating – is pretty inarguable, but there is something plodding and hoary about its brand of blues-rock boogie – with session man Nicky Hopkins’s piano to the fore – that works against the lyrics and makes it sound less urgent, more complacent. It’s Not Enough (2006)Įndless Wire, the Who’s first album in 24 years, was a remarkably strong effort, but it was better taken as whole – replete with another Townshend mini-opera, Wire and Glass – rather than sampled via It’s Not Enough, a decent enough song that made for an unspectacular single. But their recorded legacy remains vast, deep, and ripe for exploration.The vaguely country rock-influenced sound was oddly bloodless by the Who standards, but lyrically Don’t Let Go the Coat unsparingly depicted guitarist Pete Townshend, utterly shattered by Moon’s death despite breezy public pronouncements to the contrary, thrashing around in a desperate haze of drugs and booze, pleading with someone – spiritual leader Meher Baba? His bandmates? – not to forsake him. The wheels came off in 1978 with Moon’s death, and fallow periods meant virtually no new material until 2006’s Endless Wire, released four years after Entwistle’s death. Success as a stadium rock act followed, but Townshend’s impulse to eclipse Tommy led the group into another troubled phase, which saw concept album Lifehouse aborted (it was trimmed into the majestic Who’s Next) and the appearance of their final magnum opus Quadrophenia. But this was really the start: wowing America at the Monterey Pop festival in June 1967, the group elected to refine and elevate the album as an artform, a path which reached an apotheosis in 1969 with the ‘rock opera’ Tommy. “Violence, resentment and intra-band rivalry remained at their heart.”Ĭontractual and financial problems dogged them throughout their early days, and two years after their debut 45 I Can’t Explain charted, hit singles were drying up. Daltrey’s role as straight man kept the ship from capsizing – handy considering the group’s early management team of flamboyant visionary Kit Lambert and East End tough-nut Chris Stamp was often as out of control as the group. John Entwistle’s bass and Moon’s drums became lead instruments, vying for attention with Pete Townshend’s guitar, which he’d bash and trash to create an unholy wall of noise, citing Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive art as inspiration. Starting life as R&B-playing Mods, they quickly transformed into rule-breaking pioneers, perverting, distorting or ignoring the accepted rock tenets. And thankfully so, since music as powerful as theirs was unlikely ever to be created in an atmosphere of calm. He was soon reinstated, promising pacifism, but violence, resentment and intra-band rivalry would remain at The Who’s heart. Months before December ’65’s debut album My Generation, singer Roger Daltrey was dismissed for beating up drummer Keith Moon. THE WHO AS WE KNOW THEM could have been two-hit wonders.

The who songs 1965