From Mod-era "maximum R&B" to rock
operas and quintessential Seventies hard rock,
the
Who reigned across the decades as one of
the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. At their
best, they distilled the pent-up energy and chaos of
rock and roll into its purest form while investing
their music with literary wiles and visionary insight.
In their prime they were a unit whose individual
personalities fused into a larger-than-life whole.
Pete Townshend provided the slashing guitar work and
much of the material. Vocalist Roger Daltrey injected
the songs with expressive muscularity and passion.
Bassist John Entwistle anchored the band with his
stoic demeanor and expert musicianship. Keith Moon,
one of the greatest of all rock and roll drummers,
embodied their explosive energy and anarchic wit.
The Who evolved in 1964 from a group called the
High Numbers, which included Daltrey, Townshend and
Entwistle. They were joined by Moon, who'd played in a
British surf group called the Beachcombers. The newly
charged-up band came on as equipment-smashing Mods who
brashly declared, "Hope I die before I get
old," in their stuttering anthem, "My
Generation." The early Who demonstrated a mastery
of the three-minute single, articulating the
frustrations of adolescence in such combustible
classics as "Can't Explain," "Anyway,
Anyhow, Anywhere" and "Substitute."
However, it wasn't until the 1967 release of
"Happy Jack," an antic piece of art-school
whimsy from the album of the same name, that the
Who cracked the U.S. Top Forty. A turn
toward psychedelia and consumerist satire yielded The
Who Sell Out and its illuminating key song, "I
Can See for Miles," which became the
Who's biggest stateside single, reaching #9.
By the late Sixties, Townshend and the
Who had turned their attention from
singles to their antithesis. In 1969, they released
the conceptual rock opera Tommy, a double-album about
the spiritual path of a "deaf, dumb and blind
boy." An excerpt from Tommy provided a concert
highlight of the Woodstock festival and its subsequent
film documentary. Always one of rock's most
hard-hitting live acts, the
Who documented this side of their
multifaceted personality with Live at Leeds (1970), a
warts-and-all concert recording packaged to look like
a bootleg. From the ashes of Lifehouse, another
would-be concept album that Townshend abandoned in
midstream, came the
Who's next studio recording: Who's Next, a
flawless album of discreet numbers that helped define
the sound and sensibility of rock in the Seventies.
From "Baba o'Riley"'s album-opening, synth-propelled
discourse on "teenage wasteland" through to
Daltrey's electrifying scream on the closing track,
"Won't Get Fooled Again," Who's Next stands
as a virtual rock primer. From this they returned to
the rock-opera format with Quadrophenia, a
hard-rocking memoir and documentary of the group's Mod
origins.
At all stages of its career, the
Who has been a dynamic live act. During
those decades when they were actively creating, the
band was also outspoken and combustible. Group
conflicts often fueled their best work, providing a
volatile dynamic that never quite broke them up. Only
the death in 1978 of Keith Moon - who overdosed on
medication taken for his alcoholism - interrupted the
original foursome's remarkable run. Amid much
soul-searching as to whether they should continue, the
Who recruited drummer Kenney Jones
(formerly of the Faces) as Moon's replacement and
recorded two more albums, Face Dances and It's Hard.
The Who undertook a lengthy and much-publicized
"farewell" tour in 1982 but thereafter
regrouped on a number of occasions, apparently having
said farewell only to the notion of making new music
together. (Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle all
pursued prolific solo careers both during and after the
Who's alleged breakup, however.) Among other
things, the
Who revived their rock operas Tommy and
Quadrophenia for multi-night stands in big cities and,
subsequently, full-fledged concert tours. Tommy was
also successfully adapted to the Broadway stage in
1993, with Townshend's blessing and involvement, and
won five Tony awards. The next year saw the release of
an exhaustive box set, The Who: Thirty Years of
Maximum R&B. Though still no new music was
forthcoming, the
Who's surviving principals - Daltrey,
Entwistle and an admittedly hearing-impaired Townshend
- turned up on the summer amphitheater circuit as
recently as 1997. With each regrouping, the veteran
band gave the lie to that youthful and impetuous line
from "My Generation" about getting old.
