Saturday, June 26th, 1965

Pop Weekly features The Who in an article titled "The Way To Success" by Barrie Hilt

 

Transcript:

THE WAY TO SUCCESS

by BARRIE HILT

With everyone talking about images and being “in,” one of the groups who come into both categories and who are possibly one of the few groups to really show that they are going to make the scene in a big way in such a short time are The Who. It’s amazing but the number of groups who manage to dent the charts with weird names grows daily. The Who have now established themselves as such a powerful group for Mods and the like that they are currently racing up the charts with their latest release Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere which is one of the most unusual group sounds I’ve heard since Manfred Mann dropped a mike on his toe in a recording session and came out with a string of words on a single which would have taken it to the top of his own personal hit parade.

But seriously, this business of having an image is a very important thing. Mainly because just about everyone is battling away to get the right sort of image that gets you away from being just a Top Twenty star to being a star who pulls in the crowds without having a record in the Top Ten. Like Donovan for instance, and like The Stones and The Beatles. They could stop recording for a year and I guarantee they would still pull the crowds in, whereas there are some artistes today who are simply trying hard to get somewhere and are not succeeding because although they are in the Top Ten with their latest record their name doesn’t really get through in an exciting way to the kids.

The Who have just about made the grade as an image group. To all those people too, who shout about groups not being in the trend of things, no one can deny that The Whos’ records are trend-setting in their own way. For every Who record has its own unique stamp of individuality and that is something that is sadly lacking with many of today’s groups.

Certainly The Who aren’t going to be left behind in this group race to see who is going to stay alive after most of the one-hit wonders and the “overnight successes” have died away. They have their own ideas about publicity, their own ideas about how their image should be presented and their own idea of how things have been going with their fans simply by asking their fans what they think they ought to do with their next record and whether or not they should try and make something really happen differently.

The Who. You may hear a lot about them as a different group and you may think some of their ideas a little bit mad, but don’t let that worry you. They sometimes bust their guitars whilst they are onstage, but they can afford to bust their guitars now. For the fans simply won’t mind what they do as long as they are there. The Who may be crazy about their own music, but they have found, where so many others have failed, that the way into the right image has to be made and is not a natural talent. Most gimmicks are despised by record-buyers except when that gimmick is especially appealing to a certain type of person and that is just what The Who have managed to do.

I believe that The Who fully deserve their success. They have thought out their success and have made a great deal of money and a great amount of publicity from their careful planning. I suspect it won’t be long before everyone will be saying, “The Who!” instead of “who?”