Musical Talent Behind The Who's Madness

By Eliot Wald and Abe Peck

The Chicago Sun-Times

For The Who, waiting backstage on the evening of Dec. 3, the stampede that took 11 lives outside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum was a circumstance beyond their control. It could have happened to any rock group playing a badly organized, sold-out concert; in fact, there’s a lengthy list of likelier bands with rowdier fans.

In more than 16 years, The Who, one of rock’s long-playing acts, has evolved from punkish beginnings into a hard-driving rock group that is also thoughtful, articulate, even spiritual.

The Who burst on the mid-’60s British rock scene in a cloud of smoke and splinters, with leader-composer-guitarist Peter Townshend smashing guitars and amplifiers. That theatrical finale never failed to get an audience on its feet, crushing forward for a clear view of the flailing and destruction.

Instrument-smashing and rabble-rousing haven’t been a part of The Who’s repertoire for a decade. But the collective history of the band is rife with fistfights, wrecked hotel rooms and last year’s drug-related death of drummer Keith Moon.

In the beginning were the Detours, a scroungy London pub band which included bassist John Entwistle and singer Roger Daltrey. In 1963, Entwistle persuaded art student and rookie guitarist Peter Townshend to join. Drummer Keith Moon won a job when he ended his audition by manically, hilariously destroying the band’s 20-year-old drum set.

After a brief turn as The High Numbers, the band was rechristened The Who. With mop-top hairdos, ruffled shirts and pop art touches like suits emblazoned with Union Jacks, they were determinedly Mod in the era of warfare between the dandified Mods and leather-jacketed Rockers.

Townshend became notorious for his leaps, splits and windmilling attacks on his guitar strings (prelude to his guitar-breaking). Moon, perhaps the most energetic drummer in rock history, bashed at his drum set, breaking sticks and sending cymbals flying. The lithe, blonde Daltrey stalked and pranced the stage, twirling his microphone by its cord. The emotionless, near-catatonia of Entwistle seemed a calculated contrast to the general frenzy.

“Our band didn’t have any quality,” Townshend has said about the early days. “It was just musical sensationalism. You do something BIG up on stage and a thousand geezers go ‘WOW.’" But unlike latter-day flash-and-thunder bands such as Kiss, there was musical talent in The Who’s madness.

Townshend’s simple, chord-heavy melodies and wry lyrics distinguished the band from the blues-based sounds of the more famous Beatles and Rolling Stones. Yet, despite a burgeoning reputation as the top live act in Britain, the band was, as late as 1965, deeply in debt from replacing destroyed equipment.

In 1965, The Who finally crossed the ocean with “I Can’t Explain,” a kinetic single that cracked American radio. But it was their 1965 “My Generation” album that established them as part of the “British Invasion” of American pop. Songs defending the outrageous Mods — "The Kids Are All Right” and the title tune (“People try to put us down. Just because we get around. Things they do look awful cold, Hope I die before I get old . . .”) — became youth anthems on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Who were here, and they lasted longer than any of their co-invaders, save the Rolling Stones.

By The Who’s first U.S. tour in 1967, Townshend had begun moving away from sound and fury. The band’s next albums were quieter, even lyrical. “Happy Jack” (1967) contained Townshend’s first crude attempt at an “opera”; linked, song fragments about an unfaithful wife called “A Quick One While He’s Away.”

The next album, “The Who Sell Out,” (1968) was a witty parody of AM radio, with the songs sandwiched between “commercials” for deodorant, baked beans and pimple cream. The tunes were some of Townshend’s loveliest: “Tattoo,” “Mary Ann With the Shaky Hands” and "I Can See for Miles,” which became the band’s first Top Ten single. (Their previous single, “Pictures of Lily,” disappeared from radio when programmers discovered that the lyrics were an oblique reference to masturbation.)

Though the hastily patched-together “Magic Bus” (1968) sold well, it wasn’t until 1969 and “Tommy" that The Who became a supergroup. Influenced by Townshend’s growing interest in Eastern philosophy (especially that of Meher Baba, the Indian holy man who remained mute for 44 years before his 1969 death), “Tommy” was a “deaf, dumb and blind kid,” conceived in adultery, whose distillation of sensory inputs into a musical “vibration” makes him first a holy hero, and finally a disillusioned, rejected guru.

Simultaneously cosmic and sardonic, the slightly padded double album (Townshend wanted to do only one and 12 records, but MCA Records vetoed the idea) featured a dozen first-rate songs: “Pinball Wizard,” “Christmas,” “I’m Free.” The record was a smash, and led to the band performing the entire “rock opera” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House — the first rock band ever to appear on that hallowed stage. In 1976 the controversial Ken Russell directed the antic, excessive movie version. In all its recorded forms, “Tommy” wound up selling over 12 million records.

“Tommy” established The Who’s energetic rock style, and Townshend as one of the genre’s most ambitious composers. Yet audiences wouldn’t let them forget their beginnings, calling for guitar-smashing encores. Townshend occasionally responded with anger. When one audience insisted by booing, Townshend raged onstage and shouted: “See here, we’ve been up on the bloody stage for three hours playing our buttocks off and we’re bloody tired. So boo f—- ‘boo’ to you!”

Having discovered the power and publicity possibilities of tribal rock gatherings with a show-stopping appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it was natural for them to follow “Tommy” with an appearance at Woodstock.

“They got our spot,” Paul Kantner, leader of the Jefferson Starship (then Airplane) laughingly recalled. “We were hoping for the sunrise, and they stole it from us.

They also stole the thunder from those who came to Woodstock to force a political counterculture. Abbie Hoffman clambered up on stage to preach the Gospel of Woodstock Nation; Townshend conked him on the head with his guitar, and the show went on. “I hated it,” Townshend said later. “We gave one of the worst shows we’ve ever given,” Daltrey agreed.

Still, Woodstock followed “Tommy” in solidifying The Who’s position as an important rock band. Returning to England, they played the Leeds festival, which resulted in the “Live at Leeds” album (1970).

The release of “Who’s Next” (1971) saw the band changing. Now their rave-up energy was tempered with the disillusioned criticism of a “teenage wasteland” contained in “Baba O’Riley” (which also contained inspired synthesizer playing by Townshend). The Who of “Who’s Next” continued to put distance between themselves and the movements of the ’60s. Their disillusionment was summed up by one of their best-known songs: “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

During the ’70s, all four musicians recorded solo albums, none of which matched their group effort. Roger Daltrey became a movie star in the 1975 film version of “Tommy” (he continued less successfully in “Lisztomania”).

But The Who weren’t finished with rock operas. “Quadrophenia” (recorded in 1973 and just released as a movie starring non-Who actors) was Townshend’s updating of the familiar Mods vs. Rockers theme. Mod hero Jimmy Cooper experienced the power of belonging to a cultural movement, yet, Who-like, eventually declared his individuality. Overlong and a bit trite, the album was nevertheless a smash. “The way they make what’s functionally a three-piece band into an orchestra is musically remarkable,” enthused the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. “They’re the model for that kind of music. They invented it.”

Increasingly, the band which once sang about dying before getting old was now struggling to answer the question, “Is There Life After 30?” After “Odds and Bods,” a 1974 greatest hits sequel to “Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy” (1971), they explored the theme on “The Who By Numbers” (1975). The Who survived this midlife crisis: “Squeezebox,” the album’s hit single, was fun, and in 1975, when The Who billed itself as “the world’s greatest rock and roll band” for its English tour, the claim was, if debatable, certainly not laughable.

Yet the band continued to drift apart. Families, professional projects, personal disputes (Townshend vs. Daltrey, Moon vs. Earth) encouraged separation. “The last three years have been the happiest of my life as far as my family goes,” Townshend said on “Good Morning America” in 1978. “It strikes me that I’m rather too aged to ask 15-year-old girls to scream for me. Perhaps we’re all too old for this business,” he said in another interview, fueling rumors that he wanted to leave the band.

But even as Townshend was speaking, the lure of collective creation and big money had brought them back together in 1978 to record and release “Who Are You." Success followed. “We’re all very pleased,” Moon said. “We just learned how to be The Who again.”

Well-crafted if not sensational, “Who Are You” intensified the band’s exploration of mortality. The lasting message was contained in the title song, inspired by a meeting between Townshend and members of the now-defunct punk-avata.rs, the Sex Pistols, a band which had

See The Who — Page 5-C

[Caption beneath photo]:

The members of British rock supergroup The Who pound out another number in their performance earlier this year at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Shown are bass player John Entwistle, lead singer Roger Daltrey, lead guitarist Peter Townshend and new drummer Kenny Jones. (AP Photo)