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| The Who |
If I had to say once and for all which group (of the many, many groups that I love) that I love the most of all, It would have to be THE WHO. No other group has had the profound effect on my life like the works of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.
As a kid, my favorite artist was Paul McCartney and Wings ( first single ever bought: Band On The Run). This led to a love (read: obesession) of the Beatles as well, and by the time I was eight grade, my world was saturated with the lush sounds and melodies of The Fab Four.
This in turn led to an overall hunger for all the “British Invasion” groups, and I remember picking up a few albums of groups like The Rolling Stones,The Yardbirds, The Kinks, and yes, THE WHO. At the time, I was just in love with the Rickenbacker sound and that whole english scene in general.
Around that time, I had purchased a magazine called Best Of Rock Stars for a cover story they were featuring on British groups, and while perusing the issue, came across an article they had done on The Who called simply, “The Who: Then and Now”.
It was your standard article, covering the basics of The Who with a brief synopsis of their beginnings and discography, but the thing that really caught my attention was the PICTURES. I couldn’t believe how COOL this group looked! They showed The Who from 1964 all the way through 1978, from Mods, to Hippies and finally to their long-haired bearded hard rocking 70’s look. I was just amazed at the different phases the group went through, and they looked WAY cool in every variation they undertook!
At this point, all I really knew about the Who’s music were the songs You Better You Bet and Who Are You, and I knew that they’d been the original artists of the Elton John song “Pinball Wizard, but that was about it. (Actually, it turned out that I knew quite a few songs of theirs, but just didn’t know it was them at the time!)
I mentioned The Who to my friend James, (who was a Beatlemaniac like me) and he offered, “Oh yeah, The Who…they’re alright…Ringo’s in that movie of theirs, “The Kids Are Alright”…” I asked what songs he’d recommend and off the top of his head, he said “Well… there’s “My Generation” …” I made up my mind that the next time I was over at Tower Records, I’d pick up the album of the Who that had My Generation on it.
When I eventually moseyed on down to the record store, I was disappointed to discover that the “My Generation” album by the Who was out of print, and the only way you could get it was by buying a double album set, featuring both “The Who sings My Generation” and “A Quick One”. Well, I didn’t feel like springing for a double album, and was deciding what to do, when I found that the import section of Tower Records had the British version of My Generation for sale! This was truly destiny, for the cover for this import edition was Cool, Colorful and VERY MOD, just the kind of music and style I was really into at the time! I excitedly bought the LP and spent the whole bus ride home poring over the pictures of the Who on the cover, and on the back, They looked so cool, and I was reminded why I was interested in them in the first place!
So when I got home, the first thing I did was get that record on, and right away, I have to say that I was awestruck. Having grown up with the lush and wistful song stylings of Messers. McCartney & Lennon (and the whole Beatles sound in general), I wasn’t prepared for the barrage of sound coming out of that album! The power driving bass riffs, the howling guitar feedback, and, THOSE DRUMS! It was like the drummer was going MAD on the songs! And yet, among the crunching power chords and beats, there was sweet harmonies backing up the gruff lead singer, and there was no denying the fact that these songs were REALLY CATCHY! My Generation, The Kids are Alright, Much Too Much, La La Lies, The Good’s Gone…just great stuff, mod three-minute masterpieces. Throw in the Surfaris inspired song “The OX”, a powerful instrumental that kicked the roof off, and you had yourself a solid introduction to a simply kick-ass band!
Riding in my Dad’s car one afternoon, the song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” came on. I loved this song, as well as its counterpart Baba O’Riley (although I didn’t know the names of the song at the time) because both of them featured the looping Moog synthesizer organ in the intros. Imagine my surprise when the song ended, and the DJ said “That was “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who!!!” I sat up in shock! This synth-driven Prog-Rock song was the same band that had released My Generation?! Then I thought of The Best of Rock Stars article, and was reminded that The Who ran the entire musical gamut, from wide-eyed mop-headed teens to the stadium giants of the 70’s. This band’s diversity was much, much more vast than I would have imagined, and I knew that I had to investigate further, and so on my next visit to the record store, I immediately snatched up the album featuring both Baba O’Riley and “Won’t Get Fooled Again, the classic Who’s Next.
I don’t think I can say anything asbout this album that hasn’t already been said a million times over, suffice it to say that it was one of the most incredible albums I’d ever heard, with songs like Baba O Riley, Won’t Get Fooled Again, Bargain, Getting In Tune, and the incredible “Behind Blue Eyes”, every song was just epic in sound and the lyrics just took me away to a futuristic “Teenage Wasteland”! Like most fans, this quickly became my favorite WHO album, and remained such for years, til time eventually turned ALL my Who Discs onto an even playing field of equal appreciation!
By now I had fallen in love with Pete Townshend’s Concept Pieces thanks to Who’s Next, and the natural progression (for me at least) was to move on to the much-celebrated Rock Opera classic Tommy. I remember cutting class one day, going down to the record store and buying the album, and then spending the rest of the day listening to the majestic album and trying to analyse the musical story of Tommy Walker. It just blew me away, and it got to the point where I had the whole “movie” created in my head to accompany the album! For awhile there It was all about TOMMY, and I remember trying to turn many of my friends onto it, especially songs like “Go To The Mirror” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. Heck, I even got them to buy some of the WHO albums!
Around the time I got around to finally purchasing the two double albums featuring (respectively) My Generation / Magic Bus and A Quick One / The Who Sell Out, a wonderful, wonderful thing happened. I found out that a communtiy college was going to have a showing of The Kids Are Alright, the must-see movie for any fan of the Who!
The only problem was that the college was practically on the other side of the island, easily a two-hour bus ride with a transfer in town and add in that I knew absolutely NOTHING about exactly WHERE this school was, it promised to be quite a trek! I asked my good friend Jas if he would mind accompanying me on my journey to see the Holy Grail of Who fanatics, and , trooper that he is, said, “Sure”. By the time we got there, it was almost time for the show to start. I’ll never forget that feeling, of being in this huge, empty college during sunset-time, excited beyond belief waiting for that show to start!
I seem to remember that there wasn’t a really big turn-out, maybe twenty five or so kids? And as I recall, it was more like a big classroom than a theater, and I remember sitting at desks in the dark! But MAN, once that movie started rolling, I completely forgot my surroundings, immmersed myself in the film, and proceeded to get my world SERIOUSLY ROCKED!! The Kids Are Alright was simply the greatest damn rock movie I’d ever seen before (or SINCE) in MY LIFE- every scene blasted with the greatest songs,zany hijinks, and the most killin’ performances ever!
From the opening scene where Keith detonates his Drum Kit on the Smothers Brothers during a performance of “My Generation” through the historical Woodstock appearance to the sensational “A Quick One” on Rolling Stones Rock N Roll Circus ,the shattering Monterey Pop performance and ending with Keith’s very last live performance onstage with “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, there was never a moment to catch your breath!
After the movie a couple of guys from my father’s workplace offered to drive me and Jas back into town, and of course the FIRST THING I wanted to do was pick up the “Kids Are Alright” soundtrack, There were just too many songs I got introduced to in that film, and I didn’t want to go home empty-handed, so they dropped us off and I went home with yet another awesome WHO album to add to my growing collection!
Well, the next few months was spent in a WHO frenzy, with me attempting to acquire all the albums in The Who’s catalog, The Who By Numbers, Live At Leeds, Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy, Who Are You, and even Face Dances, scouring the imports section for discs like Story of The Who and Pefect Collection, even poring through the used record shops for the LPs that were out of print, like The Who Sings My Generation, Sell Out, Magic Bus, Happy Jack and (strangely hard to find) Odds And Sods. Eventually I had a pretty nice collection of WHO releases, but the “Hardcore Collecting” was still to come!
That Summer of 1982, I was with my family at an electronics store so my brother could look at stereo equipment. I was wandering around, when I came upon a display of Gene Kelly promoting a new video format that had just come out, a system called a Videodisc. They were displaying a few players, and had a few rows of Videodiscs to choose from. And right there on a spindle rack, right in front of my eyes, sat the Holy Grail:
I couldn’t believe it! There is was, The fr*cking Kids Are Alright, for chrissakes! I remember standing there, holding the videodisc in my hands, thinking “The price tag for this is around $25 which I think I can handle, but I don’t have a Videodisc Player! How The HECK am I ever gonna watch this?”
But then my parents came to my rescue and made a deal with me- If I bought the disc myself, they’d buy the Player for me…DEAL! And so I walked out of there with Player and Video in hand, and that was the beginning of my “Summer Of The Who”. For the next two months straight, I watched that damn disc almost EVERY DAY, and sometimes even TWICE! This is no joke, as my poor suffering siblings can attest. Every person living in that house got to know The Who’s songs as well as me, and every friend I had was forced to watch the disc with me, This was quite simply The Most Obsessive thing I’ve ever been obsessed with, and brother, that’s saying a lot.
I was now clearly into maniac fan territory, and having completed all the domestic albums I could, began my next level of collecting, the obscure (and oblique!) releases of the Who. Through a mail-order catalog I aquired a bunch of great WHO books, including the WHO collecting Bible, a book called “The Illustrated Discography” by Ed Hanel. This book listed ALL the Who relelases, including pictures of the covers, I got to know all the US relelase, all the UK releases, all the singles, and it was through this book that I discovered the wonderful world of WHO Bootlegs. With its strange titles and beautiful covers, these albums became the new things to set my eyes on.
The “Summer Of the Who” only got better as the band released their tenth studio album, an angst filled rocker called It’s Hard! There is something about any new album that comes out by a band when you are frothing at the mouth high on fandom, and I really took that album to heart! Listening to it every night, it became the unofficial soundtrack to that summer, and despite what people may say about It’s Hard, it remains a top-notch album in MY book!
Every night we ventured out, I had to make stops at several used bookstores and record shops, to see what I could uncover. Rock Music Books like Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia were purchased simply for the Who section, Magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem, Hit Parader, and especially CIRCUS were carefully scrutanized for even miniscule pictures of Pete and the Boys, and I remember my friends helpfully joining in the maniacal scavanger hunt with me! To this day I still have a completely filled scrapbook of all those magazine clippings, and it’s interesting to look over at it now, the yellowed pictures arranged in collages on the pages, all clearly showing the mind of an obsessed Who fan at work! J
In 2004, a dream came true for a lad like me stuck all the way out here in Hawaii, when The Who dropped in for a one-night concert here at the Blaisdell Arena! I was on a giddy high all night at that concert, but there was one defining moment I’ll always remember clearly: The Who were performing “Love Reign O’er Me”, and when that sweet, heartfelt middle played, with Pete beautifully playing the chords of his guitar as Roger sang:
“On a Dry and Dusty road,
the nights we spent apart alone,
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think…the night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain…”
I remember it was at that exact moment It really hit me. I said to myself: “ I AM SEEING THE WHO WITH MY OWN EYES! AFTER ALMOST 25 YEARS, I AM WATCHING ROGER DALTREY SING AND PETE TOWNSHEND PLAY THE GUITAR, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!”
It was the “At Last, Now I Can Die In Peace!” Moment!
We are now in 2007 and I’m still over here in WHO land, enjoying The Who’s Endless Wire CD, still taking in the majesty that is The Who. While the days of Bookstore hunting are probably behind me, It seems like the fan in me will always be here, ready for the latest Who album to lift me up!
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