The Who: Who Are You - 1978
By mid-1978, The Who were struggling to remain contemporaneously relevant in the midst of punk, new wave and disco. This album does nothing to change that, being an amalgam of synth riffs and prog rock stylings in places with Roger Daltrey's dramatic, operatic but from the streets voice starting to sound out of time among the snarl of punk and cynical sneer of new wave.
Their previous three albums, Who's Next, Quadrophenia and (lesserly) The Who By Numbers had been excellent, hard-hitting rock albums. Unfortunately, despite the individuals within the band's obvious musical proficiency, this is neither a great nor relevant album. It is still The Who, however, and there are good points to it, which I will highlight, but put in a cultural context, it was sadly a little irrelevant.
New Song bursts into action with a synth riff like the sort of thing Elton John and many others would use so much in the eighties, so maybe The Who were ahead of their time, at least. Pete Townshend's guitar injections are as mighty as you would expect and Moon's drumming is Moon, of course. Having said that, Entwistle has said that Moon was completely "out of condition" and disorientated during the sessions and struggled to get through them. There certainly isn't the vitality of his work on previous albums, you have to say. It actually doesn't sound too bad, but in 1978, I certainly didn't want to listen to stuff like this. Those guitar parts are still superb, though, in any era.
John Entwistle's Had Enough takes two thirds of the title of one of Quadrophenia's songs and indeed, its narrative, stage-y style sounds like something from that album, apart from those accursed synthesisers, that make it sound like it should be on ABBA's Voulez Vous album. 905 is another Entwistle song that is somewhat dull, albeit pleasant enough, sounding like The Strawbs in places, for me.
Sister Disco has remained one of the more popular tracks from the album, supposedly saying goodbye to the disco era - replacing it with ELO-style strings and proggy synths. Hmmm. Maybe I'd prefer Disco Inferno. Daltrey's voice is particularly hammy and, dare I say it, irritating on this. The next track informs us that Music Must Change on an overblown Townshend song that has an air of a stage musical song about it. This sort of thing is so far removed from music in 1978 that maybe it was The Who that needed to change. There are some good bits in though - the bluesy, jazzy guitar bits are quite infectious.
Trick Of The Light is a robust, typically Who solid mid-pace number, like something off Who's Next. It does, however, sound somewhat dated for 1978. It would have been fine back in 1971 with all those drum rolls and big power chords. It has a great vocal, though, all the same, and a big, rumbling bass line.
Guitar And Pen has a beguiling keyboard intro before an operatic-sounding Daltrey vocal arrives to give us more archetypal Who overblown bombast. It has a wonderful sound, I think, despite it not really fitting in with contemporary musical trends. Townshend's guitar parts are superb as is the piano. Moon's work was probably his best on the album. There is a feel of some of Quadrophenia's material about the track too. It is a sort of big slice of nostalgia.
Love Is Coming Down is a delicious serving of Who balladry with a somewhat maudlin sadness to it. Once again, it would have sat well on Who's Next. Who Are You is a Who classic, however, a slow burning keyboard, guitar and towering vocal assault on an upstart, presumed to be Johnny Rotten, after Daltrey came across him in London. "Who the fuck are you?!!" bellows an indignant, pugnacious Daltrey. Great stuff. He had been there and done it and left Rotten in no doubt about that. despite the Musical datedness of much of the album, this track still sounds relevant.
