The Who: The Who Hits 50

 

As I write this, in the spring of 2024, The Who turned 60. This excellent compilation was released in 2014 when they hit 50. Like The Rolling Stones, they are entering their seventieth decade and, also like the Stones, have only two original members left - a charismatic lead singer and an equally iconic lead guitarist. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend - British rock royalty. London rock royalty. Whereas The Stones were Dartford and the Thames Estuary, The Who were Acton, Shepherd's Bush and Goldhawk Road. The Stones were grounded in the blues of the Mississippi Delta, for The Who it was US rhythm and blues (although they had their typically 1964 bluesy moments). They were hugely influential on bands like The Jam in particular, who pretty much worshipped them and covered several of their songs.

The Who came of age in the mod era - their generation. Scooters, multiple wing mirrors, parkas, expertly tailored zoot suits, immaculately neat short haircuts, reverse RAF roundels, Carnaby Street, fighting rockers on Brighton Beach, popping pills, fucking in alleyways, eating fish and chips before Friday's night out and venerating the US sounds of Motown alongside Jamaica's ska and bluebeat. 

Let's go right back to 1964....

Into that evocative sub-culture The Who came snarling, full of youthful attitude and vigour and boy, did they gave us some killer 45s - I Can't Explain, Substitute, The Kids Are Alright, Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere and, of course the ultimate mod proto-pogoing anthem, My Generation. On this compilation we are also treated to a fine early number in Zoot Suit, which they released as The High Numbers, a song that deals with all the necessities of being a mod. The music from this period was marked by just as many great riffs as The Stones had. Pete Townshend rolled them out on a speed-fuelled, arm-windmilling conveyor belt. Plus, he loved a bit of chaotic-sounding feedback. John Entwistle was the "quiet man" on bass - reliable and taciturn. Roger Daltrey was punchy, confrontational and spunky on vocals and then there was the antithesis of shy, introverted Charlie Watts or everybody's mate Ringo Starr in the complete nutcase behind the kit that was the soon-to-be legendary Keith Moon. If he wrote a book it would be titled Excess. After all, he wrote the book, they say. It was a pretty damn perfect foursome.

After such an incendiary entry into music, things went much the way of many other bands by 1966 - they began to get weird and go psychedelic. Under the influence, no doubt. This change is represented here in tracks like in Entwistle's Boris The Spider, Happy Jack, the masturbatory-themed Pictures Of Lily, the lyrically-perplexing I'm A Boy and the trippy I Can See For Miles. These songs also possessed that quintessentially English (mainly London) atmosphere and lyrics that The Small Faces also used in their output at this time. I Can See For Miles was The Who's Itchycoo Park. 

Check out the little-remembered 1968 single Dogs too, about greyhound racing. Very London. Call Me Lightning, also from 1968 (but originally written in 1964) is another long-forgotten single. Even I didn't know of it, which is unusual considering the time it came from and my interest in everything from then. 

An interesting inclusion here, a relevant one to the paragraphs above, is a cover of the Stones' The Last Time, injected with some typical Who feedback. It was said to have been recorded as a gesture of solidarity to Jagger and Richards as they were getting hassle from the law over drugs. 

Somewhere towards the end of the sixties, they grew their hair, particularly Daltrey and they started to morph into the stadium rock behemoth that would characterise the early seventies for the band. Long curly hair, fringed sleeves on his jacket, medallion gleaming on his bare chest and swinging his microphone like a cowboy throwing his lasso, Daltrey was every inch the heavy rock frontman, up there with Robert Plant and Ian Gillan.

Musically, a Magic Bus took us down to Brighton to see the Pinball Wizard and we an we could bellow I'm Free and urge people to See Me, Feel Me (a veritable concert anthem) while still retaining that hippy-ish search for something in the underrated rock of The Seeker.

Then it was a bull elephant of an album in Who's Next, which was also The Who's best, in my opinion. Bookended by two gigantic Who anthems in Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again we also get the equally powerful big rock tunes of Behind Blue Eyes and Bargain, with Moon and Townshend driving it along at full throttle. John Entwistle's bass is lovely in the middle of the song quiet bit. Check out the synthesiser-drum-guitar interplay at the end. Classic early seventies Who. Just listen to those Townshend riffs around 3:10 on Behind Blue Eyes too. Wonderful. 

Baba O'Riley opened the Who's Next album with surely one of rock music's greatest ever introductions - that infectious keyboard loop that draws you in, seemingly never ending, before good old Keith Moon comes thumping in, followed by Roger Daltrey's titanic vocal - "out here in the fields" - and then Pete Townshend's immense guitar blows the whole fucking thing apart. The bit where Daltrey first sings "it's only a teenage wasteland" and Moon's drums power their way in is just pure rock nirvana, up there as one of its greatest moments, bar none. It is truly one of rock's greatest ever songs, isn't it? Why it was called Baba O'Riley and not Teenage Wasteland has always puzzled me, though. 

The iconic synthesiser intro to Won't Get Fooled Again, followed by the guitar, drums and vocals is what is probably The Who's finest moment. Oh, did I forget that marvellous bass line underpinning it all? What a magnificent, epic song this is. "Meet the new boss - same as the old boss..." is a line that still gets quoted today. I can't get enough of it. Moon is mammoth on here, monumentally mammoth. Forget "rock operas", Tommy and all that guff. This was The Who at their absolute peak. Unfortunately, maybe criminally, it is only included here in its edited single format. Man, how I hate "single edits"! The track plays out so much better in its full version, as we wait, as the bleepy synythesier plays, for Roger to come wailing and screaming back in for the song's titanic denouement. "Waaaaaah!!!". Indeed.

The early seventies also yielded three often-overlooked non-album singles in Let's See Action, Join Together and Relay. 

Sadly, for me, because I love the album, only two tracks from the mod-themed double album Quadrophenia are included here - the wonderful single 5:15 and the valedictory Love Reign O'er Me. Personally, I would have included The Real Me and Sea And Sand, at least. 5.15 is a real favourite of mine, with a great brassy riff and some towering Daltrey vocals. It starts quietly, with that haunting “why should I care” backing vocal and the piano before the signature riff, the brassy bits and then good old Keith blasts in. Great rock song. The Who at their very best. "Girls of fifteen - sexually knowing" - I loved that line aged fourteen thinking of what may lay in store for me! Again, on this, the vocals are superb on what is a monster of a track.

As we moved through the seventies, The Who ascended to the position of respected elder statesmen and even the punks respected them (including, as I said earlier, The Jam). Squeeze Box was a jaunty, saucy-ish single from 1975 and The Who took on the punk ethos in the belligerent Who Are You. "Who the fuck are you", Daltrey is possibly singing to Johnny Rotten (conjecture). Our boys could still cut it, despite the ire of the young punks, who were what The Who were thirteen years earlier.

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. 

Then, in September 1978, Keith Moon tragically drank himself to death. 

The Jam showed their respect by issuing a fine cover of The Who's So Sad About Us on the 'b' side of their October 1978 single Down In the Tube Station At Midnight, with Keith's picture on the rear cover. 

The Who would not resurface until 1981 and they did so (with ex-small Faces drummer Kenney Jones replacing Moon) on the barnstorming You Better You Bet. It remains a long-time favourite of mine. It is a latter-era (i.e. post Moon, post seventies) Who classic, full of pounding, beaty drums, excellent guitar, more subtle keyboards than on the previous album and a very strong Roger Daltrey vocal. The lyrics are great too, suitably perplexing and crudely but gloriously sexual in places - "you welcome me with open arms and open legs...". It reminds me of my girlfriend back then. We played the single endlessly (among other things). I really loved the single in those heady 1981 days, feeling it was The Who roaring back with a vengeance. After I had forgotten about them considerably during my punk years, I was ready to welcome my old 1973 favourites back again. This track certainly did that. 

A most underrated and appealing song from this period is Don't Let Go The Coat, which this time is a little-acknowledged Who classic. Not in a bombastic, grandiose way, but in a quirky, rhythmic way. It features an almost Brit-pop style jangly, melodic guitar riff underpinning it and Daltrey's vocal is softer and soulful here. There is a certain new wave-ish appeal to this and it sounded fine in 1981, not out of date in any way. 

The funk-lite of Athena ain't half bad either. It was the eighties, so synthesisers were being used, but to good effect. Eminence Front is a good one too, with a similar eighties rock appeal. Both came from 1982's It's Hard album. The title track from that album is included here and that's great as well. I really like this run of tracks progressing down from Trick Of The Light.

We get a couple of tracks from the early 2000s, the impressive, dignified and emotive Real Good-Looking Boy (2004) and the chunky It's Enough (2006) along with the equally powerful Be Lucky, written in 2014 for this collection, but, obviously, nothing from the December 2019 album WHO. 

Incidentally, how beautifully strong is Roger's vocal on Real Good-Looking Boy? Incredibly, that is now twenty years ago. Oh dear. Father Time is relentless, isn't he?

Overall, this is my favourite Who compilation (and there are many). The sound is excellent and I like the (almost) career-spanning song choices. If you want an idea of what this truly remarkable band were all about then I can heartily recommend this.