Key point: The Who are a guy band, especially adolescent boys who felt like the band were almost, somehow, personal friends (me circa 1979). And yes, girls ignored them.
I had the maximum R&B poster on my wall as a teenager, and I had the full page picture from Rolling Stone of Pete Townsend with the blood, all over his hand from cutting himself doing the windmill, he sliced his hand like on the bottom string a cheese slicer. A bunch of us went at the Boston to see the movie, the Kids are Alright. and sat through it twice.
YouTube, there are live shows by these guys from the late 60s and early 70s which are unbelievably good. They played long sets, they played deep cuts, they were very heavy. There’s never been anyone quite like them.
They were unbelievably good live. Heavy and adventurous and for the most part on point night after night. They also remain one of the most fun bands to watch on stage, and one is the coolest.
The Who were possibly my favorite 60s band. It's not until you get to AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top that modernity overtakes them. But it's not surprising considering my favorite sub genre is punk. The merger of chaos and order is a great aesthetic.
Thanks so much for a bunch of great memories I'd forgotten I even had. In 1971, I and my crowd were more blown away by The Who than pretty much everyone else. They just swept you up into their thing, by force. Also glad to see your mention of The Allman Brothers, musicians who somehow became virtuosos in the middle of nowhere in the rural South. Those years were costly for not a few people, but I feel fortunate to have lived then.
According to the late Butch Trucks (RiP), when the Allmans played their legendary shows at the Fillmore East in 1970, one night they played until the sun came up, and Bill Graham said it was the greatest concert he'd ever seen (at that point in time). And Graham had pretty much seen them all.
Really interesting article. It makes me want to give The Who a second look. I confess I always saw them as a second or third tier band in the classic rock panthon. But now I want to give them another listen.
That’s part of why I wrote it. They’ve been unfairly in my opinion relegated to lower-tier status. But The Who did so much first, only to be overshadowed by that other heavy rock quartet.
Thank you so much for this article, two of my favorite bands. Though I’d pick Zeppelin over the Who.
Another connection between the two bands is that Keith Moon, in a roundabout way, helped name Led Zeppelin. Paige asked Moon to join him in touring Europe prior to the formation of Zeppelin and Moon said “that’ll go over like a lead ballon”, to which Paige thought that’s exactly the term for the kind of music I’d like to play, both heavy and light. Paige changed ballon to something much bigger to encapsulate the sound he wanted. The rest is history as they say.
I too was surprised how little the Who sold compared to many of their contemporaries. But come to think of it, I wasn’t surprising at all, they were sort of a proto progressive band, and as you said appealed more to men. They didn’t have the same appeal, not just to the opposite sex, but across other popular genres of music. Like blues, folk, or just explicitly different modality’s of rock like ballads or acoustic songs. The scope of their genius was more narrow.
Great Woods! Loved going to concerts there. Great memories!
I found a cassette tape of Who’s Greatest Hits when I was about 11 or 12. How lucky I was to discover the rest of their music and to have that with me as I grew older.
Your point about The Who being a guy’s band in a way few other big rock acts are is well taken. When I saw them live in 1999, Pete asked the wives and girlfriends who had been dragged to the show to cheer. There were clearly not many in attendance.
As I’ve entered middle age I’ve found myself turning back to The Who and Pete’s solo work. There’s a genuine vulnerability in their work that I suspect is just too much for some, it’s a turn off. Perhaps this is part of the gender imbalance of the fan base?
Thanks for the comment. Isn’t it amazing how life-changing music can be?
I’ve received lots of agreement with my assertion that The Who were a guy band and were therefore not as commercially successful as some of their contemporaries. I thought I’d get people disagreeing with me, but nope!
Rock bands like The Who (or Led Zeppelin, Rush, etc.) never catched my interest. It was basically a straight jump from what my parents listened to metal music. My first concert in 2001 was a bunch of death metal bands (headlined by Vader from Poland). In comparison to metal, rock bands sound so tame (and lame). While I appreciate their efforts and even like some songs, I would never buy any more rock records (I have to admit that I own some) because I always get the feeling that I am listening to a boys band instead of men (or warriors). The RQ is just too low.
Another band that was ahead of their time, but never actually got much in the way of success for it, were The Replacements. Though they came out of the snarky fast and loud hardcore scene of the late '70s, a ramshackle act (their bassist was even their guitarist's underage younger brother), they soon revealed themselves to be a real rock n roll band that predated grunge, the alternative explosion, and did Kurt Cobain better than he ever did. Because it was the '80s, unless you were new wave or metal, you just weren't getting the attention of the mainstream, especially when, like The Who, you are a band for guys. Despite that, they put out a string of highly influential albums full of great songs that inspired much of what was to come in the following decade.
But the problem? They broke up in the early '90s, right before Nevermind, Loveless, and Ten came out. Sort of like The Ramones or the New York Dolls, they got the kudos and the influence, but they never got the pop exposure until they were already gone. That they're still getting remastered albums (like fixing the awful production of Don't Tell a Soul) and live records well over three decades after disbanding is impressive.
To this day I still recommend Let It Be, Tim, and Please to Meet Me, to rock fans, and they always dig them and are surprised the band were never bigger. Well, look at the release dates on the albums. A few years later on any of them and they probably would have hit.
But I guess that's just how it works out. There's no shame in being the band that influenced a hundred guys to start their own bands that then hit it big. At least you're reaching people.
The Replacements are wonderful! I remember a great post you wrote about them a few years back. In a perfect world, we’d remember them as being as big as, say, R.E.M. or Nirvana. They were like the Flaming Lips, but with discipline, meets Springsteen meets The Clash. And they remind me a bit of Hüsker Dü as well, which is fitting.
Yes to all of that. Did Pete also have a hand in the development of Hiwatt amps as well?
I still don’t think Daltrey gets enough credit for inventing the rock frontman, nor do I think Entwistle and Moon get enough credit for revolutionizing the rhythm section. Baker and Bruce deserve some credit, but Entwistle and Moon were first.
Roger Daltrey is oddly the most underrated member of The Who. Which blows my mind. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say he really invented the "rock frontman" archetype. Obviously, Robert Plant and others ran away with that, but Roger laid the blueprint.
Excellent.
Key point: The Who are a guy band, especially adolescent boys who felt like the band were almost, somehow, personal friends (me circa 1979). And yes, girls ignored them.
I had the maximum R&B poster on my wall as a teenager, and I had the full page picture from Rolling Stone of Pete Townsend with the blood, all over his hand from cutting himself doing the windmill, he sliced his hand like on the bottom string a cheese slicer. A bunch of us went at the Boston to see the movie, the Kids are Alright. and sat through it twice.
YouTube, there are live shows by these guys from the late 60s and early 70s which are unbelievably good. They played long sets, they played deep cuts, they were very heavy. There’s never been anyone quite like them.
They were unbelievably good live. Heavy and adventurous and for the most part on point night after night. They also remain one of the most fun bands to watch on stage, and one is the coolest.
They are one of the most fun, and just plain coolest, bands to watch on stage. Pure energy.
The Who were possibly my favorite 60s band. It's not until you get to AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top that modernity overtakes them. But it's not surprising considering my favorite sub genre is punk. The merger of chaos and order is a great aesthetic.
Oh absolutely. The Who did it better than anyone else in their era. Even the Kinks, who weren’t nearly as chaotic (though they did rock rather hard).
Thanks so much for a bunch of great memories I'd forgotten I even had. In 1971, I and my crowd were more blown away by The Who than pretty much everyone else. They just swept you up into their thing, by force. Also glad to see your mention of The Allman Brothers, musicians who somehow became virtuosos in the middle of nowhere in the rural South. Those years were costly for not a few people, but I feel fortunate to have lived then.
I am quite jealous you got to see The Who in their prime! And yes, the Allman Bros. were special. Highly underrated.
According to the late Butch Trucks (RiP), when the Allmans played their legendary shows at the Fillmore East in 1970, one night they played until the sun came up, and Bill Graham said it was the greatest concert he'd ever seen (at that point in time). And Graham had pretty much seen them all.
I’d heard that. Incredible.
Really interesting article. It makes me want to give The Who a second look. I confess I always saw them as a second or third tier band in the classic rock panthon. But now I want to give them another listen.
That’s part of why I wrote it. They’ve been unfairly in my opinion relegated to lower-tier status. But The Who did so much first, only to be overshadowed by that other heavy rock quartet.
From Tommy, one of the songs I put on all the time is “Sally Simpson,” with that outstanding piano by Nicky Hopkins (I think it was Hopkins?).
I don’t know off hand if it was Nicky Hopkins, but it is a good song. I like the change in perspective it provides.
Thank you so much for this article, two of my favorite bands. Though I’d pick Zeppelin over the Who.
Another connection between the two bands is that Keith Moon, in a roundabout way, helped name Led Zeppelin. Paige asked Moon to join him in touring Europe prior to the formation of Zeppelin and Moon said “that’ll go over like a lead ballon”, to which Paige thought that’s exactly the term for the kind of music I’d like to play, both heavy and light. Paige changed ballon to something much bigger to encapsulate the sound he wanted. The rest is history as they say.
I too was surprised how little the Who sold compared to many of their contemporaries. But come to think of it, I wasn’t surprising at all, they were sort of a proto progressive band, and as you said appealed more to men. They didn’t have the same appeal, not just to the opposite sex, but across other popular genres of music. Like blues, folk, or just explicitly different modality’s of rock like ballads or acoustic songs. The scope of their genius was more narrow.
Great Woods! Loved going to concerts there. Great memories!
I forgot to mention that Entwistle and Moon almost started a band with . . . drumroll, please . . . Jimmy Page!
Thanks for pointing that omission out.
I found a cassette tape of Who’s Greatest Hits when I was about 11 or 12. How lucky I was to discover the rest of their music and to have that with me as I grew older.
Your point about The Who being a guy’s band in a way few other big rock acts are is well taken. When I saw them live in 1999, Pete asked the wives and girlfriends who had been dragged to the show to cheer. There were clearly not many in attendance.
As I’ve entered middle age I’ve found myself turning back to The Who and Pete’s solo work. There’s a genuine vulnerability in their work that I suspect is just too much for some, it’s a turn off. Perhaps this is part of the gender imbalance of the fan base?
Thanks for the comment. Isn’t it amazing how life-changing music can be?
I’ve received lots of agreement with my assertion that The Who were a guy band and were therefore not as commercially successful as some of their contemporaries. I thought I’d get people disagreeing with me, but nope!
Started. Tasty post.
Thank you!
Rock bands like The Who (or Led Zeppelin, Rush, etc.) never catched my interest. It was basically a straight jump from what my parents listened to metal music. My first concert in 2001 was a bunch of death metal bands (headlined by Vader from Poland). In comparison to metal, rock bands sound so tame (and lame). While I appreciate their efforts and even like some songs, I would never buy any more rock records (I have to admit that I own some) because I always get the feeling that I am listening to a boys band instead of men (or warriors). The RQ is just too low.
They seem tame but there’s a direct evolutionary link between the rock guys and heavy metal.
That´s why I appreciate their effort. They laid the groundwork on which metal was built.
Another band that was ahead of their time, but never actually got much in the way of success for it, were The Replacements. Though they came out of the snarky fast and loud hardcore scene of the late '70s, a ramshackle act (their bassist was even their guitarist's underage younger brother), they soon revealed themselves to be a real rock n roll band that predated grunge, the alternative explosion, and did Kurt Cobain better than he ever did. Because it was the '80s, unless you were new wave or metal, you just weren't getting the attention of the mainstream, especially when, like The Who, you are a band for guys. Despite that, they put out a string of highly influential albums full of great songs that inspired much of what was to come in the following decade.
But the problem? They broke up in the early '90s, right before Nevermind, Loveless, and Ten came out. Sort of like The Ramones or the New York Dolls, they got the kudos and the influence, but they never got the pop exposure until they were already gone. That they're still getting remastered albums (like fixing the awful production of Don't Tell a Soul) and live records well over three decades after disbanding is impressive.
To this day I still recommend Let It Be, Tim, and Please to Meet Me, to rock fans, and they always dig them and are surprised the band were never bigger. Well, look at the release dates on the albums. A few years later on any of them and they probably would have hit.
But I guess that's just how it works out. There's no shame in being the band that influenced a hundred guys to start their own bands that then hit it big. At least you're reaching people.
The Replacements are wonderful! I remember a great post you wrote about them a few years back. In a perfect world, we’d remember them as being as big as, say, R.E.M. or Nirvana. They were like the Flaming Lips, but with discipline, meets Springsteen meets The Clash. And they remind me a bit of Hüsker Dü as well, which is fitting.
Yes to all of that. Did Pete also have a hand in the development of Hiwatt amps as well?
I still don’t think Daltrey gets enough credit for inventing the rock frontman, nor do I think Entwistle and Moon get enough credit for revolutionizing the rhythm section. Baker and Bruce deserve some credit, but Entwistle and Moon were first.
Roger Daltrey is oddly the most underrated member of The Who. Which blows my mind. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say he really invented the "rock frontman" archetype. Obviously, Robert Plant and others ran away with that, but Roger laid the blueprint.
Please do go on about The Who. I totally forgot that the show we went to was yesterday. There are no coincidences!
It is! Man, that was a fun day. RIP Dr. M who took us.