Recommendations of the Editorial team
The WHO started as a spectacle and then they became spectacular. At first the band just wanted to beat everything short and small; Later, on albums such as “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia”, they combined this raw energy with precision and with ambition to pull through large musical experiments.
They wondered: What are the limits of rock’n’roll? Does music really have the strength to change how people feel? Pete Townshend recognized a spiritual quality in music.
They were an incredibly good band, the main songwriter of which was looking for harmony and meaning in his life. On this trip he took the audience with him, inspired others to look for their own way-and at the same time stood in the Guinness Book of Records. The loudest band in the world.
I would like to speak for all WHO fans when I say that it has immeasurably enriched my life to be her fan. And it also worried me: they entered every door of the rock’n’roll and only left us to others – there was not much left that we could claim as something our own.
The WHO wanted to be louder, so they had Jim Marshall developed the 100-watt amplifier
They were arrogant at the beginning, even when, as Pete himself says, they were “actually a very ordinary band”. Then they got better and better, but the attitude remained. The punks took up this thread much later.
The Who wanted to be louder, so they had Jim Marshall developed the 100-watt amplifier. That was still not enough, so they stacked them. It is said that the first guitar feedback that was on record can be found in “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” from 1965.
The WHO told stories within the boundaries of a song, and in the course of an album they blew these borders. Could you tell an even bigger story? What was possible? And how could you convey them to a large audience – when there were no video walls yet? Smouse the instruments?
I was about nine when a babysitter put on “Who’s next” at home
Keith Moon said in an interview that they wanted to pack the audience with the eggs. Pete, on the other hand, preferred to refer to the autodestructive art movement in Germany – sculptures that quickly collapsed, exploding installations: the same way is what The Who did.
I was about nine when a babysitter put on “Who’s next” at home. The parents were gone. The window panes clinked. The shelves wobbled. Rock’n’roll. From then on I explored a music that had soul in which Rebellion was, aggression, passion. Destruction. It was all who music. There was the mid-sixties maximum R & B period: mini-operas, Woodstock, solo albums.
Imagine how it is when you meet “Live at Leeds” as a child, this locomotive from a plate. “Hi, my name is Eddie, I am ten years old and I’m just blowing away completely.” The Who on Platte were dynamic. Roger Daltrey sang vulnerable, but without weakness, doubt or confusion.
It was not a plea for pity. You should definitely listen to Roger’s vocals in “Lubie (Come Back Home)”, a bonus track on the first album “My Generation”. It runs up to top.
They are most likely the best live band to this day. Even list fanatics, punk and music historians Johnny Ramone agreed with me. You can’t explain Keith Moon and your game. John Destpi was a mystery to himself, still a virtuoso exception. Roger transformed his microphone into a weapon, apparently to self -protection. Meanwhile, Pete plunged into the fray and swung his 1970s-les-Paul-and that is a damn heavy guitar.
As a live band, they created movement, everything was in the way, and the ritual of playing seemed to free them. Recently I saw Pete squeezing tones out of his guitar in Chicago, how a mechanic wrang oil from a rag.
A stratocaster full of sweat
I watched the guitar to live to live, a living being that is beaten up and choked. When Pete took her off, I swear, she looked relieved. A stratocaster full of sweat.
John and Keith made The WHO what they were. Roger was the rock. And Pete is still one of the few rock icons that have taken part and still survived. He realized that as a rock’n’Roll-celebrity you get the role from the audience, according to the motto: “We pay you so that you undertake us.”
But he also found that the opinion of the audience could turn into: “When we are finished with you, we will replace you with someone else. The WHO will always remain irreplaceable for me.