The Who part 1

After the Kinks, my 4th favorite band of the British invasion (and in the overall Top 10), today we'll be dealing with the Who, my 3rd favorite band of the British invasion (and 3rd overall). We've already dealt with the groups at #1 & #2 (the Beatles & the Stones), we had a bonus by Pink Floyd and extended stories on R.E.M. & Queen, also in the overall Top 10. In 4 days we'll be discussing my favorite duo, and we've already covered Dylan, Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Elton John, Van Morrison, Tom Robinson, Bruce Springsteen (partially), and George Michael, all very high up on my male singer/songwriter list. Next week we'll be covering a seminal American band and the solo career of its lead singer and main composer. Enough about my personal taste, though. This is not about me - it's about the Who. Let's begin!

There a lot of violence in the songs of the Who, happening within the song or implied, and there's little love. Take one of their masterpieces, Tommy. There are only two songs that have anything to do with being in love or love making. In the first, 1921, Tommy's father ends up murdered and in the second, Sally Simpson, Sally ends up with a gash across her face. Nasty.

In general, if I were to use just one word to describe the music of the Who, that word would be angst. I think many of the feelings and ideas that appear on the songs have to do with the childhood of the group's guitarist and composer, Pete Townshend.

Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend was born on 19 May 1945, in West London. He came from a musical family: his father, Cliff Townshend, was a professional alto saxophonist in the Royal Air Force's dance band The Squadronaires and his mother, Betty (née Dennis), was a singer with the Sydney Torch and Les Douglass Orchestras. The Townshends had a volatile marriage, as both drank heavily and possessed fiery tempers. Cliff Townshend was often away from his family touring with his band while Betty carried on affairs with other men. The two split when Townshend was a toddler and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother Emma Dennis, whom Pete later described as "clinically insane". The two-year separation ended when Cliff and Betty purchased a house together on Woodgrange Avenue in middle-class Acton, London, and the young Pete was happily reunited with his parents.

Those two years were a time that he describes as "the darkest part of my life." Unstable and moody, Dennis was "a perfect wicked witch" who controlled his day with military precision and punished him by withholding food, brutally scrubbing him in the bath, slapping him, and threatening him with gypsy curses.

Adding to his anxiety was a parade of strange men who would visit for tea, including an overnight guest with "a little Hitler moustache" he had to call "uncle."

Townshend discusses these trials openly in his candid memoir, "Who I Am," but admits he may never fully come to terms with what is arguably the book's most painfully raw revelation: that he believes he was sexually abused as a very young boy.

Townshend says he's since spent years of psychotherapy trying to understand it, but any time he's attempted to delve deep into his past he's "literally starting to froth at the mouth and shake and go into a kind of a fit."

"I'm not going to do this to myself. I don't have to remember at all," Townshend says now. "I don't have to remember because the evidence is in my work. And the evidence is in the way that I operate as a man."

That includes a misguided attempt in 1999 to investigate the financial ties of online child pornography, a quest that led him to use his credit card to access a website advertising images of children, he explains in the book. As a result, Townshend was arrested in 2003 and put on a sex offender's registry, although he was later cleared of possessing pornographic images.

In his book Townshend touches on all the major events in his life including the origins of his windmill wind-up, being banned from all Holiday Inns, his fascination with mystic Meher Baba, groupies, affairs, wild acid trips, Woodstock, lusting after Mick Jagger, reaching out to a heroin-addled Eric Clapton, and grappling with the drug-induced deaths of Moon and Entwistle.

In a 1989 interview with radio host Timothy White, Townshend apparently acknowledged his bisexuality, referencing the song Rough Boys on his 1980 album, Empty Glass. He called the song a "coming out, an acknowledgment of the fact that I'd had a gay life, and that I understood what gay sex was about." However, in a 1994 interview for Playboy, he said, "I did an interview about it, saying that Rough Boys was about being gay, and in the interview I also talked about my "gay life," which - I meant - was actually about the friends I've had who are gay. So the interviewer kind of dotted the t's and crossed the i's and assumed that this was a coming out, which it wasn't at all." Townshend later wrote in his 2012 autobiography Who I Am that he at one point felt as if he was "probably bisexual". Let's start from here, and listen to Rough Boys:

Let's go back to the beginning: The founding members of the Who, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle, grew up in Acton, London and went to Acton County Grammar School.

Townshend and Entwistle became friends in their second year of Acton County, and formed a Trad Jazz group; Entwistle also played French horn in the Middlesex Schools' Symphony Orchestra. Both were interested in Rock. Entwistle moved to guitar, but struggled with it due to his large fingers, and moved to bass on hearing the guitar work of Duane Eddy. He was unable to afford a bass and built one at home.

Daltrey, who was in the year above, had moved to Acton from Shepherd's Bush, a more working-class area. He had trouble fitting in at the school, and discovered gangs and Rock and Roll. He was expelled at 15 and found work on a building site. In 1959 he started the Detours, the band that was to evolve into the Who. The band played professional gigs, such as corporate and wedding functions, and Daltrey kept a close eye on the finances as well as the music.

Daltrey spotted Entwistle by chance on the street carrying a bass and recruited him into the Detours. In mid-1961, Entwistle suggested Townshend as a guitarist, Daltrey on lead guitar, Entwistle on bass, Harry Wilson on drums, and Colin Dawson on vocals. The band played instrumentals by the Shadows and the Ventures, and a variety of Pop and Trad Jazz covers. Daltrey was considered the leader and, according to Townshend, "ran things the way he wanted them". Wilson was fired in mid-1962 and replaced by Doug Sandom, though he was older than the rest of the band, married, and a more proficient musician, having been playing semi-professionally for two years.

Dawson left after frequently arguing with Daltrey and after being briefly replaced by Gabby Connolly, Daltrey moved to lead vocals. Townshend, with Entwistle's encouragement, became the sole guitarist.

One of their inspirations were Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. The Detours were particularly interested in the Pirates as they also only had one guitarist, Mick Green, who inspired Townshend to combine rhythm and lead guitar in his style. Entwistle's bass became more of a lead instrument, playing melodies. In February 1964, the Detours became aware of the group Johnny Devlin and the Detours and changed their name. Townshend and his room-mate Richard Barnes spent a night considering names, focusing on a theme of joke announcements, including "No One" and "the Group". Townshend preferred "the Hair", and Barnes liked "the Who" because it "had a Pop punch". Daltrey chose "the Who" the next morning.

Soon after, their new manager helped secure an audition for them with Chris Parmeinter for Fontana Records. Parmeinter found problems with the drumming and, according to Sandom, Townshend immediately turned on him and threatened to fire him if his playing did not immediately improve. Sandom left in disgust, but was persuaded to lend his kit to any potential stand-ins or replacements. Sandom and Townshend did not speak to each other again for 14 years.

During a gig with a stand-in drummer in late April at the Oldfield, the band first met Keith Moon. Moon grew up in Wembley, and had been drumming in bands since 1961. He was performing with a semi-professional band called the Beachcombers, and wanted to play full-time. Moon played a few songs with the group, breaking a bass drum pedal and tearing a drum skin. The band were impressed with his energy and enthusiasm, and offered him the job. Moon performed with the Beachcombers a few more times, but dates clashed and he chose to devote himself to the Who. The Beachcombers auditioned Sandom, but were unimpressed and did not ask him to join.

Once again they changed managers; the new one, Peter Meaden, decided that the group would be ideal to represent the growing mod movement in Britain which involved fashion, scooters and music genres such as Rhythm and Blues, Soul and Beat. He renamed the group the High Numbers, dressed them up in mod clothes, secured a second, more favourable audition with Fontana and wrote the lyrics for both sides of their single Zoot Suit/I'm the Face to appeal to mods. The tune for Zoot Suit was Misery by the Dynamics, and I'm the Face borrowed from Slim Harpo's I Got Love If You Want It. Although Meaden tried to promote the single, it failed to reach the top 50 and the band reverted to calling themselves the Who.

Here's Zoot Suit:

... And here's I'm the Face:

The group began to improve their stage image; Daltrey started using his microphone cable as a whip on stage, and occasionally leapt into the crowd; Moon threw drumsticks into the air mid-beat; Townshend mimed machine gunning the crowd with his guitar while jumping on stage and playing guitar with a fast arm-windmilling motion, or stood with his arms aloft allowing his guitar to produce feedback in a posture dubbed "the Bird Man".

In June 1964, during a performance at the Railway, Townshend accidentally broke the head of his guitar on the low ceiling of the stage. Angered by the audience's laughter, he smashed the instrument on the stage, then picked up another guitar and continued the show. The following week, the audience were keen to see a repeat of the event. Moon obliged by kicking his drum kit over, and auto-destructive art became a feature of the Who's live set.

By late 1964, the Who attracted the attention of the American producer Shel Talmy, who had produced the Kinks. Townshend had written a song, I Can't Explain, that deliberately sounded like the Kinks to attract Talmy's attention. Talmy saw the group in rehearsals and was impressed. He signed them to his production company.

I Can't Explain, an instant classic, was recorded in early November 1964 and became popular with pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline. Enthusiastic reception on television and regular airplay on pirate radio helped the single slowly climb the UK charts in early 1965 until it reached #8. It also reached #14 in France.

The follow-up single, Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere features guitar noises such as pick sliding, toggle switching and feedback, which was so unconventional that it was initially rejected by the US arm of Decca. The single reached the top 10 in the UK and was used as the theme song to Ready Steady Go!

The Who were one song way from greatness; and that song would be their next single. But more on that, and whatever else followed, tomorrow.