THE WHO

Formed: 1964, London, England

Members: Pete Townshend, guitar, vocals (born London, England, 19 May 1945); Roger Daltrey, lead vocals (born London, 1 March 1944). Former members: Kenney Jones, drums (born London, 16 September 1948); Keith Moon, drums (born 23 August 1947; died London, 7 September 1978); John Entwistle, bass (born London, 9 October 1944; died Las Vegas, Nevada, 27 June 2002).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (1994)

The Who's golden age was over by 1980; by then the British band had consolidated enough of a reputation as a live act and had produced sufficient material to ensure an upper berth in the pantheon of rock performers. Along the way, the group's history was peppered by the same tragedies that scarred many of the leading groups that came to prominence in the 1960s.

Addiction and death (two original members of the four-piece band have passed on) have marked a story that has been sustained, in the last two decades, primarily through touring. Yet the magnificent body of recorded material, which flowed principally from the musical pen of guitarist Pete Townshend from 1964 to the end of the 1970s, confirms the Who's glittering standing in the gallery of greats. Their potent blend of raw rock and roll, white R&B, and incisive lyrical commentary coupled with their awesome power as a live outfit left a deep imprint on their fans and generations of young bands who followed.

Origins

The product of London's nascent rock scene of the early 1960s, the band first emerged as the High Numbers and was linked to the ferment of the mod subculture: fashion-conscious young men and women who dressed with a sharp elegance and subscribed to the sounds of the British blues revival and American soul. In 1964 the High Numbers issued a single, "I'm the Face," the B-side of which was "Zoot Suit." The single's failure led the group to hire two new co-managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. The group's name was changed to the Who, and a residency at London's famous R&B venue the Marquee quickly followed.

In a stunning burst of energy, the Who then released a sequence of singles that left a deep impression on the British pop charts: "I Can't Explain," "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere," and "My Generation"; the last was speedily adopted as an anthem of fast-living adolescents. "People try to put us down / Just because we get around" sings Daltrey, reflecting on a new confidence and optimism infusing British youth culture. But it was Townshend's line, "Things they do look awful cold / Hope I die before I get old," that distilled the spirit of this youthful assault and reflects perceptively on the notion of a generation gap between adults and the young.

The energy and aggression of their shows were soon legendary, and the smashing of their instruments onstage became a notorious aspect of their live appearances. This element of the Who's persona, embodied particularly in the excessive behavior of drummer Keith Moon when on tour, helped to form the band's mystique.

By 1966 Townshend's songwriting abilities had been further showcased in tracks like "Substitute" and "I'm a Boy." Yet there were unusual aspects to their progress—they did not manage to ride the early British Invasion wave that allowed the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and others to make headway in the United States.

Tommy and After

The spring of 1967 brought the group belated transatlantic recognition as their live gigs in New York won applause. Their appearance that same summer at the Monterey Festival in California, the first-ever open-air rock event, stole the show. In the fall, "I Can See for Miles" gave them a hit in both England and the United States. In the spring of 1969, the larger vision that Townshend had already hinted at was unveiled when "Pinball Wizard" trailed the arrival of Tommy, a double-album odyssey, inspired by a short story by the British journalist Nik Cohn, that related the experiences of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy with a penchant for playing pinball. As the first single famously announces, "But I ain't seen nothing like it in any amusement hall / That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball."

The band's status as perhaps the premier live act of the period was confirmed some months later when the Who took the stage at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969 and proceeded to deliver a memorable, powerful set. Yet their insistence that they be paid in cash before going on stage at the event, the high tide of the hippie subculture, left almost as great an impact as their performance. The tour album Live at Leeds (1970) captures some of their live electricity, and the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" (1971) stunningly voices the political frustrations of the previous decade.

In the early 1970s Tommy began to take on a life of its own. In 1972 it became a stage musical, one of the first rock operas, and 1974 saw the release of the movie version, directed by Ken Russell and featuring Elton John, Tina Turner, and a number of other notable stars.

With Quadrophenia (1973) the Who's creative conveyor belt kept rolling. Another double album with a strong conceptual thread, the piece looked back to the mid-1960s, when the fashion-conscious mods, fans of the Who, clashed with their rivals the rockers, followers of earlier rock and roll. Although the collection spawned some single successes, like "5.15," the focus of the band was drifting as a series of solo projects took group members in different directions.

Dissolving and Re-forming

In 1978 Keith Moon died of an overdose of a drug that he was taking to battle his alcoholism; it was an unsurprising conclusion to a life that had been lived to the extreme. By the beginning of 1979, former Faces drummer Kenney Jones had been drafted to replace him. The early 1980s saw the band tread water in many ways, and by 1983 the group announced its dissolution. But the Who re-formed to play at Live Aid, the transatlantic live event that featured dozens of rock and pop acts in a benefit concert for African hunger charities. A decision to return to touring in 1989 proved that the split had been far from final.

Townshend's prodigious appetite for work resulted in a fine solo album, Empty Glass, in 1980. He also became involved with the literary publishing house Faber in an advisory capacity—they had already published his short stories; in 1989 he collaborated with the British poet laureate, Ted Hughes, in creating a musical version of Hughes's children's story The Iron Man.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, the Who have continued to play and tour intermittently. Townshend issued a further concept work in 1993 with Psychoderelict, a musical piece interspersed with dialogue, and that same year Tommy enjoyed a successful Broadway incarnation. Daltrey's fiftieth birthday celebration in 1994 brought a galaxy of stars, including Lou Reed and Eddie Vedder, to Carnegie Hall.

In 1996 Quadrophenia was mounted in a well-received revival in London's Hyde Park, but the group's ensuing tours seemed to rely too heavily on the legacy of the past and made less impact. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the band was present at the New York benefit concert for victims of those events.

In June 2002 the original lineup suffered a further major blow when John Entwistle died of a heart attack on the eve of another U.S. tour amid news that Town-shend, Daltrey, and Entwistle were working on their first new material in more than twenty years. Although the tour still proceeded as a tribute to the man they nicknamed the Ox, with Pino Palladino on bass and Zak Starkey on drums, the Who could not escape dark headlines.

At the start of 2003, Townshend, whose solo profile had been relatively low for some time, was propelled into the media glare once more with his arrest for having allegedly accessed an Internet site devoted to child pornography. Townshend asserted that he had been researching a project on the nature of child abuse.

The Who, like the Rolling Stones, produced a collection of albums and singles in their first decade that sustained their reputation long after the peak of their creative output had passed. Their outstanding sequence of early singles prefaced their more sustained, keynote works, Tommy and Quadrophenia. Yet those acclaimed concept albums, which enjoyed life as stage shows and movies, have become almost a burden to their principal creator.

Townshend, a proven master of the three-minute single by the end of the 1960s, has spent most of his professional life since striving to make bigger statements. In so doing he has attracted criticism for the very scale of his ambition, often from those nostalgic commentators who still remember him fondly as the young mod with an extraordinary capability for devising one-off pop classics.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

My Generation (MCA, 1965); A Quick One (Happy Jack) (MCA, 1966); The Who Sell Out (MCA, 1967); Magic Bus (MCA, 1968); Tommy (MCA, 1969); Live at Leeds (MCA, 1970); Who's Next (MCA, 1971); Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy (MCA, 1971); Quadrophenia (MCA, 1973); The Who by Numbers (MCA, 1975); Who Are You (MCA, 1978); Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (MCA, 1994).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

A. Neill and M. Kent, Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of the Who, 1958–1978 (London, 2002); L. D. Smith, Pete Townshend: The Minstrel's Dilemma (London, 1999).

WEBSITES:

www.thewho.net; www.petetownshend.co.uk; www.bbc.co.uk/aboutmusic/profiles/who.shtml.

simon warner