Anyone else think that "Tommy" is overrated?

 

No. I'm not kidding. And I don't care to elaborate beyond this: I have never understood what's so important and unique in The Who's musical output for rock....

 

Anyway, as we all do with bands we think are overrated, I'm free to say this am I right? Or saying The Who, a barely-prog-related band in PA is overrated, is forbidden?

 

I don't know what The Beatles or The Rolling Stones fans would have to say about that...

 

... but hey... it's all OPINION. Mine or yours....

One true sign of a truly great band is when said band ardently defies categorisation, that is, when for every "well, they sound like this reggae-influenced heavy metal band playing avantgarde bebop" remark you can have yourself a "funny, I thought they were this raw punk outfit doing acoustic folk" counterproposal. And I don't simply mean "being diverse" here, I mean "being different". Blazing off every colour of the spectrum. Baring one's soul in all of its existing aspects. That sort of thing.

Few bands were as good at that as the Who. When they started out on their recording spree in 1965, the pop music world was only beginning to get slowly adjusted to the idea that, instead of making artists rot in the rut by recording the same record as long as there were enough fans to compensate the expenses, it might be more reasonable to let the artists change and evolve into something completely different. The Who were among the first bands, if not the first band, to lock on to that idea from the very beginning, and as a result, no two Who records - at least, not until Keith Moon's demise, that is - sound the same. Garage rockers, surrealistic artists, psychedelic visionaries, art-rockers, roots-rockers, synth-poppers, the Who were all that and more.

Not that this alone should be enough for granting them top honours. More important is the idea that, unlike so many others, the Who were rarely following trends - they were setting them. They weren't above borrowing ideas off others, of course: in this world of constantly interlocking interests, nobody really is. But that was never an overriding concern for the band. Not even the Who's most ardent haters, and there are plenty, could accuse band leader Pete Townshend of lacking a musical vision expressly his own. Whether it was annihilating his guitar - figuratively or literally - or toying with freshly constructed synthesizers or coming up with strange tales of deaf, dumb and blind kids empowered with extrasensorial capacities, he always knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, and it was never for the sake of jumping on bandwagon X or Y. Whereas many others might not have been knowing that.

Many people define the Who as the quintessential rock'n'roll band, with a heavy emphasis on the "rock" thing. Others contest the title, somewhat justifiably pointing out that the Who rarely rocked in a way as hard and uncompromising as, say, AC/DC or Motorhead or certain other rock'n'roll bands that came later and truly redefined the meaning of "raw sound" as we used to know it. In a way, this is true. Even for me. For me, "quintessential rock'n'roll" is something you hear, for instance, during the first twenty seconds of the Stones' 'Can't You Hear Me Knockin'. That kind of thing I only sporadically find on the Who's live records, and never on their studio ones.

The truth, I think, is that the Who, from the very beginning, were essentially an art band, and rock'n'roll, for them, was primarily an art object rather than a lifestyle. This is why, for all their diversity, the Who never ever touched the style which we commonly define as "barroom rock"; they'd simply lack the spirit to do it. I can't even begin to imagine what a song like 'Honky Tonk Women' or 'Rip This Joint' would sound like in the hands of the Who. Simple or complex, original or ripped-off, in ninety-nine percent of all possible cases, the Who's music was carrying a message; when it wasn't, it usually sucked, like on the band's early laughable James Brown covers.

To put it differently, where other bands just used rock'n'roll for fun, the Who used rock'n'roll as a medium to let out their "spirituality". From the very outset, Townshend used to regard rock music as the perfect tool for uniting people and channelling their emotions into one massive collective stream; this eventually reached its culmination on the Lifehouse project, which, according to Pete's plan, started life as the project to end all other projects, and it is absolutely not surprising that the eventual failure of the project nearly cost the guy his life. In this respect, the Who were the rightful progenitors of the entire arena-rock / stadium-rock genre, where the anthemic and "unificatory" qualities of the music matter more than anything else. Of course, seeing the word combination "stadium rock" on a page dedicated to the Who is bad news. The good news is that, again, unlike so many of their lesser followers, the Who (a) sincerely believed in the anthemic power of the stuff they were writing and performing and (b) actually wrote good music to go along with the feeling.

Which brings us to the next point, namely, Pete Townshend as one of the finest composers of his generation and maybe the pop music world in general. If we agree to roughly divide great pop composers into "masters of the form" and "masters of the spirit", Pete will unquestionably join the latter category, along with John Lennon and Ray Davies (whereas, for instance, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson I would rather stick into the former - not that I'm denying them their rightful spiritual shares). His songwriting has always been a little crude and spontaneous, even during the Who's 70s period when he would spend huge amounts of time complicating and polishing the arrangements. He hasn't been above recycling his own melodies, either, or overrelying on similar chord progressions. But when it comes to basic, simple, instantly grappling emotional hooks to chain you to a certain song for life, he's beyond all competition - except for maybe the two guys I namechecked above.

What I mean is, for Pete Townshend "art" was never just an empty word. Maybe "art" was different from "real life", but it was still an evident piece of "reality", and you only have to watch a few minutes of any of the Who's classic live shows from around 1969-71 to see the truth of it. At times, the pedantic mathematician in Pete would take over and he'd try out all kinds of rigid formulas to synthesize true beauty - but these things always failed, like the symbolic failure of the band trying to play along to their synthesizer tapes during Quadrophenia live shows, or the equally symbolic failure of their finding the "perfect chord" for the Lifehouse project. But the non-mathematical things, surprisingly, always survived. And that's what makes analysing the Who's albums such a delightful gas: separating the sincere and spontaneous from the calculated and overwrought. It's almost always a mixture of both.

As is the case with the Kinks, the biggest flaw that can be ascribed to the Who is the lack of a second equally gifted songwriter within the band. (Neither Dave Davies nor John Entwistle, with their limited access to the recording mikes and only moderate wishes to actively participate in the writing process, really count). With no-one to act as a counterweight, the Who had little choice but to accept every single idea that Pete deemed worthy, and as cool as the guy was, not all of them were worthy. While writing his rock operas, he could get carried away with the storyline, disregarding the musical content. While feeding on his depression and disillusionment, he could get carried away with conveying the idea of miserability - again disregarding the music. Finally, to put it blunt, one person just can't write as much good music as two people can, unless that one person is Frank Zappa and Frank Zappa's idea of "good music" was an entirely different thing altogether.

Yet on the positive side, the Who had something that neither the Kinks nor 99.9% of all rock bands ever had: distinctive artistic identities for all four of the band members. Pete Townshend may have been the band's creative leader, primary songwriter, and guitar wiz par excellence, but the Who were never just "Pete Townshend and the Who". Every member of the band brought something vital to the table; every member pioneered something in rock music; and even in real life, every member - bar maybe Roger - was as interesting a human being as you could ever desire.

First, there was Roger Daltrey - vocals - the quintessential rowdy suburban kid who started out as little more than an annoying arrogant bully but eventually became the father of the Big, Brawny, Heroic Anthem Delivery. His patented lionine roar, as forever immortalised in the wall-rattling scream at the end of 'Won't Get Fooled Again', is nowadays a rock cliche, but, believe it or not, there actually was a time when it wasn't. And he's still pretty much the only wide-lunged arena-rock screamer that brings out the positive emotions in me, although even today I can't fully decide if that is mostly his own merit or if it's mainly due to his singing all that "intelligent" Townshend-penned material.

Second, there's John Entwistle - the guy that, at one time, finally convinced me of the importance and potential of the instrument we commonly refer to as the bass guitar. Suffice it to say that, again, even today, while hearing or seeing his playing on some bass-heavy passages of the Who's music, I still have a feeling that somebody's got to be deceiving me because it's frankly impossible for a living person to play that instrument that fluently unless said person's fingers have been diligently pre-programmed. Whether playing live or recording in the studio, Entwistle could at the same time make his bass act the "exuberant lead guitar" part to Townshend's drier, minimalistic power chord riffage and act as the stable rhythmic anchor to prevent the band from slipping into musical chaos. In that way, he was the quiet one of the band, which only made him all the more noticeable - because for the Who, "crazy" was normal, and "normal" was crazy. Additional Entwistle-related features would include occasional significant help with singing (John actually had the widest range of them all, making it possible for the same guy to deliver the creepy "I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote" basslines in 'Summertime Blues' and the angelic falsetto of "you are forgiven" in 'A Quick One'); occasional catchy songwriting; and a distinct touch of - mostly black - humour that added further diversity to the band's albums.

Finally, the drummer was Keith Moon, a figure as legendary in its own rights as JFK or Martin Luther King and therefore not really worth writing a lot about. The only issue I'd like to address is that some people seem to seriously believe that the only thing Keith Moon could ever do was bash, thrash, and crash. Well, that's true. And John Coltrane could only blow. And Hemingway could only write. The art of bashing and thrashing can be as much an art as anything else - and the bashing and thrashing of Keith Moon had a clever and unique bashing and crashing technique all its own. In fact, I'd like to see some of his bashing and thrashing converted to guitar music one day, just to let the dissenters see what he really was trying to achieve with his style. (Note: I am primarily referring to stuff Keith did in the studio here, not in a live setting - his approaches were quite different onstage and offstage).

Thus, even if the songwriting was primarily Pete's domain, every single member of the band had his own agenda, and the resulting fusion of the four - Pete the songwriting philosopher, Roger the heavy-fisted rebel, John the technical-minded scepticist, and Keith the schizophrenic surfer - was something completely unprecedented and, I'm afraid, never to be repeated. Even the Beatles fall behind in this personality department, and this is the main reason why The Kids Are Alright is widely considered as the best "rockumentary" of all time: because its non-musical parts are almost as interesting to watch as the musical ones, which is a pretty rare thing for a "rockumentary".

Now then, why are the Who ranked among the select few on this site? After all, you could pile plenty of vile accusations against these guys. Inconsistent songwriting (even I have to admit that, although I do think it's far less inconsistent than some would have you believe). Pompous, overblown concept albums whose ambitions do somewhat exceed their grasp. A relatively small amount of recorded output - much of it due to a crippling legal battle with their first producer, Shel Talmy, which prevented them from recording at the same speed as their contemporaries during the Sixties, but also due to Pete's own neuroses and paranoid procrastination. And, finally, a much-tarnished reputation gained by their deciding to carry on playing after Keith Moon's untimely death and then reuniting for innumerable "anniversary tours" throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s, tours that have not been stopped even by John Entwistle's recent demise.

Well, fact is, none of these accusations are decisive. Inconsistent songwriting - heck, you could accuse anybody of inconsistent songwriting. Pompous albums - who cares as long as the pomposity is just a by-product of utter sincerity? This sure ain't Queen we're talking about. Lack of output - well, that sort of helps you out with the inconsistent songwriting problem, don't it? And as for the tarnished reputation, this is simply not a good argument at all, not to mention that some of that touring was actually quite good.

To summarize my feelings about the band - I like rock'n'roll music "for the body". I also happen to like intelligent music "for the soul". And I happen to think that, contrary to rumours, these two things are not at all incompatible, provided they're being made compatible in the proper way. And finally, I think no other band in pop music history has been able to make the two compatible in a way more proper than the Who did it in their glory days, from 1965 to 1973. And that about winds it all up.

 

Ivan, I can appreciate everything you said (my personal unliking of the music do not contradict the points you mentioned) except the funny argument they are still selling. Well, Madonna is still selling huge amounts of albums and I think all of it is dated before it even released. If selling was our way to judge anything than most of the music we all love is neglible.