The Who: A Quick One

THE WHO: A QUICK ONE (1966)

1) Run Run Run; 2) Boris The Spider; 3) I Need You; 4) Whiskey Man; 5) Heatwave; 6) Cobwebs And Strange; 7) Don't Look Away; 8) See My Way; 9) So Sad About Us; 10) A Quick One, While He's Away; 11*) Batman; 12*) Bucket T; 13*) Barbara Ann; 14*) Disguises; 15*) Doctor, Doctor; 16*) I've Been Away; 17*) In The City; 18*) Happy Jack (acoustic version); 19*) Man With Money; 20*) My Generation / Land Of Hope And Glory.

The Who's second attempt at staking a solid claim on the LP market ended up even less convin­cing than the first. While they did secure some personal and (questionably) financial freedom by cutting ties with Shel Talmy and negotiating a new contract with the aid of the Kit Lambert / Chris Stamp managing team, this happened under an extremely bizarre condition — namely, that each member of the band should contribute to the songwriting on an equal level. Apparently, Lambert thought of this as a financially beneficial strategy, and it may have put a bit of good money in the individual pockets of the four band members at the time; but in the long run, it only made sure that A Quick One would remain of The Who's most inconsistent (and, in spots, even em­barrassing) albums, at least in the Keith Moon era.

Do not get me wrong: it is still a fine LP, and the goofiness of the concept adds a certain naïve charm to the experience as a whole, one that you will never find on later, Townshend-dominated packages. And the approach did result in at least one excellent consequence — it stimulated John Entwistle into beginning to write songs and establishing a unique style that would later be ex­plored in depth both on The Who's and his own solo records. On the other hand, forcing Daltrey and Moon to write songs was the clear equivalent of making a legless person climb a pine tree: while listening to ʽI Need Youʼ and ʽSee My Wayʼ, I do not so much hear actual music as feel the sharp nervous pain experienced by both when trying to put this stuff together. And, even worse, the process seems to rub off on Townshend, since he was definitely not contributing his best efforts to the LP, either, mostly saving them up for several great singles.

On the whole, the album ended up surprisingly lighter and poppier in tone than My Generation. Throughout, there is not a single «monster noise» track like ʽThe Oxʼ, or even a properly noisy coda or mid-section — Pete still uses plenty of power chords, fuzz, and feedback, but only as extra melodic elements rather than chaos generators. There is, in fact, only one properly aggres­sive and abrasive song — the album opener ʽRun Run Runʼ, whose somber stomp is slightly re­miniscent of ʽMy Generationʼ, but whose message is more akin to The Beatles' ʽRun For Your Lifeʼ, albeit wrapped in slightly more intricate wording ("your horseshoe's rusty and your mirror's cracked / you walk under ladders, then you walk right back" is Lennon's syntax crossed with Dylan's lexicon). As a sidenote, the song has nothing to do with The Velvet Underground's ʽRun Run Runʼ, but both tunes do share the grim one-string vamp structure that, perhaps, simply brings on inevitable associations with run-run-running. And it is fun, but it ain't ʽMy Generationʼ.

Pete is being even more lightweight on ʽDon't Look Awayʼ, a rare excourse into folk-rock, if not country-rock, for him (another subconscious nod to Rubber Soul, perhaps?) — a catchy, but fairly throwaway tune on the whole; and ʽSo Sad About Usʼ, the album's only acknowledged Townshend semi-classic, seems to be a little too worshipful of The Kinks (in their pre-Face To Face songwriting stage) — to be honest, I have never been much of a fan of this tune, just be­cause it feels strained and suppressed to the kind of simplistic pop formula that Townshend had already outgrown at this point. (Odd enough, this is a rare case where I prefer the cover versions: both The Jam and The Breeders did slightly sped-up, tightened-up covers on which they sound more dedicated to the material than Pete and Roger seem to be on the original). Plus, the bridge section of the song really sucks — seems like they threw together the key change and the clumsy lyrical skeleton in about thirty seconds, and the line "you can't switch off my loving like you can't switch off the sun" is mega-corny for Pete even in 1966. It is allegedly Paul Weller's favorite Who song, though, so what do I know? So bad about us!

In any case, in the Great Inter-Who Songwriting Competition of 1966, Pete Townshend is only awarded second place after the silent John "Ox" Entwistle. Introduction of dark humor and creepy absurdity into pop music had only just begun, and luckily, John was just the kind of guy to whom the perspective of writing a simple (or even a complex) love song did not really appeal as much as the perspective of writing one song about a spooky spider and another one about delirium tremens. His spiritual predecessors in this whacky business include Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Bobby ʽBorisʼ Pickett, but John's big advantage was being a professional and innovative bass player, which sort of made him the obvious choice for the band's mascot-of-macabre — plus, he had a poker face attitude, and nothing could be more helpful when singing about ʽBoris The Spiderʼ. Of course, ʽBorisʼ is essentially a spooky kid song, but that does not prevent it from being innovative in the bass department — John's rumbling, sinister descending riff is another small step in rock's evolution toward heavy metal. In addition, ʽBorisʼ gives us Entwistle's full range, from the falsetto of "creepy crawly, creepy crawly" to the pharyngeal depths of "Boris the spider, Boris the spider!", so throw in a bit of amazing showmanship as well.

Next to the ubiquitous ʽBorisʼ, which went on to become a stage favorite (hundreds of imaginary spiders named Boris were fictitiously hunted, maimed, and trampled on stage over the years), ʽWhisky Manʼ remained practically forgotten, because it is a comparatively quiet little pop song, yet it also has its share of fun and sorrow, and, most importantly, introduces the French horn as a secondary favorite instrument for Entwistle — he may have never learned to play it in as virtuoso a manner as he played the bass, but he had a knack, from the very start, to extract impressive melodic content from it. You can already hear faint echoes of Tommy's overture in his slightly «Eastern raga-meets-Siegfried»-style horn lines, which end up to be one of the artsiest flourishes on the entire album. As to the lyrical content of the song, I would not take it too seriously: in 1966, the band's problems with alcohol were not that great yet, so ʽWhisky Manʼ is more of a darkly humorous tidbit in good old British style than a truly autobiographical representation. It would go on to become autobiographical for at least two members of the band, though.

Next to the somewhat slacking Pete and the unexpectedly enthusiastic and original John, the less said about the con­tributions of Moon and Daltrey, the better. At least Roger had the good sense to restrict himself to one composition: ʽSee My Wayʼ is a very poor attempt to write something in the semi-meditative style of The Beatles circa 1965-66, and would end up being one of only two songs he'd ever written for The Who completely on his own. Moon's ʽI Need Youʼ is even worse, although that one is at least curious for its novel character — Keith actually trying his hand at a sentimental love song? during a short break in between stuffing cherry bombs in toilets, no doubt. He must be complimented on diligently trying to go for a verse, bridge, and chorus structure with a powerful build-up, but ultimately the powerful build-up remains squarely dependent on his drumming force rather than the song's melody. Much more Keith-like is ʽCobwebs And Strangeʼ, a drunken-elephant circus romp that is best taken with the accompanying video (fortunately pre­served in its entirety in The Kids Are Alright) — an accurate enough illustration of Keith's friend­ly destructive force, but little else.

So far, we have seen some boring and some fairly successful entertainment value in A Quick One (including, among other things, a mighty fine cover of Martha & The Vandellas' ʽHeat­waveʼ, with surprisingly effective and tuneful falsetto harmonies that totally rival the original), but not a lot of substance. That substance might theoretically be expected from seeing a nine-minute track round out the second side of the album — but while ʽA Quick One While He's Awayʼ may have been a musically and lyrically groundbreaking composition for 1966, time has not been very kind to it: its multi-section structure became routine in the wake of the art-/prog-rock explosion, and its storyline — the silly tale of a housewife seducted by an «engine driver» — may have been somewhat titillating in the still somewhat innocent 1966, but today the story is not even very funny, just a bit of bad, clumsy comedy.

That said, from the purely musical side ʽA Quick Oneʼ is a daring and entertaining creation, although, like so many other Who songs, it truly came to life on stage — arguably the finest version I have heard to this day is their performance in The Rolling Stones Rock'n'Roll Circus, where the overall environment was perfect for a bit of dazzling vaudeville, and The Who turned up the amps, tightened up the riffs, and gave the show of a lifetime (better, I think, than on the Live At Leeds version, where the song was played more like an obligatory prelude to Tommy and was ever so slightly sloppier). Still, even on the studio version the creativity is admirable: all the different sections are played in different styles, from pure pop to a bit of ska to a bit of Roy Rogers-style country-western (the "soon be home" section) to the grand finale where, unable to hire themselves a chamber orchestra for better effect, they ended up singing "cello cello cello" instead, and whose "you are forgiven" section is like Beethoven for pop toddlers.

Not that Who fans expected anything like that at the time, I think — and it is not so much the issue of a multi-part nine-minute suite as is the ostentatiously pop nature of the album. In fact, 1966 marked an important stylistic split in The Who's creativity: with My Generation, they tried to bridge their studio activities with their live shows, but starting with A Quick One, The Who live and The Who in the studio would essentially be two different bands for the rest of their lives, and especially for most of the Sixties (it was not until Who's Next that the bridge was brought back, and even then only tentatively). And A Quick One was almost shamelessly poppy; but this actually reflected Townshend's changing attitudes toward pop art, in whose lightness, humor, and relative freedom-from-conventions he saw — at least, pretended to see — something approaching true progress at the time. This conception would not reach its peak until late 1967, though; in 1966, The Who still seemed too dazed and confused about their transformation from Shel Talmy pet dogs into posh artsy trendsetters under Kit Lambert's creative directorship.

Modern CD editions of the album come with a slew of bonus tracks, yet end up omitting the classic string of 1966 singles that pretty much obliterated anything on the album — ʽHappy Jackʼ (there is an alternate acoustic take here, though), ʽSubstituteʼ, and ʽI'm A Boyʼ still have to be purchased separately on hit compilations, such as the classic Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy, or later best-of packages. I do not think that it is a sound decision, but at least the bonus section does a good job of collecting various B-sides and other rarities that should never ever be forgotten (this is the goddamn Who in their liveliest years we're talking about — every sound bite is priceless). In this particular case, what we have is arguably the single best version of the ʽBatmanʼ theme found on record (the theme is all about its thunderous bass line, and who'd handle thunderous bass lines better than The Ox?); a couple of hilarious covers from the early Sixties (ʽBucket Tʼ, with another endearing passage on that French horn; ʽBarbara Annʼ, a particular favorite of Keith Moon's that The Who perform with less pure vocal harmonies than The Beach Boys, but far more kick-ass energy); and at least one perennial classic — Entwistle's ʽDoctor Doctorʼ, which I honest­ly think is his single most underrated song in the entire catalog. It's got all the pizzazz of ʽRun Run Runʼ (fast tempo, chugging bassline, nasty feedback pops from Pete's guitar) plus some of the most hilarious lyrics you ever get to hear in 1966, yet just as relevant for some people (I'm sure we have all met characters like that in our life) these days.

Even the bonus tracks, though, are almost universally jocular and sarcastic: the stuttering semi-psychedelic B-side ʽDisguisesʼ is just about the only exception, and it seems to be trying a little too hard to emulate the slow, lazy, hazy style of Beatles songs like ʽRainʼ (at this point Pete would probably start throwing rocks at me, since he'd spent a large part of 1966 trying to explain to fans and journalists that The Beatles really weren't where it was at). But they are all fun, catchy songs, proving that the pop idiom was not at all out of reach of The Who — in particular, their attempts at adapting the style of The Beach Boys (ʽIn The Cityʼ) were moderately successful, and with three capable and one tone-deaf (Keith) singers in the band, they achieved impressive suc­cess in the art of multi-part vocal harmonies, far more than could generally be expected of a band that seemed to place loudness, noise, and reckless experimentation before everything else at the start of their career.

So what would be the final verdict? From a purely «objective» stance, A Quick One should be considered a failure — too much pop, too many strange contributions from invalid songwriters, and a nine-minute mini-rock opera that turned out to be just a dress rehearsal for much more ambitious and profound things to come. I do not think that many will disagree with the obvious: in the big creative album race of 1966, The Who lost to the other biggies (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Beach Boys, Dylan, etc.) fair and square. Yet the band's talents, multiplied by the overall magic of the year 1966, still ensure that A Quick One is a fun listen — the most lightweight The Who ever got, but for some people, this might actually be preferable to the «heavyweight» Who of Tommy and particularly the post-1970 period. Subtract one or two really weak songs, throw in the hilarious bunch of bonus tracks (even a bizarre take on ʽMy Generationʼ that segues into a quaky-wobbly ʽLand Of Hope And Gloryʼ), and you are set for a fun roller coaster ride populated with spiders named Boris, engine drivers named Ivor, whiskey men, cobwebs, and strange. No matter how serious life is, there should always be a moment left for a quick one, and the album is such an important link in The Who's evolution anyway that thumbs up are still guaranteed.

The Who: My Generation

THE WHO: MY GENERATION (1965)

1) Out In The Street; 2) I Don't Mind; 3) The Good's Gone; 4) La-La-La Lies; 5) Much Too Much; 6) My Generation; 7) The Kids Are Alright; 8) Please, Please, Please; 9) It's Not True; 10) I'm A Man; 11) A Legal Matter; 12) The Ox; 13*) Circles.

When this LP was finally released on the market, The Who were not particularly happy about it, and few of its songs would survive as radio classics or stage favorites. Of course, they were still luckier than The Kinks: almost twenty months of non-stop work separated the congealing of the band's classic line-up from the marketing of their first LP, a period during which Pete Townshend had solidly cut his teeth as a songwriter — you can easily tell that they included those James Brown and Bo Diddley covers on the final version not because they had gaps to fill, but because those had become an essential part of their live act at the time. And yet, Pete was still left behind with the feel of an immature rush job, one that neither managed to properly catch up with all the musical groundbreaking of the epoch nor managed to capture their live ambience.

The second argument is moot, though. In the studio, The Who were perfectionists who could never even begin to set themselves the goal of sounding just as wild and out of control as they did on stage — and this is a good thing, as they are one out of a small handful of «effortlessly two-faced» bands whose studio and live output live two different — connected, but autonomous — lives. But it is also true that both onstage wildness and studio perfectionism are complex arts that require the accumulation of experience, and in 1965, The Who were still learning on both fronts. In retrospect, My Generation is a formative album whose flaws almost outweigh its virtues; the saving grace is that the flaws themselves are downright bizarre from time to time.

No review of My Generation, however, can bypass the point where it all begins — ʽI Can't Ex­plainʼ, one of the greatest songs of 1965 and perhaps of the entire decade. The Who burst through with the same kind of blast as did The Kinks with ʽYou Really Got Meʼ, and indeed Townshend has always acknowledged the huge influence that Ray Davies had on his own songwriting. But The Who did something bigger with that song: where ʽYou Really Got Meʼ amends the rules of pop music with its minimalism and brutality, ʽI Can't Explainʼ downright rewrites them, reversing the roles of the instruments — placing the guitar in the rhythm section and making a lead instru­ment out of the drums. With John's bass staying somewhat low in the mix and Daltrey's vocals still suffering from certain stiffness, ʽI Can't Explainʼ is a Pete / Keith show all the way, and every note, every beat punched out on those instruments feels like a wake-up call to action. The lyrics of the song primarily appeal to young people — it is one of those classic "I'm eighteen, and I don't know what I want" moments — but the musical core of the song is far more mature than your average garage rock nugget from sex-crazed youngsters. And it has one of Keith Moon's greatest drum parts ever: despite the initial feel of crazy chaos, every fill is perfectly calculated and in its rightful place. (And no, this does not apply to every song Keith had ever played on, live or in the studio — he could be extremely messy if he was in a different kind of mood).

As far as I'm concerned, it is a better song than ʽMy Generationʼ itself, if only because ʽMy Gene­rationʼ suffers from being a bit too self-conscious: it spells out openly (and a bit trivially) the same things that other youth anthems were conveying more metaphorically at the time (even ʽSatisfactionʼ was never quite as explicit as ʽMy Generationʼ is with its simplistic philosophy), and its chorus is too simplistic and sloganeering. There are three things that people always re­member about the song — "hope I die before I get old" (a line that got compromised a long, long time ago, what with «The Who» still trudging their sorry asses on stage fifty years after it was written); Roger's bizarre and gratuitous stuttering gimmick; and John's fantastic bass solo — and only the last one of these still gets my head spinning. Yet it was a very important song for The Who and for rock music in general, and without its success, the band's career might have turned out very differently (if only for the fact that they'd only just kicked Roger out of the band when the single began to rocket up the charts, and so they quickly had to bring him back in), and then there's the Live At Leeds version which is an entirely different thing... anyway, who am I kidding? This is friggin' ʽMy Generationʼ, and nothing I say can change that fact.

There is that other fact, though, that Pete Townshend actually wrote some fun songs for the rest of this album, and they sort of got lost in transit when compared to the success of the band's singles. ʽThe Good's Goneʼ — now there's a completely different musical approach to the subject of breaking up, surprisingly deep and mature: not an ʽIt's All Over Nowʼ where the indignant lover is dumping the cheating bitch, but a simple irritated acknowledgement that the feeling is no longer there on both sides, punctuated by Townshend's cold guitar tones and Daltrey's weary and frustrated delivery. (As a psychological portrait, I think the song works better than ʽMy Genera­tionʼ, but don't tell anyone). ʽMuch Too Muchʼ — another really good one: "If it's you I need I've got to pay the levy / Got to pay 'cause your love's too heavy on me". Let alone the fact that nobody probably ever used the word ʽlevyʼ in a pop song, the subject of the protagonist moving away from his object of affection because the affection has become too chain-like is also relative­ly new to the pop sphere — already at this point, Townshend was not interested in writing stereo­typical love ballads, and made sure that the musical atmosphere always correlated with the lyrical message. Perhaps they aren't too great from a straightforward melodic perspective, but they are interesting songs, and Daltrey, even with his still uncertain and underdeveloped voice, understood fairly well how to do them justice.

On Side B, there are a few joke songs, seriously influenced by the Stones (ʽIt's All Over Nowʼ, ʽThe Last Timeʼ), but they rank among the greatest joke songs of the Sixties — ʽIt's Not Trueʼ is an early example of an anti-tabloid rant, and ʽA Legal Matterʼ is the first of many Who songs about running away from their wives or fiancées, although its most distinguishing feature is pro­bably the cute little ringing riff at the beginning (so nice to hear it cropping up in the middle of the song as well). But, of course, the greatest Townshend original here is ʽThe Kids Are Alrightʼ, a song that had probably stunned many with its "I don't mind other guys dancing with my girl" (so whatever happened to the half-chivalrous, half-egotistic ideal of "If somebody wants to take my place / Let's pretend we just can't see his face"?) — and, if you want to entertain darker thoughts, it is not impossible to interpret the whole thing as an invitation to share... oh, never mind. The important thing is that, for all its questionable lyrical content, ʽThe Kids Are Alrightʼ is a magnificent power pop creation, a rip-roaring-ringing anthem that does for The Who pretty much the same that ʽPlease Please Meʼ did for The Beatles. Except The Beatles showed them­selves to be quite egotistic, whereas Daltrey and Townshend are, uhm, happy to share. You know, in a way this record actually makes the Stones' attitude towards women seem downright courte­ous — at least Jagger and Richards despised their imaginary girlfriends for imaginary promiscu­ousness; Townshend puts down his ones just because he is afraid they might be getting a bit too possessive of his personality. But that's the way life works sometimes, too, and even this kind of attitude deserves its musical depiction — and gets it, fair and square.

Against this background, the James Brown covers recorded here sound disappointing: ʽPlease, Please, Pleaseʼ in particular seems almst ridiculous, coming off the heels of ʽThe Kids Are Alrightʼ — "I don't mind other guys dancing with my girl" immediately followed by "Baby please don't go, I love you so?". Is this an apology or something? And Roger Daltrey taking on the challenge of covering James Brown... there's a reason why neither The Beatles nor The Stones dared to cover any of Brown's classics, you know. Most likely, the covers were there simply for instructive purposes: being huge fans of American R&B, Townshend and the boys thought it was their duty to properly introduce British audiences to the Godfather, a figure somewhat underrated in comparison to blues and rockabilly greats — a noble, but obviously obsolete purpose.

But who really cares about the James Brown covers when we got 'The Oxʼ? A sonic marvel that still sounds impressive today, with Keith playing a relatively straightforward, but totally relent­less tom-tom pattern and Pete experimenting with feedback on the wildest of all possible pre-Hendrix levels. (Special mention, by the way, should be made of Nicky Hopkins, who adds his energetic piano rolls not only to this song, but to the majority of the other tracks on the album as well: this was one of his earliest big breaks as a session player, and although for the most part he is content to be staying in the background, his piano parts do a good job of «thickening» the sound — it is not for nothing, after all, that Pete was worried for such a long time about the lack of a keyboard player with The Who onstage). ʽThe Oxʼ sounds absolutely nothing like the majo­rity of blues-rock instrumentals at the time: it is accessible and avantgarde at the same time, a celebration of well-structured noise, inspired by the likes of Link Wray but pushing such influen­ces as far forward as they could go at the time. Play it loud and proud today, and it will proudly compete against any noise rock achievements of the past half century.

With all these wonderful breakthroughs, I really do not care that ʽOut In The Streetsʼ begins with the exact same guitar trills that Townshend also used for the far superior single ʽAnyway, Any­how, Anywhereʼ; or that ʽLa-La-La Liesʼ sounds woefully underproduced, a catchy pop song that deserved Beatles-level production but got Shel Talmy; or that the group's vocal harmonies sound frail and shaky next to their peers; or about those noble James Brown covers. No amount of filler can bury the fact that here, in late 1965, when you could think you'd already heard it all, we have emerging one of the most unique and intelligent voices of the first generation of British beat bands. And they were only beginning to heat up — yet My Generation is still a thumbs up all the way, just like any Keith Moon-era Who record.

Technical note: the US equivalent of the album was retitled The Who Sings My Generation and featured a less interesting cover photo on which The Who were no longer seen scrutinizing you from below (but you had Big Ben there, because how else you'd know that these guys came from across the water?), as well as replaced the band's cover of Bo Diddley's ʽI'm A Manʼ with the proto-psychedelic B-side ʽCirclesʼ, apparently because of strong sexual connotations in the for­mer (ironically, The Yardbirds had their version of the song released fair and square in the States that same year). In 2002, the album (previously unavailable for a long time on CD due to a legal matter, baby) got a deluxe edition with numerous alternate takes that are mostly of historic inte­rest — but at least it is now delivered together with ʽI Can't Explainʼ. On the whole, though, I do not recommend the deluxe edition as strongly as the other reissues of the band's catalog that come together with rare B-sides, EP-only tracks and other autonomous, well-rounded songs that often add a lot to the catalog.