The Who Biography
The following biography
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Wikipedia.org
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Free Encyclopedia.”
The Who is a British rock band of 1960's and 1970's
fame. Noted for the dynamism of their live performances and for their thoughtful
music, they are also acknowledged as having been rock pioneers, popularizing
among other things the power chord and the rock opera (most notably the immortal
"Tommy") under the leadership of Pete Townshend. Their earlier "mod" albums,
which boasted short, aggressive pop songs, Pete Townshend's distinctive power
chords, and constant themes of youthful rebellion and romantic confusion, were
formative influences on punk rock and power pop. Entertainment-wise, they were
famous for destroying their instruments at the end of shows (especially
Townshend, whose guitar-smashing would become a rock cliche), and infamous
wildman Keith Moon added to the band's reputation with frequent shows of
destruction, such as destroying hotel rooms (another eventual cliche) and,
according to rumor, driving his Rolls Royce into a swimming pool intentionally;
although this incident never actually happened, it does seem like something the
eccentric Moon would do.
The
original band members were:
Pete Townshend - guitar, primary composer, piano &
synthesizer on studio recordings
Roger Daltrey - vocals, harmonica
Keith Moon - drummer
John Entwistle - bass guitar, brass instruments
Charlie Simpson - backup bass guitar
The band's classic era, and in many respects the
band itself, ended in 1978 with the untimely death of the inimitable Keith Moon.
****
Origin London, England
Country {{{country}}}
Years active 1964–present
Genre(s) Rock
Label(s) Albert and Epic Records
Members Pete Townshend
Roger Daltrey
****
Sounds
and performances
On
stage
Early years
Each of the eventual band members played in various
early versions of The Who and in other groups. Pete Townshend and John Entwistle
first played together in a band called The Confederates. The two also played
together in bands called The Aristocrats and The Scorpions. Roger Daltrey was
the lead guitarist for a band called The Detours. Townshend has said that at the
time he, Entwistle and Daltrey met, Daltrey was the best guitarist of the three.
Daltrey invited Entwistle to join The Detours;
Entwistle agreed to do so and left The Scorpions. Entwistle then proposed to
Daltrey that Townshend, still with The Scorpions, replace Reg Bowen in The
Detours. Daltrey agreed. The Detours were filled out by Colin Dawson on vocals
and Doug Sandom on drums, with Daltrey playing lead guitar.
The Detours began playing under other names,
including The High Numbers, Maximum R&B and The Who.
The classic era
From around the time the band settled on its
classic line-up in the mid-sixties, The Who performed as a rock power trio
modified by the addition of Roger Daltrey as a lead singer who did not play an
instrument other than the occasional use of a tambourine or harmonica. From the
beginning the band drew attention because all three instrumentalists — guitarist
Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon — would often
play lead parts, sometimes simultaneously, or the guitar or bass might assume
the role of percussion while the drums added spice rather than driving the beat.
The result was music more cacophonous and often more sophisticated than
conventional perfomances in the rock genre. To this day, Moon is remembered for
his influential drumming, and Townshend for his memorable riffs and power
chords. Finally, Entwistle is known throughout the rock world as, arguably, the
greatest bassist in rock history.
Moreover, all but Moon were competent vocalists,
and shared the vocal workload. Daltrey was the official front man, centered on
the stage, and served as lead singer for most songs. Entwistle sang his own
compositions, and contributed humorous role-playing vocal phrases in songs such
as "Summertime Blues". Townshend sometimes took over as lead singer from
Daltrey, or the two took turns during a song, singing alternate verses as in
"Naked Eye" or exploiting a distinctive format in many of Townshend's
compositions (he is one of the more celebrated pop song writers) where Daltrey
would sing the verses and Townshend would sing during a bridge or interlude that
contrasted stylistically with the rest of the song, as in "Bargain".
The surfeit of singers also let them use three-part
harmonies in rich choruses such as the "Listening to You" motif in Tommy, and to
provide a chorus of ethereal background "Ahhh"s in songs such as "Behind Blue
Eyes" and "Odorono". They also used background vocals in other creative ways,
such as the clever staccato "Laugh laugh laugh"/"Lap lap lap" syllables echoing
the sense of the lead vocal in "Happy Jack" and the humorous "Cello cello cello"
chorus purportedly inspired by being unable to afford a string section when
going into the studio to record "A Quick One, While He's Away".
A great audio documentary of the band during this
"classic" era is the album Live at Leeds, which is usually considered one of the
best live albums by any rock band.
Later changes
In 1971 they began supplementing their stage act
with pre-recorded synthesizer "continuo" parts in order to cover material such
as "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" from that year's Who's Next
album. In addition to feeding the synthesizer tracks to their stage monitors,
drummer Keith Moon would wear headphones to ensure that he heard the recording
clearly enough to sync the band with it. When they first introduced these
recordings technical difficulties sometimes severely disrupted concerts, causing
the band members' notorious tempers to flare onstage.
After the death of Keith Moon in 1978 The Who gave
up the power trio format, with new drummer Kenney Jones formerly of the Small
Faces, and began touring with a keyboardist, usually John "Rabbit" Bundrick, and
a small horn section, none of whom were officially members of the band. They
soon scaled back to just a keyboardist backing the band, but returned to the
inflated touring line-up, even adding a second guitarist and back-up singers, on
the 1989 tour. The 1996 and 1997 tours also featured this expanded line-up which
helped them bring to life their classic extended rock work Quadrophenia.
Beginning in 1999 The Who returned to the power trio format with only a
keyboardist augmenting the sound and then added Pete Townshend's brother Simon
Townshend on second guitar and backing vocals in 2002 (who had also played the
Quadrophenia shows).
The Who began their career by covering and
imitating Rhythm and Blues hits, and never completely abandoned those roots.
Even after moving on to other types of material they continued to perform R&B
classics such as "Young Man Blues" and "Summertime Blues" throughout their
performing career, including their late reunion tours.
Other
aspects of their performances
The musicians of the Who were also natural showmen:
singer Daltrey was a dynamic front man, twirling his microphone on the end of
its cord, while Townshend played crashing chords on his guitar with great
windmill-like sweeps of his arms and the maniacal Moon battered his drums
powerfully. Through all that mayhem, Entwistle stood still, often for the entire
length of the show, seemingly bored by the whole affair, playing intricate,
powerful, innovative bass lines as if he had the stage to himself. The band
members also punctuated their performances with jokes, tricks, and over-the-top
introductions to the songs; Townshend once commented that only the cessation of
touring saved them from degenerating into a vaudeville act. During performances,
they would often chat with members of the audience between songs. The crowd-band
interaction was high during peformances of Tommy or Quadrophenia, when Townshend
would have to explain the plot of the operas to the crowd. During these
explanations, Moon would usually comment in a sarcastic and humourous manner,
much to the delight of the crowd.
In the early days, The Who was most famous for
smashing their instruments at the end of their concerts, and would often throw
the damaged remains into the audience. One of the most famous times this
happened was on The Smothers Brothers Show. The Who were nearing the end of "My
Generation" when the American audience witnessed the truly destructive nature of
the Who. Pete Townshend jammed his guitar into his speaker, causing it to short
circuit in a ball of fire and smoke! As Pete Townshend smashed his guitar into
oblivion,Keith Moon rigged his drum set with double the normal amounts of
explosives. This would signal that the band had given all it had, and generated
some coveted souvenirs as a side effect. Townshend cites his art school mentor
Gustav Metzger as an influence, who had developed a concept called
Auto-Destructive Art. Although The Who mostly stopped smashing their instruments
around the time of Tommy, they would occasionally do it long afterwards.
They were also notorious for how they treated their
hotel rooms and dressing rooms, particularly Moon. The band was arrested for
this on at least one occasion, in Montreal, and were for many years banned from
the Holiday Inn hotel chain. Led Zeppelin, a hard rock act of the same era, was
equally famous for their wild antics and parties in their lodgings.
The Who's live performances were traditionally
extremely loud. For most of the 1970s they were listed in the Guinness Book of
World Records as the loudest Rock band in the world, measured at 130 decibels,
though other bands, notably Deep Purple, have since taken over that dubious
honor. Townshend's later partial deafness and tinnitus is well known; popular
legends hold that the members of the band suffered permanent hearing loss from
their loud concerts, or that Townshend's right ear was damaged as a result of
being too close to the drum kit when Moon detonated an oversized concussion bomb
in it at the conclusion of a performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in
1967. Townshend, however, maintains that the true cause was listening to the
music at high volume through headphones.
Various members of the band wore "trademark" dress
on stage and in photo shoots at various periods of the band's history. During
the 1960s Pete Townshend sported a jacket made of a Union Jack. (Reportedly the
Irish Republican Army threatened to blow up the band on stage if he wore it at
an appearance in Ireland, but Townshend had planned ahead and provided himself
with a jacket more sympathetic to Irish nationalist sentiments.) At the end of
the decade he switched to a simple jumpsuit or boiler suit, and appears wearing
it in the Woodstock footage. For a period John Entwistle wore a Halloween-style
skeleton suit in concert. From the late 1960s through most of the 1970s Roger
Daltrey appeared in a fringed buckskin jacket or vest, and can be seen wearing
it in most film footage of the era.
In The
Studio
Sounds
The Who were much more efficient as a live band,
and throughout their history members always claimed that they could never
capture their live sound in the studio. Because of this, studio recordings were
always made for the purpose of establishing material for the Who's live shows
during which songs would take on entirely new dimensions. Perhaps the best
starter for anyone interested in listening to the band is the Live at Leeds
album, on which, recently, the entire 1970 concert is now available. However,
great care and effort went into the recording process so that the studio
recordings are among the best of their genre even though they, in many ways, are
not representative of the band. (One of the two guitar solos, as well as the
electric rhythm guitar on "I Can't Explain" was purportedly dubbed in by Jimmy
Page, the guitarist later made famous by his work in rock group Led Zeppelin) As
the sixties progressed their studio sound was progressively modified by the use
of overdubs to add complete additional parts without the need for additional
musicians, rather than simply as an ordinary studio technique for capturing
clean takes of vocal and solo parts. The added parts were usually additional
guitar and keyboard parts for Pete Townshend, though horn parts by John
Entwistle were added to a few songs. When Tommy came out in 1969 the mix
included not only electric guitar, bass, drums, and three-part vocals, but
additional tracks for acoustic guitar, piano, organ, and horn, as if performed
by six or eight instrumentalists rather than the actual three. As a result of
this expansion many of their recorded songs have a dense sound with rich
textures and fine details that can only be appreciated through careful headphone
listenings.
Tommy also featured some of Townshend's early use
of synthetic sounds, a recording of the click and fade of a piano note or some
sort of percussion instrument dubbed in from a reversed tape to give a reversed
sound that grows louder up to a sharp cut-off, used in the song "Amazing
Journey". His interest in synthetic sounds blossomed when he acquired an early
ARP synthesizer and used it very aggressively on the 1971 Who's Next album.
Though other keyboard instruments continued to be used in the band's recordings,
and they briefly returned to a leaner sound for the 1975 The Who By Numbers
album, Townshend's adoption of the synthesizer and the near-simultaneous
maturation of studio recording equipment and techniques led to a big, solid,
"modern" sound that became the signature of the post-classic era Who.
Genres
The studio albums of the sixties chronicle the
phases of the band's ventures into several sub-genres of Rock music. Their 1965
My Generation UK album (Released in US 1966 in slightly altered form, "The Who
Sings My Generation") features covers of popular Rhythm and Blues songs
performed with a heavy sound that The Who promoted as "Maximum R&B". On their
1966 A Quick One UK album (Released in US 1967 in slightly altered form, "Happy
Jack") they abandoned R&B in favor of an experiment in Pop music as an aural
counterpart to the Pop art movement. By the time of their 1967 The Who Sell Out
album they had mostly abandoned the Pop experiment, instead offering a mixture
of psychedelic music and other songs of no specific sub-genre characteristics.
With their release of Tommy in 1969 they permanently gave up their experiments
with sub-genres, and settled on a mainstream Rock sound, albeit well toward the
"hard" end of the spectrum and featuring many of the characteristics of
progressive rock, in which with the mini opera on "A Quick One" they had already
pioneered to a small extent, alongside Sgt. Peppers and the Moody Blues; the aim
was to do something serious with rock music - a rare occurrence at the time.
In the background of those major trends in The
Who's music there were several other minor tendencies. Keith Moon always wanted
to play Surfer Music (he joined the Beach Boys for an hour), and two or three
tunes in that genre eventually appeared on the band's B-sides or collection
albums, such as the tune "The Ox" from My Generation. As time passed Pete
Townshend increasingly incorporated Jazz motifs into his composition, singing,
and playing, but even when present they tend to be masked by the Hard Rock sound
of the band in ensemble. Finally, as with most of the early British Rock
musicians, the members of The Who were greatly influnced by Country Music,
though the genre rarely appears in their recordings unless transformed almost
beyond recognition.
History
In its earliest days, prior to Keith Moon joining,
the band was known as The Detours and played mostly rhythm and blues. They
eventually changed their name to The Who when Keith joined, making the classic
line-up complete. For a short period during 1964, under the management of Peter
Meaden, they changed their name to The High Numbers during which time they
released a mostly unsuccessful single under that name, designed to appeal to
their mostly mod fans. When "Zoot Suit/I'm The Face" failed to chart, they fired
Meaden and quickly reverted back to The Who. The rest, as they say, is history.
They became one of the most popular bands among the British Mods, a social
movement of the early 60s who rejected the "greaser" music favored by the
Rockers.
The band soon crystallized around Townshend as the
primary songwriter (though Entwistle would also make the occasional noteable
contribution). Townshend was at the center of the band's tensions, as he strove
to write challenging and thoughtful music, while Daltrey preferred energetic and
macho material (Daltrey would occasionally refuse to sing a Townshend
composition and Townshend would thus sing it himself), while Moon was a fan of
American surf music.
The Who's first hit was the 1965 Kinks-like single
"I Can't Explain", followed by "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," which was the only
song composed in a joint effort by Townshend and Daltrey. They vaulted to fame
with their My Generation album that same year. The album included such mod
anthems as "The Kids are Alright" and the title track "My Generation", which
contained the famous line, "Hope I die before I get old". Another early
favorite, showing Townshend's way with words, was the 1966 single "Substitute",
which included the line, "I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth." The
subsequent hits like the 1966 hit single "I'm A Boy", about a boy made up like a
little girl, "Happy Jack" about a mentally disturbed young man and the 1967
"Pictures Of Lily", a tribute to masturbation, all show Townshend's growing use
of clever and novel stories with sexual and mental confusion that eventually led
to his masterpiece Tommy. More hits followed, like "I Can See For Miles", "Mary
Anne with the Shaky Hands" and the "Magic Bus" with a little wink to the
Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour.
Although they had great success as a singles band,
the Who, or more properly their leader Townshend, had more ambitious goals and
over the years their music became more complex and their lyrics more provocative
and involving. Townshend also wanted to treat the Who's albums as unified works,
rather than collections of unconnected songs. The first sign of this ambition
came in their album A Quick One (1966), which included the story-telling medley
"A Quick One, While He's Away", which they later referred to as a "mini opera".
A Quick One was followed by The Who Sell Out (1967), a concept album that played
like an offshore radio station, complete with jingles and commercials. The Who
Sell Out also included two tracks from a never-completed Rock opera, Rael 1 and
Rael 2. Those early efforts were followed by Tommy (1969), their first complete
Rock opera and the first commercially successful one by any artist. Around this
time the spiritual teachings of Meher Baba began to influence Peter Townshend's
songwriting, and he is credited as 'Avatar' on the Tommy album.
Townshend then attempted an even more ambitious
concept album Performance Art project called Lifehouse. Although the intended
album was not released until reconstructed as a radio play for the BBC in 2000.
The songs were also released on a 6-CD album from Pete Townsend's website. The
Who included many of the project's best songs in Who's Next (1971), which would
become their most successful album. Other songs can be found scattered around on
other albums, such as Odds and Sods, which included Pure and Easy, the main
song, and Naked Eye. Who's Next was followed by a work which is more a monologue
piece than Rock opera (there are only a small number of lines sung by other
characters), called Quadrophenia (1973), with a story line about an adolescent
named Jimmy, his struggle for identity and with mental illness, based on the
clashes between Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s, particularly the riots
between the two factions at Brighton.
The band's later albums contained songs of more
personal content for Townshend, and he eventually transferred this personal
style to his solo albums, as seen on the album Empty Glass. 1975's The Who By
Numbers had several introspective songs in this vein, lightened by the
crowd-pleasing "Squeeze Box," another hit single. Nevertheless, one rock critic
considered "By Numbers" to have been Townshend's "suicide note."
In 1978 the band released Who Are You, a move away
from epic rock opera and towards a more radio-friendly sound, though it did
contain one song from a never-completed Rock opera by John Entwistle. The
release of the album was overshadowed by the death of Keith Moon in his sleep
after a prescribed pill overdose. Kenny Jones, of The Small Faces and The Faces,
joined the band as his replacement. The following year was also traumatic for
the band: on December 3, 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a stampede for seats at
Riverfront Coliseum at the start of a Who concert killed eleven fans. Band
members were not told of the deaths until after the show because civic
authorities feared more crowd control problems if the concert were cancelled,
and the band members were reportedly devastated when they found out about it.
The band released two more studio albums with Jones
as their drummer, Face Dances (1981) and It's Hard (1982). In 1982 they also
embarked on the first in a series of farewell tours.
Thereafter they stopped recording new material and
settled into intermittent forays on the "nostalgia tour circuit", as Townshend
focused on solo projects such as The Iron Man and Psychoderelict, a forerunner
to the eventual release of the radio work Lifehouse. Their best-known reunion
tour occurred in 1989 and emphasized Tommy. In 1996 they staged successful
multi-media performances of Quadrophenia featuring a narrator and guest singers.
By this time Zak Starkey was their regular drummer. Their appearance at the
post-September 11, 2001 The Concert for New York City was the most fervently
cheered of any act, by the audience of New York police officers and
firefighters.
Just before the outset of a tour in the summer of
2002, John Entwistle was found dead in his room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las
Vegas, Nevada. A coroner's investigation revealed that while not technically an
overdose, a modest amount of cocaine in his system was a contributing factor in
a fatal heart attack, the result of years of heart trouble caused or aggravated
by regular cocaine use. After a brief delay, the tour commenced with bassist
Pino Palladino filling in for Entwistle. Most shows from the tour were released
officially on CD.
In 2004 The Who (with Greg Lake on bass guitar)
released two new songs, "Old Red Wine" and "Real Good Looking Boy", as part of a
singles anthology (The Who: Then and Now), and went on an 18-date world tour,
playing Japan, Australia, the UK and the US. Again, all shows were released on
CD. They then announced that the spring of 2005 would see the release of their
first new studio album in 22 years. In March 2005, Pete Townshend's website
issued a statement that the release was delayed indefinitely, and explained that
expected UK/US tours in the summer of 2005 were also shelved. Part of this was
due to slow recording of the new material, and part was due to Zak Starkey's
commitments as a member of Oasis.
In September of 2002, Q magazine named The Who as
one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die".
The Who performed "Who Are You" and "Won't Get
Fooled Again" on the London stage of the Live 8 concert in July 2005. Steve
White (Paul Weller drummer and younger brother of ex-Oasis drummer Alan White)
replaced Starkey, and Damon Minchella filled in for Palladino (who was also not
available).
Influence
The Who was easily one of the most influential
groups in rock music as a whole. The music made by the power-trio ensemble of
Townshend, Entwistle, and Moon was followed by groups such as Cream, Led
Zeppelin, Rush, Jimi Hendrix Experience,The Mods and nearly all punk bands. "My
Generation" is the band's most covered song, as Britpop band Oasis has used the
song for their closer during their 2005 World Tour. Pearl Jam also would perform
The Who's "Baba O'Riley" and "The Kids Are Alright" during their tours in the
90's and 00's.
In a completely different aspect, The Who invented
the rock opera and made one of the first notable concept albums. Following in
Tommy 's footsteps were David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, The
Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and the Pink Floyd albums Dark
Side of the Moon , Animals and especially The Wall.
The synth-covered tracks of Who's Next were a
starter for the orgins of the new wave genre, which is based on synth instead of
traditional instruments. Bands affected this way include The Police, The Cars,
Boston, and others.
Discography
The Who
in popular culture
Cartoon references archived at thewho.org:
Dilbert
Horton
Shoe
The 5th Wave
Warped
The Who were featured on The Simpsons season 12
episode 2, "A Tale of Two Springfields", where a The Who concert reunited New
Springfield and Old Springfield after a bitter division due to a new telephone
area code creation.
Several screenshots are available at
animatedtv.about.com
Use of Who songs in film and television soundtracks
can be found at the discography page.
The Who also have a song on the popular game GTA:
San Andreas
The Who songs are used as theme songs in all three
versions of CSI
* * * *
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