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The Who: Difference between revisions
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{{creator}}{{Featured Article}}
[[File:whos_1971-1.jpg|frame|[[Rockers Smash Guitars|This guitar has seconds to live]].]]
{{quote|''People try to put us d-down''
''Just because we g-get around''
''Things they do look awful c-c-cold''
''[[Funny Aneurysm Moment|I hope I die before I get old]]''
|'''My Generation'''}}
{{quote|''Inside Outside / Leave me alone''
''Inside Outside / Nowhere is home''
''Inside Outside / Where have I been?''
''Out of my brain on the 5:15''
|'''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}RpK0zDJE4qs 5:15]'''}}
[[The Who]] were a famous, groundbreaking [[The British Invasion|rock band from Shepherd's Bush, London, England]], known both for their many influential songs and for their pioneering of the art of [[wikipedia:Instrument destruction|instrument destruction]]. They were formed by guitarist Pete Townshend, who joined forces with lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle and [[Crazy Awesome]] drummer Keith Moon. They are so influential that when people talk of the great rock bands of [[The British Invasion]], it's often [[The Beatles]], [[The Rolling Stones]] and
The group started out as the Detours in 1962 when classmates Townshend and Entwistle met Daltrey, then a high-school dropout working in a sheet metal factory. After beating around the bush for a while as a mod-rock act, changing their name to the High Numbers and then the Who, added Moon to the lineup in late 1964, and finally struck gold in 1965 with the singles "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhuL79iEWDo I Can't Explain]", "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUkJYkVTITU Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere]" and the famous "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnDbWqe_kQ My Generation]". The album of the same name however was a rushed affair lacking in memorable work (though the American release was better). Guitarist and primary songwriter Pete Townshend had more ambition though, and included the 9-minute "mini-opera" "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIpsDTSmRyM A Quick One, While He's Away]" on the album ''A Quick One'', which was released the next year(and also featured the single "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvFuUaCe8eY Boris the Spider]"), as a taste of things to come.
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* Leslie West - Guitar (Songs available on the deluxe editions of ''Who's Next'' and ''Odds and Sods'')
Not to be confused with the [[Mongolia]]n [[Folk Rock]] group [[The HU]] or [[w:World Health Organization|the World Health Organization]].
{{discography}}
Albums released:
* 1965 - ''My Generation''
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* 2004 - ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNP2jxAdpk8 Real Good Looking Boy]''
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Going Mobile]] ("[[Captain Obvious|Going Mobile]]")
* [[Magic Bus]] ("[[Captain Obvious|Magic Bus]]")
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* [[Teenage Wasteland]] ("[[Refrain From Assuming|Baba O'Riley]]")
{{creatortropes}}
* [[All Drummers Are Animals]]: Keith Moon was the [[Trope Codifier]], legendary for wrecking hotel rooms - including part of a Holiday Inn in Michigan on his 21st birthday while The Who was touring the US. Popular legend claims that the chain banned the Who from all its hotels afterward, though Moon's biographer claims this was an exaggeration.
** Moon's trademark room-wrecking gambit involved dropping a lit cherry bomb into the toilet; he bought ''five hundred'' cherry bombs on his first trip to the U.S. and spent the next few years working through them. In later years, John Entwistle confessed that he occasionally joined in the fun, handing Keith the matches.
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* [[Crazy Prepared]]: Townshend's preferred manner of preparing songs to be recorded by the band was to record demo tracks on which he sang lead and ''played all the instruments himself'', to give the other band members a clear idea of what he wanted. His "Scoop" trilogy of solo albums is made of of compilations of these demos, and two discs of the six-disc "Lifehouse Chronicles" box set are made up of them.
** One of his demo tapes even got onto ''[[Tommy]]''. "Tommy's Holiday Camp" was intended to be sung by Keith Moon (as indeed it was when played live), but Pete's original solo version was used instead.
* [[Darker and Edgier]]: A lot of their early material bordered on comedy: "I'm A Boy" was the lament of a child whose mother refused to acknowledge his gender, "Pictures of Lily" and "Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand" both serving as a cheeky attempt at [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|fooling 1960s censors]], etc. Then there's ''[[Tommy]]'', with its cynical take on adultery, child abuse, pop culture stardom, and social isolation only ''slightly'' obscured by the inclusion of a song about a blind kid playing pinball. And [[It Got Worse|it gets much, much worse]] from there on out, with [[Creator Breakdown]] leading to a string of bleaker and bleaker albums throughout the 1970s, culminating in 1975's ''The Who By Numbers'', sometimes referred to by fans as "Pete Townshend's suicide note." Joking and light-hearted songs didn't entirely disappear from the group's catalog, but they were increasingly relegated to one or two tracks per album, if that.
* [[A Date with Rosie Palms]]: "Pictures of Lily"
* [[A Day in the Limelight]]: Almost all of The Who albums contained around two or three songs composed by bassist John Entwistle (instead of the main songwriter Pete Townshend), the majority of them sung by Entwistle himself instead of lead singer Roger Daltrey.
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** The song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhtmzy5L4hw Glow Girl]," recorded during the ''The Who Sell Out'' sessions but unreleased for a number of years, ends with a short song fragment ("[[Gender Bender|it's a girl, Mrs. Walker, it's a girl]]") that is recycled almost verbatim as the second track of ''Tommy''.
** A subtle one: listen carefully to the music during the chorus of "I'm One" from ''Quadrophenia''; part of it sounds like part of the ending of "Overture" in ''Tommy''.
* [[Sell Out]]: ''The Who Sell Out'' is a massive [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] of the group's numerous commercial endeavors during the late 1960s, including recording radio promos for Coca-Cola, Heinz Baked Beans, a car dealer, a maker of guitar strings, the United States Air Force, and anyone else they felt would reimburse them for their trouble. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111210142501/http://www.thewho.net/linernotes/WhoSellOut.htm The original plan] was to entice the companies mentioned on the album to pay for the references. No one was interested, but the band was blatant enough about it that many listeners [[I Meant to Do That|took the album as intentional satire]].
* [[Single-Stanza Song]]/[[Looped Lyrics]]/[[Title-Only Chorus]]: "See Me Feel Me"
* [[Soprano and Gravel]]: Townshend and Daltrey, respectively.
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* [[The Stoic]]: John Entwistle played this role within [[The Who]], usually not moving too much and keeping a straight face to contrast with the other members' wild antics. It's really only ''comparatively'', though; he had his fair share of crazy moments, including sometimes joining the others in the onstage instrument-destroying.
** "Comparatively" is right. It's odd that you can be described as the low-key member of the group while performing an entire concert in a '''''leather''' Halloween skeleton costume''.
** Special mention should be made to his outfit from the Monterey Pop Festival. He's not [[Monterey Pop|on screen]] much, but when you see him, it's like getting hit with a psychedelic neon club.
* [[Subdued Section]]: "You Better You Bet" among others
* [[Three Chords and the Truth]]: Especially in the early period, to the extent that many of the early punk bands cited the Who as their prime inspiration. (The [[Sex Pistols]] and [[The Ramones]] ''both'' recorded covers of "Substitute".) In a bump recorded for ''Little Steven's Underground Garage'', Townshend quips "Wanna see a magic trick? Look what I can do with only three chords!"
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[[Category:The Who]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Memetic Creators]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Who, The}}
[[Category:Musicians of the 1960s]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 1970s]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Names to Know in Music]]
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