The Who/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
/wiki/The Whocreator
  • Accidental Innuendo: Pete Townshend has said that "Squeeze Box" is about nothing more than a woman who plays accordion to the annoyance of her family. But John Entwistle said that when he first heard the song, he knew "it was about tits."
    • Not according to this. "[Squeeze Box was] Intended as a poorly aimed dirty joke."
  • Broken Base: The disputes over whether the band should have quit after Moon's death have been...energetic, especially with Kenney Jones and the 1989 Tommy tour. It got better (mostly) after Zak Starkey became the drummer.
  • Covered Up: They are often the coverers though: "Young Man Blues" (Mose Allison), "Eyesight to the Blind" (Sonny Boy Williamson II), "Summertime Blues" (Eddie Cochran), "Leaving Here" (Eddie Holland, Jr.), "Baby Don't You Do It" (Marvin Gaye).
  • Crazy Awesome: Keith Moon
    • According to Alice Cooper, only a fraction of the rumors about rockers like Ozzy, Iggy Pop, and Alice Cooper are actually true. All the stories about Keith Moon are true... and you've only heard a fraction of them.
    • Not just Moon either- their appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and their reaction to Jerkass Tommy Smothers' teasing. I don't know why he thought it was a good idea to bring an acoustic guitar onstage after the Who's set, but... the moment is canonical Crazy Awesome.
    • A lot of that was scripted, though the big explosion certainly wasn't. Tommy was a big fan of the Who, and decided to have them on after he saw them at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival. Moon had a knack for going off-script.
      • And Tommy came on stage with an unstrung acoustic guitar, meaning he knew all along that someone was going to break it.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Woodstock. While they were playing "See Me, Feel Me," the sun rose. The band had a lighting rig - one of the first used in rock concerts - constructed to replicate the effect for future performances.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Usually courtesy of Keith Moon, although each band member was pretty hilarious in his own way. The intro to "A Quick One While He's Away" on Live at Leeds, and many others. You can see a lot of them, including Keith Moon's "striptease" in The Kids are Alright.
    • A Crowning Moment of Funny story from The Who's travels on the road: Keith Moon, Mr. Crazy Awesome trope codifier, is enjoying his music in his hotel room at a great loud volume, as per the norm. The hotel manager comes round to complain about "the noise". Keith, ever the polite one, invites the manager into the room with a gallant wave. He walks him over to the bathroom, whereupon he lights a stick of dynamite, drops it in the toilet, and closes the door. The dynamite ignites, and Keith, still in polite mode, says to the manager, "That, dear boy, was noise." He then turns up his boombox and says "This... is The Who."
    • Another time, as The Who were leaving their hotel, Keith yelled "Wait, I forgot something!" He then ran back into their hotel room, grabbed the TV, threw it into the pool, and climbed back into the car as if nothing had happened.
    • The "Happy Jack" and "Call Me Lightning" music videos.
      • Most of John Entwistle's compositions (both with The Who and as a solo artist) were written with a rather dark humor.
    • Any of the videos where they're lip-synching a song. Watch Keith Moon, naturally. He'll usually spend most of the video contentedly bopping his head and occasionally hitting the drums in rhythm with the song.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Several, but the version of "A Quick One" from The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus featured in The Kids are Alright stands out. Part of the reason the Stones sat on the footage for several years was because they couldn't take being upstaged by a rival band in their own film.
    • "See Me, Feel Me," "Won't Get Fooled Again," "The Real Me," etc.
  • Ear Worm: A lot of their songs. Particular examples are "Who Are You" and "Pinball Wizard".
  • Ending Fatigue: The keyboard break in "Won't Get Fooled Again".
  • Epic Riff: "My Generation", "Baba O'Riley", "I'm Free"...and a few others.
  • Face of the Band: This wasn't always the case. The Who now consists of Pete, Roger, and those two guys who aren't John and Keith. One could also argue that Endless Wire is a Pete Townshend solo album featuring Roger Daltrey on guest vocals.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Some have ignored the band's work after Moon's or after Entwistle's death.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The line "Hope I die before I get old," in "My Generation", after the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle. In another Flip-Flop of God, Townshend took in the '90s to claiming that "oldness" is a state of mind, not a descriptor of physical age.
  • Magnum Opus: Either, Tommy, Live at Leeds, Quadrophenia or Who's Next.
  • Memetic Mutation: A Quip to Black in the CSI style, followed by "YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" from "Won't Get Fooled Again".
    • "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" from the same song. Used to criticise every politician in office, ever.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: So very, very much with Live at Leeds. Many see the whole point of the album as showing the Who in their raw, live form as the original LP did. The 1995 and 2001 re-releases gave us the whole concert, but with crackling noises removed, some of the vocals re-recorded, and the Tommy section moved to a separate disc.