The Who

[Valeyard]

So kind of a split happens here.



Townshend's solo run truly begins here. I'm covering his solo albums mostly right now because I'm more familiar with it, likely to a fault, and because it is really important to The Who's future. I have all of them, plus tons of demos and b-sides and a fuckton else. He didn't stop, ever. End of the '70s, he was writing for both his solo project (Empty Glass) and the next Who album (Face Dances). While not his first solo album (Who Made Who and Rough Mix, the latter with Ronnie Lane, but the former is better) it was the first one all written by him.

Empty Glass is a great album. Better than anything the Who would subsequently put out, to be sure. Good enough to make me wish that he'd saved a couple songs for the Who. The Townshend neurosis isn't there as much as you'd think; out of the ten tracks, I'd say only three are like that, and even then one of those is lashing out at rock journalists. But the album flows really well and there's not really a slow or weak point.

During this time as well, Townshend gave the famous interview where he said "I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man," and addressed his relationships with men in the past. He later backtracked when people questioned his sexuality and said he was talking about "other gay people I know," which is really fucking funny. While I don't know nor care what sexuality he identifies with, I do know that looking back he was just a very troubled guy.

Singles released:
"Rough Boys" is Mr. Slave-style gay. The tone of the song, helped by the video, seriously sounds like a creepy old guy trying to pick up young guys at a place like a poolhall. It's a great song, don't get me wrong. Would have been a great Who song, in fact. I have a theory that I can't prove that this is really about doing drugs with Sid Vicious and Sid freaking out when Townshend wanted to fuck him. The album is literally dedicated to the Sex Pistols...

"A Little Is Enough" is fun song about how even if his wife loves him a little, it's enough. Kind of a good "Breakfast At Tiffany's." One of the times Townshend knocks being neurotic out of the park, where this feels very real but is also extremely catchy, something he'd wind up being great at as his solo run progressed.

"Let My Love Open The Door" is a radio standard. Short, catchy, and well-crafted. I love it, even mangling it at karaoke once in a while. Depending on when you ask him, this was either a Meher Baba song or just a song. It proves Townshend was still able to write pop rock singles, no matter what he believed, and I think this is probably more well known than a lot of later Who songs. I know I've heard it on the radio much more, or so it feels. He later mixed it slower which makes it feel like a real love song. And, after way too many years, it got Daltrey vocals which is fucking incredible.

So since Townshend was putting his best stuff on Empty Glass, that meant his less-best stuff was going to be on Face Dances, which came out a year later.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

This is up there as one of my favorite threads right now... great stuff even if I'll never be a big Who fan in the end but I've never been a big 70s music fan in general tbh for whatever reason (see Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, etc.) unless it was the Punk scene and even that was like the late 1970s.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

View attachment 1685

"11 ROCK FANS DIE IN STAMPEDE"
...
"How to brighten your holiday dinner table"

Oof.

 

[Valeyard]

Face Dances fucking sucks.

No one's heart is in it. The songs aren't there (I will defend "You Better You Bet" to the end although again, personal significance trumps quality I'm sure). Production feels weird. Kenney Jones just feels so safe on drums. It's got two songs going for it plus a fun cover. I've had multiple chances to pick up nice vinyl copies but haven't because I just can wait until I have everything else.

While Townshend defiitely used his best shit on Empty Glass, there's a glimmer of things that work. "You Better You Bet," a song written about the daughter of a friend whom he was banging, is the best. That will probably shape your opinion of the album, especially as it's the first track. It was the fourth video to ever air on MTV, and first video to be repeated. I think that's pretty wild. But again, I will defend "You Better You Bet" based on nothing that will mean anything to anyone but me. It is, though, a great example of a song that should've been on Empty Glass. Swap it for, like, "Rough Boys" or something and the album improves dramatically while "You Better You Bet" is Townshend as fuck. Only he can write, in what I can only interpret as a lot of self-unawareness, that someone he cares about will "welcome me with open arms and open legs" and how she'll be there to fuck him when he's drunk.

The other song worth anything is "The Quiet One," which is Entwistle writing a song that he could sing that wasn't "My Wife" at every show. I like it and it's objectively the best on the album. It's the only one that feels really Who-like, or at least as close as they could get. In a weird way, though, it almost dates itself on an album that dates itself pretty hard; nostalgia on nostalgia is weird. But it's the backbone of the album that is unfortunately an invertebrate.

Singles/others of note:

"Don't Let Go The Coat" would be fine enough, I guess, if it wasn't the second single released. It's just...it's lame, dude. I have tried fucking hard to get it but it isn't what I want from the Who or Townshend. It's more Townshend autobiographical writing that feels more like a boring close-talker cornering you at the bar at like 12:45. This is also the second track on the album, immediately following "You Better You Bet," and that transition is rough. My pick for worst Who single, for sure.

"You" is another Entwistle and it isn't great. Again it seems like a parody of a Townshend song but it's not the writing I expect from the Ox. It's very catchy, though. I have a soft spot but still.

"How Can You Do It Alone" is another song about jerking off, however it's now more about the inability to get off without having sex. A song about how Townshend can't jerk off anymore, basically. Townshend kind of assumes his problems are universal, as always, but this offers specific scenarios where the protagonist of the song asks how a kid stealing a porno mag or a weird old flasher can do it alone. Then it takes on kind of an annoyed tone while talking about how his girlfriend masturbated in the shower instead of fucking. It's the awkward content I expect from Heroin Townshend.

"Daily Records" would've worked as a single despite being not being a Who song structurally. Again, Townshend is convinced that at 34 he's too old and how he can't keep up with the kids today and how he's ruined his life and how it might affect his daughters. Veers off into what I assume is a lyric about his wife followed by one that is obvious Meher Baba. It's a catch-all. Probably should've been on Empty Glass too. I used to like this quite a bit but I have no fucking recollection as to why.

The band hated Face Dances. It's gone down as their least popular album. I sort of think that it was intentional, that Townshend sabotaged it so he could get away and do his own thing without having to deal with the Who baggage. Everything was changing with MTV too. Some artists/bands wouldn't be able to translate to the new era very well, or at all, and that likely fucked with them. But this did not work.

Townshend does succeed, though, in the sense his next solo album is maybe the most pretentious album to that point.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Even in 1982, titling an album All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes was a fairly questionable move.

 

[Valeyard]

It's more dumb than offensive, though. See, it was because Eastwood and John Wayne were cowboys but they squinted.

It's fucking stupid. Album is something, though.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Agreed. That title is something you'd expect from Bachman-Turner Overdrive or something not from one of the great minds in rock

 

[Valeyard]

All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes came out in 1982.



Look, this album is fucking awesome. It's the most Pete Townshend thing ever made. The songs that are good are great, the songs that aren't really aren't, it has neuroses and pretentiousness out the ass, and allegedly a narrative (depending on where you look). It's widely considered his weakest (lies) and is still better than Face Dances. Townshend paced his 80s albums very well.

It's also very 1982. This album fits in the times, the early MTV days, better than anything The Who would ever do. I can't be swayed otherwise. This is pretty state of the art stuff. That in mind, it only means so much if the record is inaccessible. This takes the right mood and the right time to get into. I hate saying "you need to listen to it more than once" but it takes a little time. What makes it work is that it's slick-sounding ego and fucking unsingable, pretentious wackiness.

Singles/songs of note:

"Face Dances Pt. 2" was the first single and it's good stuff, although I have big problems. First, that video is goddamn nightmare fuel. Second, and more importantly, it's when I realized that the old days were done because it's synth-heavy and relies so much on post-production that it doesn't feel like anything even Who-adjacent. The video, nightmate fuel aside, literally is him holding a guitar instead of playing one. That always said something to me. Townshend has said he wrote it while looking in a mirror, which is another really fucking funny thing to me. It's another time where my misinterpretation of it --I always thought it was, like, a couple looking at each other from across a table or something-- might be better. No worse, at any rate. No, I don't remember why the song called "Face Dances" wasn't on Face Dances because, again, it would've fit well and elevated the album. But then it wouldn't be the highlight of Chinese Eyes.

"Stop Hurting People" is the first track and I list it because if this doesn't elicit a positive reaction, the album might not land. The album starts with this, a grown man waxing poetic about how "my 'beauty' needs an understanding a knowledge of what I am" and talking about how wonder of wonders he isn't with this other person anymore. I won't lie, this spoke to me hard at 15 because I was a pretentious douchebag. Adult Me needs to kick that dude's ass. But this is awesome.

"Uniforms" was the second single and it's what always makes me think there's a story somewhere in this album. Like this feels like something you put in the middle a narrative, to move a story along. That it was a single probably speaks to the album but it never would've occurred to me to put it out as one. No one would be all "omg have you heard 'Uniforms?!' this album is the shit!" or anything.

"Slit Skirts" might be one of solo Townshend's best. Another song about age (poor 34-year-old rock star) and cynicism and sexual inadequacy. It's the most passionate he's sounded in years, and despite having some of what are basically tropes at this point it works extremely well on a kind of universal level. For once the feeling of getting older really works, and there's some great lines. It's my favorite, and going through the album proper and hitting this --last track-- makes the entire thing hit in an oddly perfect way.

I keep going back to Chinese Eyes and expect to hate it, but I end up still loving it but differently almost every time. Again, it isn't for everyone and is 100% the best and worst of what Pete Townshend could do at this point, but there's still something there.

Then three months later It's Hard came out and it looked even better.

 

[Valeyard]

It's Hard was the last album The Who put out until 2006, and the last album with John Entwistle. It's a lame way to go out.

I mean, it isn't a bad album, I guess. I don't like it very much but that isn't indicative of its quality. People who love it really love it, but for me it's always been kind of a 3/5 thing. Unlike Face Dances and Empty Glass, this and All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes have very little in common outside of Townshend. The production is more like a rock album, albeit still one suffering from just having a bad fit as a drummer. Kenney Jones is great, but he just never fit and/or was never mixed properly. I hate The Who sounding so...clean. They all sound like they don't want to be there, like they're all recording things in different places. Daltrey sounds weird at points, enough to where I almost wrote him off; he has moments where there's notes he could absolutely have hit even two years before but just can't make now. Both he and Townshend hate this album and think it never should have come out. I can understand why, but it isn't the worst. It's just there, mostly.

This is decidedly a three-song album, and two of them were singles. The rest feels like possibly better versions of things that would fit on Face Dances or Empty Glass.

Singles/noteworthy songs:

"I've Known No War" is the last great Daltrey rage. Whatever he had left in the tank was saved up for this, and it's great because of it. It took me too fucking long to recognize that it's built around music from Quadrophenia, too, and that was always what I dug. It feels like, had it been done ten years earlier, a great Quadrophenia track. Still would be applicable, too. It holds up very well, much to my surprise.

"Athena" rules and is forgotten. First single released for the album, it's written by a Pete Townshend who was VERY on drugs and as great a single as they could release. I would say it's more along the lines of a "Let My Love Open The Door" than a "You Better You Bet" but they're all in the same family. What's awesome is that the song was written for Theresa Russell, who Townshend had met somewhere and fallen in love with despite her being married and not into creepy crane-shaped junkies. He had this obsession that led to writing "Theresa" which morphed into "Athena" despite "Theresa" being a way cooler title. But the reason this is awesome is because Theresa Russell's husband was legendary director Nicholas Roeg, of The Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad Timing among others. The reason he and Townshend even crossed paths was because Roeg was interested in finally making a Lifehouse movie, and then Townshend fucked it up by getting weird about his hot wife. A more on-brand thing has never happened.

"Eminence Front" is the last truly great Who song, the last great single, and one of the greatest opening riffs of all time. I'm going to say now that I was afraid my eventually getting to it somehow killed Stephan Bonnar and got a little nervous. It was the best entrance music in the Who canon, though, and I don't think anyone could argue otherwise. It's got Daltrey on rhythm guitar which is fucking weird to see. The lyrics don't match the music, though. For me, anyway. This is an epic wall of music that deserves more than lyrics about how people are fake. I really wish a Daltrey who gave a fuck could've done the vocals. There's an alternate take I'm not even going to bother linking with Daltrey on vocals where he just is pretty bored. The biggest problem with "Eminence Front" is that no recording can do it justice, you need to see it performed live. Even with the half-dead band touring. No matter how good you think a recording can be, you need to hear it live to really hear it.

"It's Hard" is the epitome of too little too late. If it came out earlier, with Daltrey actually motivated or the band all in the same room, it could've been a strong Face Dances track. It's a good single, but for this band at this point it doesn't work. By this point, I feel like the MTV era had passed over The Who. This feels like a reason why, and no I can't tell you why. It just feels, for the first time, like a dad trying to be the cool dad. Maybe they were right to stop when they did.

"A Man Is A Man" is weird because I have no earthly idea who the fuck it's supposed to be about. Or who it really is about. It can't be Keith Moon. It just feels totally meaningless because I have no idea who they're fucking talking about despite looking, and I refuse to trust the source I have.

See, in 1985, Townshend had his semi-autobiographical-weird-ass-story-collection Horse's Neck. It was all stuff he'd written between 1978 and 1984, and those were his most miserable years, so literally every story smells like booze coming out of a syringe. In this book, we get a story of him inhebriated and having sex on a dentist chair while images go through his mind that would become the weird-ass, out there lyrics in "Athena." A story of a Muslim food vendor he knew growing up that got fought or got killed by teenagers who vandalized his food truck and how he inspired him, how he was "a man that's a man." I'm looking at it on my shelf now and should reread it when I feel like I can focus on something because I'm getting at least a couple things wrong. But the bones of It's Hard are in this book and they're weird as fuck. It's engaging as hell and I encourage you to check it out because of how strange it is. There's a story about a guy living in the walls of someone's house and sees people laid out on a giant plate in the yard. It's short and worth a look. Just ignore the two instances at the end where he fucks wildlife.

With The Who inactive indefinitely, Townshend could concentrate on his solo work. His next album, White City: A Novel would be a multimedia project. It's something that exists.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

The production is more like a rock album, albeit still one suffering from just having a bad fit as a drummer. Kenney Jones is great, but he just never fit and/or was never mixed properly. I hate The Who sounding so...clean. They all sound like they don't want to be there, like they're all recording things in different places.

Phil Collins claims in his autobiography that he called Pete Townshend once he found out The Who were looking for a new drummer to volunteer his services but Townshend said "Aw geez. I'd love to have you in the band but we just hired Kenney Jones." I'm biased but I think Phil's one of the few guys that could have replaced Moonie. Besides Zak Starkey eventually.

It's just as well cause Phil said he would've quit Genesis to focus on The Who so no solo career, no Invisible Touch, no NBC special with Gilbert Gottfried, Vanessa Williams, and The Ultimate Warrior.

Speaking of supergroups, looking forward to you discussing Pete Townshend's short lived band with David Gilmour in the next post.

 

[Valeyard]

He should've picked Phil. I don't know if it would've helped the longevity of the band but the last two albums would have been exponentially better. I wouldn't have minded a surreal world where we get Daltrey doing "Invisible Touch" though.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

“I Don’t Care Anymore” could have been a monster The Who song.

 

[Valeyard]

White City: A Novel is not a novel, it's an album and accompanying short film. It's actually a really compelling little film for what it is. It's naturally different versions of the songs on the album as well, and that's actually legit distracting because I finally get the narrative he was going for. The version of "Face The Face" features the geekiest version of Pete Townshend I have ever seen, however. But the concept is really sound.

It's about, basically, life in the low-income housing neighborhood Townshend grew up in. The rest is pretty much up for interpretation; I don't know if it's an actual narrative or vignettes of different stories or just very abstract pretentious metaphors for fuck knows. It's a great idea, I think. There's such potential there, like he could've done what Lou Reed did with New York. Townshend just isn't able to do that without someone policing him. Left to his own devices, he makes things much more complicated and pretentious than they need to be when this could've been so much clearer. It isn't like Tommy or Quadrophenia where the narrative is at least easy to understand.

The big thing is that he collaborated with David Gilmour on two songs that are, depending on how you feel, the best on the album. That's because they're driven by Gilmour, and once you know he's playing on it you can't hear anything else. He's the perfect counter to Townshend, probably because after you deal with Roger Waters for so long you develop a kind of patience for douchebaggery. The songs he plays on, "Give Blood" and "White City Fighting," were built around Gilmour riffs. The former was Townshend asking for his help, the latter was Gilmour asking for Townshend's (and Gilmour having no fucking idea what the lyrics were about so he suggested putting it on Townshend's next album instead). Townshend also wrote Gilmour's "All Lovers Are Deranged" around this time. He covered it himself later on but never released it.

This was my first solo Townshend album, and it has a special place for me. I love it, but not as much as I did when I was 15. I feel like I'm too hard on it now, though.

Singles/songs of note:

"Give Blood" came about because he wanted Gilmour to play something while he (Townshend) and others just shout "Give blood" over and over. It's a great sentiment and Gilmour makes it work; if this were solely Townshend it would not be half as good. I'm torn on if I like it as a single, though. It definitely sticks in your head, but I can't decide if it's in a good way. Hell of an opening track, though.

"Secondhand Love" is a single that doesn't feel right. It's a great look at what Townshend drifts towards stylistically when he wants to put out a rock song, and it will definitely be a style he comes back to. It's funny because this is the kind of song he accidentally parodies when he gets to Psychoderelict years later. It's also my least favorite thing he does because he makes it feel so lame. Like, slightly harder than soft rock but not real rock either. It's like Clapton.

"Brilliant Blues" was not a single but should've been. Easily the catchiest on the album and while very artsy Townshend lyrically it's easy to understand. Biggest negative is that it can strike as repetative, I suppose.

"Face The Face" was a single though and I'll be honest and say I fucking can't stand it. It feels like the sort of track that happens in the middle of an album to give you room to breathe between two better ones. It's highly regarded, somehow, and think it's because the live versions (like the one linked) are captivating. Like the band is fucking great but Townshend as the gaudy frontman without a guitar is a kind of ego-stroke I can't get behind. That's all just me, though, and I'm an asshole.

"White City Fighting" is driven by Gilmour. I think the song itself is really strong, and disagree with Gilmour about understanding the lyrics. Feels straightforward. The bass is good stuff as well, which isn't something I associate with Townshend's solo work. I cannot stress how Gilmour this feels and how welcome it is.

White City is worth checking out, but it doesn't change the world. It's a lot softer than Empty Glass and easier to just get into than All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes but I personally can't say it's as good as either, regardless of personal attachment.

The Who were actually back on good terms by the time Townshend's next studio album, The Iron Man, came out in 1989. Won't lie, I've been looking forward to writing about what I think is one of the worst and infuriating albums ever made. I feel personally wronged by The Iron Man.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

“Give Blood” also gave classic rock stations a song to use for ads promoting blood drives they were sponsoring (even if the lyrics make it sound like Pete Townshend was someone who was afraid of donating blood).

 

[Valeyard]

The Who reunited for Live Aid and a couple shots after. Kenney Jones left, leading to Simon Philips. They toured for the first in years in 1989, playing Tommy and, for the first time since the shitshow original tour, Quadrophenia. By then the rock landscape was so vastly different that it was clear they didn't age well. I mean I can respect Leather Jacket Era Roger Daltrey and Uncool Art Teacher Pete Townshend for trying but the world was not as they left it. Entwistle just always seemed cool regardless of age, though. He was the rock guy, after all.

The Iron Man: A Musical was unleashed in 1989.



By now, the Who were back touring and while it wasn't a long tour, it was still more than they had done since It's Hard. During that time, though, Townshend began work on a musical based on the story The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. Had this been the Townshend of the 70s, this could've been a masterpiece. Okay, maybe "masterpiece" is far too much but it would've been a good fucking record. The Townshend of late 80s up to now, that's a disaster waiting to happen unless someone is on top of him. Neuroses was giving way to ego, which was already big enough as it was.

The best thing The Iron Man did, without a shadow of doubt, was lead to the property being bought and eventually turned into animated classic The Iron Giant. It became a stage musical by Townshend, somehow, and that impressed studios. It drew attention to the story and became something many people love dearly to this day. Townshend is even credited on the film, although it bears emphasizing that none of his music nor anyone else from the album is on the soundtrack.

This album is shocking. I tried to find a copy for years, but no luck. I figured it was out of print and gone forever. Then years later, in a tiny record store in a tiny town on a gorgeous rainy day, I found it used. $6. Snapped that shit up. Like, you don't understand. This album not just has Townshend and The Who, it has Nina Simone and John Lee Hooker. Fucking royalty, in a Townshend musical, based on a beloved story.

This is what he did to Nina Simone.

I don't know what to fucking say. Still. I was mortified. That's a crime. And this is her only song. Nina Simone has to sing a song about eating naked children and eating "pretty naked girls, preferably tattooed."

At least Hooker is able to sound like Hooker. On one song. He gets two. Both are bad songs, but "I Eat Heavy Metal" is at least letting the Hooker hook until the backing vocals ruin the whole thing. "Over The Top," meanwhile, has Hooker sounding really unnatural and the rest of the song is fucking annoying.

The Who come together for a cover of Arthur Brown's "Fire" and original song "Dig." They're far and away the best on the album; Daltrey's done this shit before, he knows how to make Townshend's bullshit work. No one should cover "Fire," though. Never works. I just wish this was a Who album because even if it was total shit it wouldn't smear legends and all the songs would feel natural. As it is this is a breath of fresh air in a septic tank.

Other shit:

"A Friend Is A Friend" is regarded highly enough to always pop up on Best Ofs. To be fair, it at least sounds like something that would be in a musical production. The only song that does. The best I can think of for me is that it leaves little impression; I've heard it a lot but I forgot about it completely. Always was skipped on the Best Ofs.

"I Won't Run Anymore" is the opener and fills with false hope that this will be a decent musical project. It gets the intro just right for a stage production and sounds tighter than most of the songs. It's the non-Who highlight.

"All Shall Be Well" is...dude I haven't seen The Iron Giant in many years but I don't remember the part where a chick's "naked and dreaming behind locked doors" and a dude is dealing with being a man. But here it is, loud and bombastic with screams and shit.

This album is the most outright garbage thing I can think of that directly involve The Who. It's Townshend's worst habits all shoved together with the added insult of having two legends be so misused that the album would fail on that alone. That it led to The Iron Giant is a goddamn miracle and proof a deity of some variety must exist somewhere. Meher Baba, maybe.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I'm sort of surprised that The Who didn't do more in the '90s outside of a few tours. It was a much kinder time for late era classic rock bands than the '80s (or '00s for that matter) and they had superfan and rock megastar Eddie Vedder around to do PR work to tell the kids about how great these old guys were. Were Pete Townshend's hearing loss issues already really bad? I notice he's playing acoustic guitar a lot in late '80s and '90s clips (although some of those might've just been deferring to David Gilmour being in his band).

In any case, it's too bad John Entwistle's last album with the band was It's Hard.

Van-Pires - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

TIL that John Entwistle did the soundtrack for a late '90s UPN cartoon.

 

[Valeyard]

Eddie Vedder is the best thing to happen to the Who after Moon died. No joke. He's the only one who is able to match Daltrey while sounding totally different. I know he got them to work the Bridge School Benefit in there somewhere but that's all I can think of without looking it up.

90s, they got distracted. Tommy hitting Broadway probably changed a lot of priorities, especially for Townshend.

 

[Valeyard]

At some point, Lifehouse began to evolve. Townshend started not just thinking about Lifehouse, but about himself and the creation of Lifehouse. All the work he'd done, successes and failures, was turning into a story itself. This leads to The Boy Who Heard Music.

I'll get more into that later, but Townshend's meta project started with Psychoderelict.


First things first: I fucking love the title Psychoderelict and it might be the best title Townshend has ever come up with.

Two versions of this album exist: the original, and the "music only" version. The original is basically a radio play; instead of letting someone take what they want from a story, he felt the need to spell it out. He was serious about this vision.

A summary of this crap:

Aging rock star Ray High is a drunk recluse who spends all his time working on a project called Gridlife. His scummy manager is concerned that, because Ray isn't releasing new material, that he'll go broke. A rock journalist, Ruth, is always out to get Ray because reasons. The manager and Ruth conspire to get Ray's name out there and force him to make new music, which happens in the form of a 15-year-old girl named Rosalind who sends him a nude picture from when she was 12 (posing on her mother's grave) and talking about wanting to be a star. Ray, naturally, finds this erotic and offers to help her if she tells no one. They exchange letters and he opens up about himself and his problems. He sends her a demo for a Gridlife song and talks about how Ruth is awful but her hate motivates him.

But, of course, Ruth is Rosalind and has been fucking with Ray. She's banging the manager, and a whole track on the album is them having BDSM sex. So, as Ruth breaks the story that Ray was soliciting nudes from an underage girl, she records the demo ("Flame") as Rosalind. It becomes a big hit. Ray, furious, is convinced that Ruth and the manager are fucking with Rosalind and how it was bullshit because he was trying to help her. It's rightly pointed out by someone that by giving her a hit song, he did help her out. Ruth tells him he should stop worrying because he's making money from his records again so it worked out. Eventually he and Ruth talk and he admits that he knew all along Ruth and Rosalind were the same person (which makes NO fucking sense) and that he loves her (which makes even LESS sense). Somehow this inspires Ray to write music again and he's back to being a real rock star or something.

Now, there is a LOT to unpack, of course. But before I attempt to poorly do so, I gotta say the album --both versions-- are weird and not good. The original, the radio play, is fucking stupid. That summary is leaving out the horrible dialogue, horrible writing, and totally insane notion that this is anything but ego. I bought the original (again at a little record store in another little town) and was...surprised because I didn't know it was a play. I was not too pleased because literally every track but one had dialogue that was stupid when I just wanted to hear the music. The story unfolding was also so bad I thought it was funny in that "oh god he's an idiot" way.

The music only version is much better, but it has the unfortunate problem of being able to hear all the songs. A few are recycled demos from Lifehouse and some of Who Are You, which is kind of brilliantly used as Ray listening to his old demos. The original stuff is built on everything that I hated about his other albums, like he was searching for the right formula to piss me off. There's some good, of course, but taken a whole it just is a disaster of an album from a music perspective.

Singles/songs of note:

"English Boy" was the one single. Would have been a better Who song to be sure, however it sets the tone of the album right out of the gate. I linked the original version so you can truly get the gist of things. It's got some annoying points, usually when it isn't the chorus. I'm not talking about the dialogue because you can hear exactly what it is. If I thought Townshend was capable I would think it was satire.

"Let's Get Pretentious" fills the "journalists are assholes and people are fake" quotient. I actually don't mind this terribly as a song but it just feels fucking goofy. There's just only so much you can say this album has, though.

"Don't Try To Make Me Real" is the one song that sounds like there's something worth saying. It's such a directly broody, whiny, misunderstood artist song but has some power to it. Should've been the single. This is the music only version because I'm not fucking sadistic.

"Now And Then" is the only song I think I like. It's just light and reminds me of the slow version of "Let My Love Open The Door." It just suffers from being a Pete Townshend song. Anyone else could've made it work without being such a...Townshend.

"Fake It" is about how he is cool if you fake orgasms because you're still in love. Cuck.

I gotta go into the subject matter just because it's so glaring. The premise of this always really bothered me. I heard this after the 2003 child porn scandal, and it always felt really weird knowing that ten years after Psychoderelict the real Pete Townshend had underage porn and had his name more out there than it had been since 1979. Also was weird that this was a year before a Who greatest hits album came out, followed by a tour. It just all feels fucking gross on way too many levels, and please don't think I'm saying I think something like Psychoderelict was actually going on. I'm not stupid. But it was always a really fucking weird coincidence that no one ever talks about. Not even a scandal can make people give a shit about Psychoderelict apparently. In that sense, though, this could be the most brilliant work Townshend has ever done.

This was the last solo album Pete Townshend has released to this day. After it came out and it was attempted as a real play, it died. But Ray High would live on with The Who.

 

[Valeyard]

The Who went back on tour as a band in 2000, the first big tour since 1982. By this point they'd settled on Zak Starkey as their drummer, who fit so much better than anyone else.

Then that disagreement between planes and buildings occurred on 9/11 and shit changed.

Jokes aside, the US was a fucking shellshocked wreck, afraid that every little creak was going to be a plane full of anthrax flying into your house. You were there, you know what was up. On October 20th, a benefit concert for the city of New York was put together at MSG that had literally everyone. You had Bon Jovi wearing a police hat and looking like a twat. You had Harrison Ford trying to shake hands with a one-armed man. You had Bono soothing another tragedy boner. You had Howard Stern in a hasmat suit. You had Sandler bringing back Opera Man. It was a wild show, maybe the most important of my lifetime. But you also had The Who.

They steal that shit.

I'm not even being biased; they completely took the show over and the crowd was unable to recover. Like, I remember watching it and being so fucking happy they were there and that they were putting in one of the greatest performances they ever had. I watched it now for the first time since, maybe, and I remember exactly how I felt. It helped me out immeasurably, seeing them just take over. Giving this cathartic performance, no bullshit just this sense of stability. The Who doing Who shit at this show was incredible and seeing all the cops, firemen, and families being INTO that was and is so special. I was so afraid they'd suck. That it'd be just three old guys and some drummer who didn't fit going out there and shitting up the place. Instead I got what is legit one of the greatest performances they've done, certainly the best post-Moon, and Zak Starkey winning me over forever. Also, because I was literally the only person I knew who listened to the Who, I'd sort of developed this weird fear that they wouldn't get over with the crowd. Like they were just some forgotten band from a bygone era. As always, I was fucking stupid and it added so much for me personally seeing those people react that way. I mean, dude, them taking over "teenage wasteland" is one of my favorite things at any show I've watched. They stole the show, no one was able to get the crowd back completely. Not Jagger (again), not McCartney (who was headlining), not any celebrity. The Who saved New York, just for half an hour.

Interest at its highest, a tour in 2002 was a go. The first show was to be in Vegas. Then Entwistle had to go and dead himself.

He died like a rock star, though: coked up with preexisting health problems and after banging a stripper. He took hideous care of himself, so the coke hastened things. I was heartbroken; to this day I remember, very sadly, changing my MSN messenger name to "RIP John Alec Entwistle" and no one knowing who the fuck died. I thought they were done, but then --as they did when Keith Moon died-- they went back on tour immediately with a replacement. I was heartbroken that I would never see The Who if I got to go to a show. Sure, I'd see Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, but two guys not a band make. It still bugs me they tour as The Who, honestly. Entwistle was the backbone of the band and had been the biggest part of the reason they survived the dark times. He never phoned it in because he was a goddamn machine and did amazing things so frighteningly effortless that it still blows me away.

Thankfully, at least, nothing bad would come along to completely derail the band's return in the 2000s.

 

[Valeyard]

In 2003, Pete Townshend was arrested using a credit card on a site known for child pornography. I word it like that because it's all such a mess that it seems like the only 100% for sure thing is that he used his credit card on a child porn site.

Townshend has said two things: that this was "research to look into his own abuse" for his autobiography, and that it was to prove credit card companies don't care what horrible things they support. These are two different things entirely and of all the times he shouldn't do Townshend shit it's about an issue like that. But he never downloaded anything, which is very important to note, and depending on where you look didn't even access the main site...which I call bullshit on because what the fuck kind of idiot tries to research and/or prove a point, literally giving out your information in the process, without even checking what they paid for? Especially if this is "research," where it would be mandatory to look at the actual thing you are "researching." The important thing is that, four months later, he was cleared of charges. He cooperated, but since he wouldn't appear in court was put on the sex offender registry for five years.

I was in shock when it happened. Shock but not surprise, if that makes sense. In a weird way this was on brand; Townshend was a deeply troubled guy who also didn't seem to grasp how certain things work, like the internet. He would be dumb enough to pay for that shit for genuine "research," and not understand what the fuck he'd done. He'd also be a first-round pick when it comes to likely perverts. I just knew that any of that wouldn't negate what his work meant to me, and if he'd been proven guilty I'd be done. Dude would've died in 1993. I was of course relieved when he got cleared, registry notwithstanding, but I've never been fully sure one way or the other how I really feel. He's just fucked up enough that it could be anything, none of which would be surprising. But in the end, he was cleared and spent five years on the sex offender registry. That's what it comes down to, I guess? I can't nor would defend him.

 

[Valeyard]

I gotta mention this, as well.

In 2002, Kurt Cobain's diaries were published. At one point, he says "I hope I die before I become Pete Townshend." Naturally this did not sit well Townshend who offered a retort. Won't lie, this read very differently in my memory. Not sure how, exactly, but things like

The entries are not uninteresting. It is simply that they are devastatingly hard to contemplate. They actually hurt. These are the scribblings of some once beautiful, muddled, angry, petulant, spoiled, drug-addled middle-class white boy from a divorced family who just happened - with the help of two of his slightly more stable peers - to make a first album that is hailed as one of the best rock records ever made. I sometimes get letters from people who write and draw like Kurt Cobain. I put them in a file marked 'Loonies', just in case they try to sue me in the future for stealing their ideas.

slipped my mind. It's an interesting read although Townshend always has an air of arrogance in his writing and that can be offputting.

 

[Valeyard]

In 2004 the latest compliation --Then And Now-- came out. It had all the songs you would expect, but it also had the first new Who songs recorded since It's Hard. I guess technically The Iron Man but that shit never happened.

"Real Good Looking Boy" is good, but there's just something off. Maybe it's Entwistle (replaced by Greg Lake here!) not being there. Maybe it's just me now being very aware of what solo Townshend had become and being on guard for all that brings. I do know that taking "Can't Help Falling In Love" verbatim is distracting, although a Daltrey version at one point would've been awesome. Song is about how Elvis impacted Townshend, though, but it feels like two things that don't go together. But for real I love this shit.

"Old Red Wine" is about Entwistle. Honestly I've heard this a bunch of times over the last however many years its been and I've always been underwhelmed. It just is missing something somewhere, a common theme from here on out to be sure. It doesn't feel like the song they expect it to be. Best thing I can say I guess is that it would've fit really well on It's Hard.

I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl that summer and it was genuinely one of the best shows I've ever been to. Just objectively-speaking; all the shit one can say about The Who or Townshend or anything, it can never be said that they ever phone things in. They busted their asses. Once Daltrey warmed up, it became something special. Found out later that Eddie Vedder was in the front row (along with Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman!) and was a little sad he didn't jump in for something. They busted out "The Punk And the Godfather" from Quadrophenia though so it's all well and good. They were reenergized, though. Deaths and scandals didn't hamper them.

Rumblings began happening about a new album, and I was 100% against it. Not that I didn't think they could do it, but because they were not The Who anymore; they were Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend doing the songs of The Who. One of the things Entwistle was able to do was in a way keep Townshend's bullshit in check when it came to albums. He was the one who had the songs and style that would break up an album, giving a break from Townshend's stuff. He was a saving grace for the post-Moon era that way, when Townshend's style was changing and Daltrey didn't sound like he gave a shit. Without "The Quiet One," Face Dances is that much more dire. Without "One At A Time," It's Hard doesn't work. My fear was that any new Who album would be more solo Townshend weirdness but with Daltrey along for the ride, and while there would absolutely be something worthwhile there was a very good chance it would be a fucking mess like Psychoderelict.

Townshend had begun working on the story The Boy Who Heard Music. It was an evolution of Lifehouse, but integrated elements from Psychoderelict and with a larger injection of ego. Ray High returns, as does his manager and the Lifehouse-inspired fictional project "Gridlife." Townshend was publishing pieces of it as a novella on his site and I remember being kind of excited at the idea of a new project, even if the Psychoderelict bullshit put me off a little. He'd been making clear that this was going to be the new album and I felt all my fears being justified. It took a while to get everything put together, but before long it became real.

And I don't think I was wrong.

 

[Valeyard]

In 2006, seemingly out of nowhere, The Who put out the "mini-opera" of new songs entitled "Wire And Glass." I about lost my shit in the most cautious of ways; I expected the worst, and it being compared to "A Quick One, While He's Away" made me very nervous because that's not a comparison you just make. And it isn't as good, not by a longshot, but it was fucking good. Daltrey sounded good, the songs sounded suitably from a project and probably worked better in context, and it got me very interested in a potential new album. However, it doesn't sound like The Who. It sounds like Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend doing Who music.

I'm just going to copy the Wikipedia synopsis of The Boy Who Heard Music because I seriously don't feel like rereading it right now.

The story covers a period in the life of three children from different ethnic backgrounds who grow up to form a band and develop the "Gridlife" concepts of older musician Ray High (a character who also appeared in Townshend's musical Psychoderelict). High is the narrator of the story which starts off in the year 2035, with the old Ray High in a mental institution in London. He is in an alternate plane of existence called "In the Ether" and looking backward. The younger characters are Gabriel who "could hear music", Josh who "could hear voices" and Leila who "could fly." The three live in the same neighbourhood but are of different religious faiths: Gabriel is Christian, Josh is Jewish and Leila is Muslim.

Ray High and Leila's father Damoo have been in a partnership called BBZee Studios. As children, Gabriel, Josh and Leila present a play in the studio which involves Josh's Uncle Simon dying and ascending to heaven. The children become interested in Ray and his band after watching tapes of an old concert, and form their own band called The Glass Household, based on Ray's notes and writings. Their fans often refer to the band as "Glass", which becomes a hit under the management of Ray's previous manager Rastus and his company PlusBond. The band's contract puts Leila in control of the company's pop-music distribution and she uses it to begin to make Ray's old ideas about the "grid" come true.

The two boys compete for Leila's affections, and she marries Gabriel, who finds it difficult to satisfy her. He becomes an alcoholic and a web porn addict and voyeur, reported by the press to have affairs with both men and women. While searching on his name, Gabriel discovers pictures of himself being sexually abused as a child. When Gabriel gets another woman pregnant, Leila leaves him to have an affair with Josh. Gabriel's son is killed in a car accident, and Gabriel's grief is used as the public reason why Gabriel will not participate in a Glass reunion concert in New York, though actually he and the other members of Glass are involved in a power struggle over control of rights to the music.

Gabriel is an ageing, reclusive drunk living in Ray High's old house when Josh shows up on his doorstep. Because Gabriel has refused use of Glass's music, Josh has run out of money, and he asks Gabriel to release the rights to the music so he can stage a Gridlife concert. Gabriel agrees, and the group travels separately to New York City, where the concert will be staged. Gabriel meets a woman in the Ritz Carlton, where he hears screaming children. Opening a window, he hears all the tragedies of New York playing out in the streets below. However, the concert will go on as scheduled as a tribute to the victims.

The concert takes place in Central Park with many bands participating in a programmed "Method" which produces individualised music for audience members, all of it combining to make the sound of an ocean. Ray seems to be there to take his bows, but he is actually watching a representation of the event at his old studio in Isleworth which is connected to the mental institution.

As the concert concludes, Josh grabs a gun from a security guard and shoots Gabriel. A massive staircase appears, accompanied by demons and angels, and Gabriel ascends. This is mirrored by the staircase at the studio where the children held their play many years ago.

The steps from the children's old stage set now lead to a pub called "The Black Hole." At an afterparty for the show, Gabriel passes by, entering the pub, and Ray says that he can no longer return because he has passed through The Mirror Door. Josh imagines Gabriel in The Black Hole, "piecing together the fragments with the help of a whiskey." Josh and Leila have tea, and then Leila leaves Josh in his own mental institution cell, alone with his "voices."[

Lifehouse becoming "Gridlife," becoming a device in The Boy Who Heard Music created by a fictional Townshend character and later on finished by other very Townshend characters is just what's up. The bolded part I just fucking love because it might be the most Townshend thing ever summarized. But I actually dug the story much more than I expected, and looking at the synopsis now I think I honestly like it more now. It's every bad habit Townshend was capable of, yeah, and it sounds absolutely silly in a lot of places, but I can see how it could work. I'd pay to see a production of it.

This led to the new album, the first since 1982 and the first without John Entwistle. Endless Wire.

When it first came out, I didn't like it. It wasn't that it was a bad album, it just wasn't a Who album. Wasn't even a Townshend album, really. The sense of aimlessness that happened when Keith Moon died hit harder without Entwistle around. Any Who it felt like seems very It's Hard, like something that would have been a good followup. It could've been the album they needed once. In 2006 it didn't do it and I wasn't feeling any of it.

Now, though? I'm enjoying the fuck out of it. It isn't a Who album and both Entwistle and Moon are sorely and very obviously missing, but it's far better than I remember and than it has any right to be. Best since Who Are You, easily. Townshend and Daltrey sound good and they're motivated. Daltrey's voice was a big hangup for me at the time, as dude's just old and his style isn't the kind you can keep up. Everything is keyed lower for him, obviously, and it feels like it. There's times where he slips into almost Springsteen though. Townshend doesn't have the vocal range he once did, either, but he's got more power now. He's got a lot more on this album than he has previously.

It does overstay its welcome, though. It peaks with the "Wire And Glass" stuff, which here is several tracks that flow together more like the Abbey Road medley than any kind of mini-opera. Material is way better for it, I think. It's the stuff that feels special, almost familiar. Like when you visit a place you used to be all the time and see how it was developed or changed over time, and is totally different but still feels almost the same. I guess that's what I always wanted from Endless Wire but didn't really get until this most recent listen. Huh. I think, in that sense and in that mindset, I might rank this much higher on my personal list than I ever expected. I can't explain why but it feels overlong but somehow hits a level on the back half that makes it something special. Whether it's good or not is definitely depending on who you are, of course. But you don't wanna hear me get all emotionally invested more than necessary, I'm sure.

Songs of note (although the best stuff is already linked with "Wire And Glass"):

"God Speaks Of Marty Robbins" is one I did not like initially but I think Young Me was a fucking idiot. My reasoning was that this is a couple of unreleased demos Townshend had for years fused together, and it wasn't new stuff. It isn't, but it's great. Townshend giving a fuck and just playing guitar, singing stuff that really does sound like he wrote it years before, just works. It sounds like something that could've come out in the 70s, either on a Who record or on a solo jam. Reminds me a lot of his version of "Begin The Beguine." I mean it's the same but still.

"In The Ether" is something else. Townshend doing a Tom Waits voice and singing lines about caged in autistics and shit. The progression is fantastic and it sounds amazing but the Tom Waits voice is absurd. Just get Daltrey if you gotta go gravel. Dude's right there. But on a creative level I wish this was the kind of shit that was on Psychoderelict. It's its own thing and still familiar enough to pass.

"A Man In A Purple Dress" is about the legal system and authority and who is to pass judgment and all that shit. You know why it's on here, but it might fit into the story better somewhere. It's Daltrey being good, though. This album is pretty much split between the two of them on vocals, which is frustrating but it does accentuate positives while hiding negatives. It's another you could just tweak and it would be welcome on one of the classic albums, I think.

"Tea & Theatre" is what I think, canonically, the last Who song. This should have been the last thing they ever did under the Who name because it's the perfect ending. While, yes, it is part of The Boy Who Heard Music it is also the end of the Who. It's about the end, how they did these amazing things and then one died, and then the other died, and then it was just two of them leaving the stage. It's the best thing Townshend has written since Empty Glass and the best Daltrey has sounded since It's Hard. What kills me and is actually a little heartbreaking is how this song of losing people and how sad it is and how there's only two left to reminisce has no drums nor bass; it's all just beats, electronic and fairly contemporary, with no one there playing anything. It's two guys with their other halves being just replaced in the most insufficient ways, on purpose, to show what they're missing. On one hand it sounds really dodgy and as un-Who as it gets, but it's also beautiful considering what it means. This is the end, and it should've been the end. It was the right way to go out.

The Who toured since, as they are wont to do. The next album wouldn't come out until 2019.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1619245907823980544

 

[Valeyard]

One of the last decent episodes, too!

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

The Who announce 2023 orchestral tour – with UB40 at regional shows

The Who have announced an orchestral tour for 2023 with UB40 featuring Ali Campbell supporting at regional shows.

www.nme.com

I chuckled at the opener choice but I get it. It’s getting harder and harder to find openers that boomers will accept. At least, Pete & Roger aren’t having a speed painter open.

 

[WilcoRuss11]

water is such a funny song. people need to have more of a sense of humour. it should be one of their greatest hits.

 

[Valeyard]

I never dug "Water" as much. It hits me the same way "Long Live Rock" or "Join Together" does where it's fine but not what I like out of The Who. It is however much better than both of those.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0tB1C3RJYWiQkJrR2XsSFxyeRVp8KfoUtLdNknicSigngtuHSWNbVyaDPx5Fg6FFcl&id=14106370407

Tommy reunion.

TIL Ann-Margret has a singing career. What a collection of talent (and Pat Boone).

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0pSmscfXHw5orG4LN3C2cGxuG4DS5TUGvxgCJLJfe7t44bvTLYEnwBbWVoprU6kdAl&id=107710719302307

Buried in there is Pete Townsend is releasing his first solo single in 29 years, Vale.