Each member was to contribute two songs each. This management-led move almost worked and it is both a strength and weakness of this album. Pete Towshend had penned almost all of the debut album the previous year and, while the results are mixed, offered a set that could stand on its own. Now, with success and pop-business concepts bidding their public view the band as riding the ratrace, it was time to expand beyond the rock band mold and play the conventions rather than the reverse.
The cover says it all, here. A richly coloured cartoon of the band bursts out of their panel and into the darkness around it, titles emitting in huge goopy letters from each member. The basic field is solid black. The band name and much smaller title are given in a plain, sobering font. And there they are, refulgent, spilling into the universe, each with his own cry of detonation. Well, that's how the marketing went and it's persistent in the mythology to this day and probably beyond. The Who weren't just a rock and roll band they were rock and roll, barely controlled chaos amid the shards of guitar bodies and kicked in drum heads, amphetamine punchups and bombast. And this was the one where they were each king for a track. Let the noise begin.
And it might have.
The Who were, in fact, more of a functioning oligarchy than an anarchic free-for-all. Pete Townshend was at the helm with his songwriting and directing but his ear was taken by a management team who got him and knew how to guide him. If the Beatles had made the grade in matching suits and then the Rolling Stones replaced that with their cooler designer label effect The Who drove right into the pop art shopfront and plundered the colour and post-modern appropriation and took the stage like a dayglo commercial break and burst into fragments of autodestruction. Though many saw the Sex Pistols as the inheritors of this the big difference was that the Townshend/Lambert/Stamp team actually did the kind of things that Malcolm McClaren only claimed in table talk. So, giving each of these ponced up yobs their own soapbox was bound to implode. Well, it doesn't.
Run Run Run opens with a blasting 2/4 swing of power chords and busy drums. It's messy but groovy. Daltrey sings on the downbeat about someone trying to outrun a plague of bad luck. A lovely few minutes of thrash, tough leads and cooing harmonies in the chorus. Great mid '60s hard rock. It's the sole Townshend song on the old Side One.
Boris the Spider smashes to life and introduces us to the realm of John Entwistle, classical soloist level bass player and imagineer of strange portraits in music. A big dirty bass descent through the semitones ends in a scattering of amp tremolo from Townshend as though the note shattered on contact with the floor. Entwistle sings in unison with his proto-metal bassline. He sees a small spider which gives him the creeps so he kills it with a book and grinds it into the floor. End of story. If you're terrified of spiders you're laughing with him. If you aren't you're laughing at him and his quaking anxiety. The chorus replays the opening chromatic descent as Entwistle matches the bass notes in a cartoon horror voice so low it sounds like a purr. The Ox claimed to have written this one in twenty minutes after a pub conversation with fellow bass icon Bill Wyman. It was to follow him for decades begging to be sung until he wrote a song to replace it as its notes would have worn through to transparency by that time. But for me it never grows old and so never has to hope it dies. In there among all the Purple People Eaters, Alley Oops and Hands of the Rippers, Boris hangs on above, clinging to a tiny silken thread.
I Need You. The legend goes like this: Keith Moon thought The Beatles used a secret language to talk about him. The lyrics are all paranoid in clubland as Keith moves around the coloured social circles being embraced with insincerity and threatened with hatchets. Mostly it's a light rock excursion lifted by a harpsichord adding some wit and an instrumental section that begins with a scouser talking about Rorge and Jingo. Beach Boys fan Keith sings mostly in falsetto which is what he would contribute to the band's harmonies. How much of this is Townshend lending a compositional hand or simply providing a lot of guidance is unknown and usually goes without comment in memoirs but I find it hard to credit the writer of this not champing at the bit to contribute more. Let's credit it a Moon since no one else seems to differ and leave it. In the album sequencing it forms a further change in texture after the opening two blasts and has a great aching chorus.
The Ox re-enters with another tale of crazy. Later, when Pete had the task of writing too close to his own bones songs for Tommy about child abuse and bullying he had to give them to John. Entwistle gave him Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin which are driven by genuine horror. It was thus from Entwistle not so much being fearless in looking at the abyss but detached from it that some plain descriptions and good rhymes set in unnerving chromatic melodies became so powerful. (Youtube the movie versions of these songs and you'll hear why as they are heightened by cinema where the originals from the album are left subtle.) In Whisky Man the narrator enjoys a friendship with the title character who only comes out when they drink which is nearly all the time. His doctors cry hallucination but he keeps drinking with his friend. When they take him to his padded cell his worry is that Whiskey Man will waste away and die. Finally, the first lines are revisited so he seems to be back drinking and chatting with the W. Man. Has he broken out or just gone further into delusion? The chunky rock is kept thick but light and features not the first but the best so far of Entwistle's brass talents, a French Horn solo that works beyond novelty value. It's musical and atmospheric. It would point to more and better. The final line of vocals ends with Townshend playing a sparkling clean riff around the open D which keen listeners will recognise from the next album's Rael and more pervasively throughout Tommy. Here, if you know that, it has the feel of someone trying out a pattern and trying it anywhere it might work. When you go back and listen to almost any of the early Who recordings it's easy to hear how much of Tommy came from musical scrapbooks. I think this is the first instance of this riff outside of the opera, though.
Roger Daltrey only finished one song in time and where the other one might have gone they placed a cover. Heatwave harks back to the band's R&B roots with a joyous Martha and the Vandellas number done here as thrashing rock with a perceptible swing. The mono original brings the piano to the fore which will be a revelation to anyone better used to the power chord version on the stereo mix.
The US release of the album replaced this with the single Happy Jack (and gave the title to the whole album) and common wisdom applauds this. So would I except for two things: Heatwave forms a bright and spirited farewell to the Motown swing of the mod scene they had outgrown and fits in the flow, and; the end of side one was an even more blasting drum workout.
Cobwebs and Strange begins as a short arc melody played on the penny whistle by Townshend and soon lopes around into near chaos as he is joined trombone by Datlrey, trumpet by Entwistle and, of course the nominal author, Keith on drums. It's a crashing drums piece with some pesky instrumentation in the way. But while neither a solo nor a gathered and concentrated outing it gets old quickly. On the end of Side One it can either run its course while you go and check the letterbox or you can lift the needle and flip the record. In the digital realm you let it play for fifteen seconds and click on skip. Maybe Happy Jack could have gone here.
The old Side Two begins with a bounce as a country flavoured bounce takes us into Don't Look Away. A confident vocal from Daltrey courses over a 2/4 cantering beat of tidy drums, acoustic guitar and picked bass. Over his voice comes Townshend's descant which reminds any of us who has forgotten how strong The Who's vocal harmonies could be. The descants in this song are notably nothing like the kind of harmonies found on records by those better known for vocal blocks like the Beatles, Byrds, Beach Boys or the Hollies. There is less concern with them to form chords than for the vocals to be fixed in the arrangement. Whether matching the lyric word for word or providing wordless support they feel like other instruments. In this case they tighten in toward the chorus with its gorgeous modal setting of the word of the title. The sudden brilliance of this washes over a sombre modified chord that forms something like a 9th. What might read like a teen angst ditty becomes a Gregorian lament .. beat group format. My favourite underrated Who cut.
If Townshend had only one song on Side One he dominates Side Two with all but one short track not of his authorship. Roger Daltrey's sole writing credit on the album (and for most of The Who's career) is the tiny but interesting See My Way. If there's any profundity in the lyric it's deep within the mind of its author as it reads unambiguously like a my way or the hy way ultimatum. After a brief ba-ba-da-ba-da vocal introduction we drive straight into a kind of modified Buddy Holly gallop as the narrator lets his girl know he's really only interested in hearing himself played back to him (I can find no trace of irony in this as there might be in a Lennon lyric) and as such might easily remind us of a lot of the taunting statements on the Stones' Aftermath album earlier the same year. The vocal is sprightly and the Daltrey/Townshend vocal interplay even tighter than on the previous track and its's more varied, going from the ba-ba fanfare at the start through light descant to full falsetto glory. Moon chugalugs on the tom toms delivering big crash cymbal moments and some unexpected but highly effective French horn playing that acts percussively, giving us a kind of Townshend style rhythm solo in pure smoothness. This would survive long without the nutrition of the album tracks around it but in place it provides just under two minutes of bouncy fun with a delightful message of committed narcissism.
So Sad About Us. When bands try to recreate the excitement of their live sound in the studio they all too often get lost in the atmospherics or pare things back too far in the name of authenticity. Long Tall Sally is not the most inspiring of Beatle tracks but the backing was done in a single take and pounds with energy and great abandon in the solos while some of Shel Talmy's worst efforts left songs shrieking under too much reverb until they drowned. The Who played a perfectly orchestrated teen anthem like a make or break audition that showed off the players' individuality and interdependence. It sounds like the studio but so hotly that you want to get in front of them live urgently.
Bass and drums work in lock step like timpani before Townshend thrashes through his chord riff, lifted with modfications from Needles and Pins to become a fanfare. Enwistle and Moon lift this to their shoulders as the choir sings the fanfare in la-las. Bam! The chorus eases the tension with long harmonies in high head voice which give way to the urgent minor key verse before kicking the door down for another chorus. And this just tightens until it is driven beyond words to a machine like chorus of la-las which gets cranked up another gear before bursting into the chorus again. Finally, the brakes are hit and we hear the aftershock of wordless vocals and the engines of the rhythm section crunching to a perfect stop. All the power pop of the '70s and beyond was born here in this apotheosis. This and stations leading to it like I Can't Explain and The Kids Are Alright are my go-to examples of why I think British rock music completely eclipsed its American inspiration.
Then we close on A Quick One, the longest track on the record. Kit Lambert was always on Townshend's case about breaking boundaries and orchestra conductor's son Kit kept pushing his protege toward opera. Not Italian histrionics nor the week long horned helmeted other kind but something that came from t-shirts with POW! printed on them, Beatle boots and purple hearts, of working class London in the war and beyond. Townshend cobbled some scraps together and complied.
A big a capella barbershop chorus tells that her man's been gone for longer than he should. A light guitar figure curls upward from a major third to a fifth before the band kicks in and a tough voiced Daltrey talks about all the available women in the town made vulnerable by the war. A chorus of joyous oooohs carries his lead as the band cruises on. A sudden stop and a full 12 string fanfare very similar to So Sad About Us begins stridently and Townshend as a messenger or civil servant cheers the wife up with what might as well be an offical lie about her man being late rather than dead or missing in action. This is cut short by a few crashing chords that give way to a sneaky sounding arpeggio, palm muted and spidery. The voice of the predator from the first part comes in an identifies himself as Iva the Engine Driver who brings sweets and treats and easy seduction. As he starts to get his way the band speeds up and he repeats his tune but lets it grow into more of a threat as the others chime in on choral vocals, mixing a Beach Boys sweetness in with the sleazing carnality. This crashes to a close as we imagine what is happening. It gives way to a cowboy lope on the guitar and bass and a very restrained Moon clopping and teasing the ride cymbal. It's the husband singing as the horses take him forward that he'll soon be home. We mosey on with this for a while until it is suddenly interrupted by some sharp chords and arresting vocal harmonies - fourths, ninths rubbing shoulders with minors - repeating what sounds like "Dane" or "daing!" Your guess = my guess. After a breath that Townshend open D rings and moves to an open G in stately fashion before the band comes in at a gallop and the choir sings "cello cello cello cello...." (because they didn't get the planned cello to play the part). Over this, Townshend in calmer voice plays the returning husband numb but thawing with joy as he runs to the arms of his wife amid the glorious harmonies (and a riff that could have served as the hook of a single). And then a dramatic pause as Townshend as the wife confesses the infidelity with Iva the Engine Driver, a matter of fact single note per line, a fall to describe her fall and a collapse at the finish. Underneath this (almost like the child to come) the D riff from Tommy slowly rises to life and hubby says, "you are forgiven." This repeats over a growing falsetto choir to a purely liturgical plagal end but then bashes back in as everyone is forgiven as Pete speaks it under the final chords.
The war, loneliness, sexual predation, reconciliation and forgiveness and for the first time something transcending mere pop arrangement toward complex orchestration. And this was all playable live. And to the extent that the falsehood of their performance of it kept the airing of Rock and Roll Circus from release for decades due to the supposed envy of the hosting Rolling Stones (it was licencing disputes, in fact, because it always is). At 9:05 the track is a few minutes shy of the 11:35 that the Stones used for the playout of their 1966 set Aftermath but it feels much shorter. There is no soloing or exploration of grooves, no jamming; there is drama, characters, dialogue and restless scenery and costume changes as roles progress and the story unfolds on the stage. As such it speeds by and goes down like dessert. It is to my mind more focussed and immediate than the more complex suite that Brian Wilson was beginning at the time (and would only be allowed to finish decades later) or The Beatles blockbuster album to come. It is certainly superior as a sustained work to The Who's own Rael song cycle on 1967's Sellout. The durable themes and their access give it the kind of moment they would not each again until 1969's Tommy and by that time they were soaring.
It's not all wonder n invention, though, as we turn an ear to the production and have to deal with something important. Having wrested themselves from the ravages of Shel Talmy (which deal held up the reissue of the first album for decades) they were free to fly into the celestium of minute to minute innovation. Instead of that they let Kit Lambert produce. While his engineer keeps the recording free of unintentional clipping there is nothing between Kit and the compressor to make the ride cymbals sound like steam engines and the guitars either too big or small. Too much reverb here and too flat there. Almost none of this sounds intentional but rather like amphetamine inspired instructions followed to the letter. Sellout suffered from all of this, too, the bizarre moment-squashing levels and weirdly stodgy vocal tone. His intentions might well have been to celebrate new ideas with new sonics but any innovative ideas he might have had were well above his ability to command them. The difference between this and other manager-producer confusions like Andrew Loog Oldham and teams like the one at EMI at the time can be heard in how Rubber Soul still sounds fresh and A Quick One sounds like the mid '60s. Tommy has it's problems but is generally free of them and it's tempting to think that the band had learned lessons that eluded its mentor. By the era-change album Who's Next Lambert was set adrift and the production shifts to the band itself and the steady hand of Glyn Johns and production standards that remain standard. Back in '66 this album was made to excite 1966 and only a few years later its listeners would have to listen through that filter.
Nevertheless, this is a statement of a band from rock music's second stage where it grew beyond adolescent hedonism and explored the observations that its newfound cultural power endowed. In the great change year of 1966 when songs about suicide, middle class drug dependence, social status, loneliness, genetic shopping, self-empowerment and the great black space of possibility rumoured to exist beyond the workaday world all made the top ten A Quick One (While He's Away) just added more flavour and punch. A tip top result for a second platter.
Listening notes: I used the most recent high resolution remaster from one of the online hi-res audio stores. Very clear and deep sound that would be a great deal better than the original vinyl and certainly superior to the '80s reissue vinyl that I used to own.
