The album Roger Daltrey thought would never work for The Who
Once you have reached the upper echelon of rock and roll royalty, where do you go from there? That is a question which Britain’s mod rock revolutionaries The Who have never truly discovered the answer to.
It was during the height of the 1960s, when London’s music scene was at its most swinging and rebellious, that the anarchic sounds of The Who first traversed the airwaves, and it didn’t take the band very long to establish themselves in the eye of the musical mainstream. From ‘I Can’t Explain’ to the era-defining anthem ‘My Generation’, virtually all of the band’s early singles made it into the pop charts, and their penchant for loud, explosive live shows cultivated a spectacular reputation around the Pete Townshend-led outfit.
What elevated them from being just another swinging sixties rock and roll outfit, though, was Townshend’s ability to mature and develop within his songwriting. The following decade saw The Who move into the realm of rock opera, with Quadrophenia becoming arguably their greatest artistic achievement. By that time, The Who were inseparably woven into the fabric of rock and roll around the globe; they had reached the top. When you’re at the top, though, it’s difficult to know where else to go. Either pack it in entirely, or submit to your fate going downwards.
The Who have been presented with a number of opportunities to dissolve the band over the years, namely when drummer Keith Moon tragically passed away in 1978, taking with him an utterly essential aspect of the band’s sound. Still, Townshend, Daltrey, and Entwistle carried on, and the albums that The Who put out in the wake of Moon’s death (Face Dances and It’s Hard) are, without a doubt, the worst albums ever recorded by the band.
To their credit, The Who resigned themselves to being a touring-only band for a few decades after those disastrous LPs. However, the insatiable artistic appetite of Pete Townshend returned in the 21st-century, producing Endless Wire in 2006 and Who in 2019. Although neither record comes close to replicating the profound mastery of Tommy or The Who Sell Out, they were, at least, a whole lot better than the band’s early 1980s efforts. Still, frontman Roger Daltrey wasn’t always convinced of their potential.
Speaking to Rock Cellar in 2019, Daltrey revealed his initial animosity toward Townshend’s Who material. “My initial reaction was that they’re really interesting songs but it’s a Pete Townshend solo album, not a Who album,” he shared, possibly still scarred from the recording process and reception of records like Face Dances, which were more closely aligned with Townshend’s solo material than anything else.
In the end, though, Daltrey was able to mould that raw material into something that felt more comfortable in the realm of The Who. “I did quite a lot of work on the songs melodically, changing some of the tenses of the songs to make them connect with an audience rather than being ‘I’ songs, you know,” the vocalist explained. Perhaps as a result of those changes, the final product is hard to denounce.
Sure, Who isn’t in the same league as some of the band’s earlier material, but it’s an inarguably solid album which perfectly reflected the continued artistic development of the band, decades after they – arguably – reached their sell-by date.
Many other bands in a similar position, grappling with a ‘where do we go from here’ crisis might have shilled out for a ‘Greatest Hits’ album or a self-aggrandising documentary film, but The Who poured all of its resources into an album of new, original material. It’s no wonder they remain on the upper echelon of rock excellence.
