The band that overtook The Who: “Snapping at our heels”
One of the biggest moments in rock music is towards the end of The Who’s song ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. There isn’t a scream out there that personifies both the rage and joy that rock music can bring. Roger Daltrey’s otherworldly vocals on that song are still marvelled at today, and rightly so.
Interestingly, the song comes from a relatively cynical place, which arguably could make it one of the most quintessential rock songs ever. Not only did The Who go after older generations and squares on songs like ‘My Generation’, but ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ was aimed at hippies who constantly said the world would get better despite no evidence to back it up.
“All those hippies wandering about thinking the world was going to be different from that day,” said Townshend talking about the track, “As a cynical English arsehole, I walked through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them, and shaking them and trying to make them realise that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change.”
The song marked a clear moment for The Who, as they cemented themselves as not only a technically proficient rock band but also a rock band who weren’t going to play by anybody’s rules. At the heart of the rebellious nature lies the scream, Roger Daltrey’s exceptional vocals that still reverberate across the musical landscape today.
When you consider how much of a key factor of the band Roger Daltrey’s voice was, it must have been frustrating for The Who when Led Zeppelin came along and started to overtake them. Zeppelin took influences from all over music when putting their records together; however, in an interview, Pete Townshend said he always struggled to look past the fact that Robert Plant was just doing an impression of Daltrey.
“I think, you know, Robert Plant was a shrieker, he copied the way that Roger looked on stage. You know, he had his own thing, but Robert Plant was somewhere between Roger Daltrey and Steven Marriott from The Faces,” said Townshend. Some might find these comments quite controversial, but Townshend does concede that eventually, Robert Plant managed to find his own voice.
“He found his own feet in the end,” he said, “But I think Roger was aware that he had to really sharpen up, and he started to really regard his voice as an instrument.”
While The Who got better and branched into continuing to make conceptual work, it wasn’t enough to stop Led Zeppelin from overtaking them. There was something about the way that Led Zeppelin blended multiple genres at once that appealed to the world at large, to the point that people everywhere were constantly listening.
“I think by that time, we’d become aware that Led Zeppelin was snapping at our heels,” said Townshend, “And eventually, of course, in heavy rock terms, they overtook The Who.” Despite being one of the bands at the forefront of the second wave of the British Invasion, it wasn’t enough for The Who to stop getting overtaken by the unrelenting force of Zeppelin.
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