How did The Who get their name?
For many rock fans, most of The Who comes from the mind of Pete Townshend. Outside of their days in the Mod scene in 1960s Britain, Townshend was the one who kept the band on the right track, writing material that meant more than a traditional love song. Before Townshend became the primary songwriter of the group, he wasn’t even in the running as the leader in the beginning.
When most of The Who were still kids, vocalist Roger Daltrey started his first band, The Detours, who played a rock and roll version of R&B. Aside from their covers of James Brown tunes, Daltrey drafted John Entwistle to the lineup after seeing him walking down the street one day with a bass in his hand. Although Entwistle suggested adding Townshend to the group, Townshend was a little apprehensive about joining a rock outfit.
Although he had tried his hand at writing songs, his commitment to art school often got in the way of the first handful of rehearsals. By the time the band found out there was another band called Johnny Delvin and the Detours, the hunt was on for another name.
After brainstorming, the original idea was to make something that would deliberately be a joke when the band was announced. As Townshend tells it in his book Who I Am, the band initially underwent different name changes and recalled fighting tooth and nail for his suggestion, recalling, “I suggested The Hair. For a while, I hung onto my choice (could I have somehow had an intuition that the word ‘Hair’ was going to launch a million hippies a few years later?). Then on Valentine’s Day 1964, we made out choice. We became The Who”.
Securing ‘The Who final lineup
While The Who soldiered on through the club circuit, the core lineup wouldn’t fall into place for a few more years. Despite the drumming talents of Doug Sandom working well in the club in the early days, Townshend recalled an A&R man pressured them to let him go because he was too old.
After trying out a future Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, Townshend eventually was sold by Keith Moon’s playing, remembering, “Keith appeared one day at one of our regular dates at the Oldfield Hote and as soon as he began to play we knew we’d found the missing link”. Though the band continued playing their Mod favourites like ‘I Can’t Explain’, it wasn’t until Townshend hit on the formula for ‘My Generation’ that he hit on something big.
Aiming at the Establishment going on in Britain, Townshend wrote the song as a mission statement for what the youth of Britain were meant to be, refusing to be stomped out and hoping to die before he got old. Townshend did get old by rock star standards, but in his wake, he created some of the most forward-thinking rock music of his generation, creating the blueprint for the rock opera on albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia. Townshend proved that rock could mean more than a couple of chords, all centred around the joke about messing with whoever announces his show.
