The one instrument Roger Daltrey said didn’t work for The Who
Of all the big names that led the British invasion’s pop conquest of America, The Who proved to be most enduring. The Beatles had dissolved, The Kinks were lost in their tedious vaudeville phase, and while The Rolling Stones entered the 1970s during their golden run of classic LPs, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had creaked into self-parody by the decade’s close—albeit boasting canonical hits like ‘Miss You’ and ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (but I Like It)’.
The Who’s 1970s, however, were even more fruitful than their ’60s, steadily dropping hard rock monster albums right up until 1978’s Who Are You, released three weeks before original drummer Keith Moon’s death.
The road to stadium behemoths necessitated a radical transformation. Founded as a swinging mod outfit cranking out fierce but tight garage-beat numbers, by the time of their Woodstock Festival appearance, The Who were dreaming up grand rock operas such as 1969’s Tommy and embracing a new dawn of hard rock theatre. Stepping away from singer to frontman, Roger Daltrey grew out his hair, bared his chiselled chest, and strutted into the powerhouse performance template that would define the following decade.
Heightened live drama and greater studio ambitions pulled guitarist and principal songwriter, Pete Townshend, in search of new sounds. During the sessions of the unrealised Lifehouse sci-fi project, Townshend became enamoured with the latest synthesizer technology and snapped up the EMS VCS 3 and ARP 2500, sketching out the distinct electronic tones that glittered over ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’—eventually featured on 1971’s Who’s Next.
Recorded for the Lifehouse concept but issued as a stand-alone single, 1972’s ‘Join Together’ further indulged Townshend’s immersion in modular synths, shaping the track’s distinctive jew’s harp boings with the ARP. Yet while Townshend was lost in matrix switches, Daltrey was less than enthused with the mass of wires and synthetic bloops being wheeled into London’s Olympic studios. “…at that time I was still very doubtful about bringing in the synthesiser,” he revealed in 2010. “I just felt that with a lot of songs we’d end up spending so much time creating these piddly one-note noises that it would’ve been better just doing it on a guitar.”
He added: “I’m a guitar man. I love the guitar, to me it’s the perfect rock instrument. I don’t think Pete did much with those sequencing things that he couldn’t have done on the guitar anyway.”
Notwithstanding Daltrey’s misgivings, the synth would feature prominently in The Who’s work from then on. The wieldy ARP 2500 would rear its head again on 1973’s Quadrophenia and to soundtrack 1975’s Tommy feature, eventually building a home studio to permanently house its gargantuan self, and its semi-modular portable 2600 upgrade, which would shimmer on 1978’s ‘Who Are You’.
Townshend was such a fan of the ARP gear that he personally served as their official marketing face shortly after the film release of Tommy. According to the ARP advert, “His creations say plenty. About life. And about his choice of musical instruments, his ARP synthesisers help him express himself exactly the way he wants to. His ARP 2600, for instance, has a patch cord and slider system which makes it a natural for live performance or studio work. You’ll find one in just about every leading rock band in the country”.
