Lyrically Speaking: Understanding The Who song ‘Who Are you?’
Approaching the 1970s, The Beatles’ flame was faltering, making way for Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Who. These rival Brits would enter the ’70s with an appetite for rock innovation and chart domination, propelled by the pioneering work of the Fab Four. This period would welcome The Who’s most successful and conceptual work, beginning with 1969’s groundbreaking rock opera, Tommy.
Although The Who weren’t as synonymous with the prog-rock era as Yes or Pink Floyd, their taste for complex, conceptual material put them on par with Led Zeppelin, fellow frontrunners in the hard prog arena. Like many of their contemporaries, The Who began to welcome darker themes and more aggressive instrumentals in the 1970s as the hippie era took a final bow.
By 1978, The Who had released their two most enduring rock operas, Tommy and Quadrophenia, accompanied by a host of classic hits and sold-out world tours. Sadly, this year would mark the band’s last with their original drummer, Keith Moon, but three weeks before his death in September, the group released one final classic lineup album, Who Are You.
Although the album wasn’t musically influenced by the contemporary punk explosion, several of its tracks questioned the band’s ongoing relevance in light of a dawning generation. With the arrival of Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend encountered conflicting emotions.
Most notably, the title track, ‘Who Are You?’, is a story set in a day in the life of Townshend during punk’s ephemeral flame. The line, “Eleven hours in the Tin Pan, God, there’s got to be another way,” refers to the story’s setting.
Although the line appears in the fourth verse, this is where the day began for Townshend. “Tin Pan Alley” is a nickname for London’s Denmark Street, which housed a disproportionate congregation of songwriters and publishers during the 1970s. The Who’s songwriter had visited for a long, excruciating meeting to dispute royalties.
The guitarist emerged from the alley with a handsome cheque and, staying true to his rockstar sensibilities, proceeded to a local pub to cast three sheets to the wind. At the pub, Townshend bumped into Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, who professed allegiance to their luminary for his proto-punk work in the hard rock realm. Although partially flattered, Townshend couldn’t help but feel a little long in the tooth.
Parting company with the two Pistols, Townshend staggered out only to fall asleep in a Soho doorway, where we find the protagonist at the beginning of the song: “I woke up in a Soho doorway/ A policeman knew my name/ He said, ‘You can go sleep at home tonight/ If you can get up and walk away’.”
Townshend’s rage is palpable in Roger Daltrey’s delivery, especially the violent lines, I remember throwin’ punches around/ And preachin’ from my chair.” This anger didn’t necessarily target the punk movement, however.
“I’d like to think that where the song came from wasn’t the fact that I was drunk when I did the demo, but the fact that I was fucking angry with [my manager] Allen Klein and that the song was an outlet for that anger,” Townshend once recalled.
The band’s famously belligerent manager was most certainly a factor in the song’s aggression, but Daltrey noted the group’s aversion to the threatening punks in an interview with Uncut some years later. “We were getting incredible accolades from some of the new Punk bands,” he said. “They were saying how much they loved The Who, that we were the only band they’d leave alive after they’d taken out the rest of the establishment! But I felt very threatened by the Punk thing at first.”
“To me, it was like, ‘Well, they think they’re fucking tough, but we’re fucking tougher.’ It unsettled me in my vocals. When I listen back to ‘Who Are You?’ I can hear that it made me incredibly aggressive. But that’s what that song was about. Being pissed and aggressive and a c*nt!”
Although tensions rode high in the late ’70s, the frontman revealed that he later accepted the punk icons as equals in the tapestry of 20th-century rock. “It was only a few years after that I realised what a great favour Punk did the business,” Daltrey added. “We toured with The Clash in 1982, we took them to the US with us, and I used to fucking love watching ’em. I’m still a huge Joe Strummer fan.”
Listen to The Who’s ‘Who Are You?’ below.
