‘Naked Eye’: the song that took The Who 54 years to perfect
It is difficult to imagine The Who pouring over ‘My Generation’ for months on end, in an attempt to make every aspect of that legendary song as perfect and pristine as possible; it is for its rough-around-the-edges spontaneity, after all, that the song so beautifully encapsulated the youth rebellion of that era. Still, not every Who song is imbued with the spirit of that 1965 single.
During their early years, the reckless young mods dealt almost exclusively in short, sharp, and raw rock and roll anthems, but that amphetamine-fueled output couldn’t sustain the band forever. Before the decade was up, Pete Townshend’s songwriting had moved into something far more expansive and crafted, in the form of the rock opera compositions that made up Tommy, along with subsequent records like Quadrophenia. Inevitably, those efforts took a little longer to perfect than the three-minute heroism of ‘My Generation’.
Fortunately, enough of those longer-form compositions did well enough to keep The Who at the top of Britain’s rock and roll pyramid for the entirety of the 1970s, their previously rebellious credentials even endearing the group to the emerging landscape of punk rock. Even still, there were some tracks from that era that never quite seemed to fit neatly within the group’s discography, ‘Naked Eye’ being the prime example, at least in the mind of frontman Roger Daltrey.
Born from a series of end-of-set improvisations from 1969 onwards, ‘Naked Eye’ was a constantly evolving beast within the band’s repertoire, but one which was rarely considered suitable for mainstream consumption. It was, in fairness, released on the 1974 compilation record Odds & Sods, and has since been featured on reissues of Who’s Next; you can even hear its riff in the extensive Live at Leeds ‘My Generation’ medley. Yet, neither Daltrey nor the rest of the band were entirely happy with the track until decades later.
“The song, where it’s recorded in live shows, was never very good,” Daltrey affirmed to Vulture in 2023. “Up until last year, when we changed the rhythm of the bridge for the instrumental piece between verses and brought it back into rhythm.”
“It kind of completed the song. It took a long time to get together from 1968 to 2022, but we did it in the end.”
Roger Daltrey
According to the vocalist, the song’s unparalleled bed-in time was down to the complexities of Pete Townshend’s songwriting: “It has some great lyrics with a really nice guitar progression, but then when it got into the instrumental, the rhythm skipped. It used to always throw us, and I thought it was so bloody hokey. I never could quite get into it.”
It wasn’t until 2022, in fact, that the vocalist finally cracked it: “We resuscitated the song, and I said to Pete, ‘Can’t we just make this in sync with the rest of it, so it’s a groove or something?’”
Explaining, “We put another simple little off-beat in there, and it brought it all into time, and the song’s great now. It really comes alive.”
“Mind you, these are Townshend songs,” Daltrey added, with a thinly-veiled adoration for his musical comrade. “None of them were easy to master. That’s what I love about Pete’s writing.” Although fellow bandmates Keith Moon and John Entwistle weren’t around to see The Who finally perfect ‘Naked Eye’, the phrase ‘better late than never’ certainly comes to mind.
For dedicated Who fans, too, the experience of hearing its development over the years is arguably more enjoyable than the track itself.
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