The song Roger Daltrey thought captured the essence of The Who
The Who have always been a tricky band to define. There are a lot of facets to them, whether that’s in their earlier high-octane work, their show-stopping stage presence or their narrative-driven records. There are so many different aspects to them that when you start talking about why you like The Who you end up falling down a rabbit hole of other reasons. It’s a good problem to have, but it means that when you are trying to pick a song that definitively represents them, it’s an almost impossible task.
One thing that follows The Who around, regardless of what particular era you’re looking at or which album you’re listening to, is energy. They’ve always been an upbeat band, with a line-up featuring Keith Moon, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey; it was impossible not to be.
This trickled into their stage show and studio albums. The Who famously didn’t do encores because if they and the crowd had enough energy after the show to play more songs, they didn’t feel they were doing their job right. They said that they always left everything they had on stage the first time around, so it was rare that they came back on after they’d left.
“Our encores were always shitty. If you ever got an encore, you regretted asking for it,” said Roger Daltrey when discussing the band’s mindset to live shows, “We all gave it all out in the show. If you give a good show out, you’ve got nothing left for a good encore […] And pretentious crap about, oh, we go off now, so we can be called back. What a lot of bollocks.”
As such, if we were to pick a song that wholeheartedly defined The Who, it would have to capture their energy in the best possible way. While there are a lot of tracks that you could argue do that, none are more of a tribute to the band than the first original number they ever released. They had started gigging, playing covers of American R&B music, but with their debut single, ‘I Can’t Explain’, they finally unveiled their original selves to the world.
The track was a massive statement of intent. It highlighted how much The Who could bring when left to their own devices. They could cover American R&B, but when they put their minds to it, they could deliver a sound that packed more of a punch and pricked up more ears. There’s a reason why they were one of the biggest bands that fronted the British invasion.
Roger Daltrey agreed that the song is one of the best for epitomising The Who. He spoke about the meaning of the song and then discussed its relevance for the band, “Well, it’s that thing – ‘I got a feeling inside, I can’t explain’ – it’s rock n roll. The more we try to explain it, the more we crawl up our own arses and disappear,” he said, “I was very proud of that record. That was us, y’know – it was an original song by Pete and it captured that energy and that testosterone that we had in those days.”
