“Incredible”: The Who song that split Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend
As the 1960s came to a close, The Who‘s future stadium pomp began to rear its head. Previously a snappy mod outfit known for raucous performances shaped within taut pop numbers and fixtures in London’s swinging counterculture, their slot at the totemic Woodstock Festival witnessed a semi-rebirth of the band.
Frontman Roger Daltrey grew his hair out, threw on a shammy leather with mesmerising fringes, and strutted into the band’s new era with bare-chested confidence – more than just The Who’s singer, he became a powerhouse ringleader, orchestrating the band’s high-energy, hard rock theatre.
Guitarist and principal songwriter Pete Townshend, too, was entering a new creative realm at the dawn of the 1970s. Embracing the era’s emergence of the album as the premier artistic statement of the day, Townshend expanded his conceptual ambitions accordingly and dreamed up 1969’s Tommy rock opera, the defining double-LP telling the tale of the titular Tommy Walker’s dissociated sensory journey from traumatised child to pinball superstar. Convoluted plots of abuse, LSD awakenings and messianic worship proved a winner, receiving unanimous critical acclaim and peaking at number four on the Billboard 200 and number two on the UK Albums Chart.
The pressure was on for Who record number five. Rolling up his sleeves to conjure another mammoth pop narrative, Townshend developed the science fiction Lifehouse project. Set in a not-too-distant future where music has been outlawed and the population is hemmed inside government-imposed “experience suits”, the young rebel Bobby courageously plays rock ‘n’ roll in his “suit”, triggering a musical wave of rebellion against the oppressive dystopian state.
Biting off more than he could chew, Lifehouse‘s novel multi-media operation – encompassing a live recorded conceptual experiment and a mooted cinematic feature – began to overwhelm Townshend. Due to dissatisfaction with the project’s trajectory, The Who decided to abandon Lifehouse and pursue a more focused, direct rock direction for Tommy’s anticipated follow-up.
Released in 1971, Who’s Next would set the template for The Who’s ensuing gargantuan rock attack, rivalling arena monsters Led Zeppelin for rock’s ultimate heavyweight. A major sonic feature carried over from the Lifehouse project was Townshend’s growing interest in synthesisers. Recorded during the Lifehouse sessions, Who staples ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ glitter with the VCS3 and ARP 2500, the synths wielded as key melodic lines within the songs over mere glossy production devices. While Townsend was lost in the new vanguard of electronic music, Daltrey held the modular gear with less veneration.
Dropped the following year as a stand-alone single, ‘Join Together’ delivered another rousing stomper smattered with Townsend’s inventive use of synths—its distinctive jew’s harp opening created from the ARP. While many celebrated its hypnotic hook, and Townsend told Melody Maker he thought the single “incredible”, Daltrey struggled to enthuse over the synth’s presence within the band unit.
“I quite liked it as a single, it’s got a good energy to it,” he said in 2010. “But at the time, I was still very doubtful about bringing in the synthesiser. I 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 guitar…”
Whatever misgivings Daltrey held, the synth was here to stay. Leaning more on the upgraded and portable ARP 2600 for Quadrophenia and memorably affording 1978’s ‘Who Are You’ it’s squelching modular funk into, the synthesiser would grow to be one of The Who’s signature weapons, imbuing their hard rock pomp with extra sonic dazzle ‘Join Together’ helped set in motion.
