The moment Pete Townshend checked out of The Who
By the late 1970s, only one of the three big classic rock monsters of the day was still operating with vitality. Led Zeppelin had passed from Physical Graffiti‘s last hurrah to the creatively sputtering Presence, and The Rolling Stones’ golden era was long behind them as Mick Jagger strutted across the decade into the caricatures they’d deigned to become, albeit still managing to knock out fantastic cuts like ‘Fool to Cry’ and ‘Miss You’.
There was no stopping The Who, however. Dominating the decade with their widescreen power pop bombast, a string of global tours and rock opera LPs thrust the band into carrying the mantle of the world’s premier arena name. Successfully transitioning from taut, snappy garage numbers in their 1960s mod front to Woodstock deities, the raucous anthems pumped out of Tommy and Who’s Next would get special affection from punks who were due to upend rock only a few short years later.
Following 1976’s The Who by Numbers Tour, the band hit the brakes for a year to reconvene. It became apparent that drummer Keith Moon was so unhealthy from alcohol abuse that it was severely affecting his playing. Deciding another tour wasn’t possible, a low-key set for The Kids Are Alright documentary at Kilburn’s Gaumont State Cinema was scrapped for the cutting room floor due to a lacklustre performance.
However, guitarist and principal songwriter, Pete Townshend, still had some big numbers in his bag, recording 1978’s Who Are You and spelling the end of their classic era with the immortal line-up.
During the Who Are You sessions, Moon played his last show for another stab at The Kids Are Alright segments, playing well enough for it to be included in the 1979 film. Following their awaited soundtrack album’s eventual release, Moon would die at 32, three weeks later. This could have spelt The Who’s demise, but instead, pushed the band toward a new chapter.
“None of us wanted Keith’s death to be pointless, which is one of the reasons we decided to carry on rather than stop,” Townshend revealed to BBC’s Nationwide in 1979. “Strangely enough, about two or three months before his death, I’d really got to the point where I’d seriously just decided to stop all work in the group.”
He added: “We went to Shepperton [Studios] and we went to the old house which he’d love so much and he’d done so much work publicising and all that, and spent so much time there, made it his job to be there and, we just all looked at one another and thought you know we can’t possibly stop now…”
Respectively lost in soundtrack work and planting the seeds of The Who Films Ltd production company, it’s easy to envision Townshend and bassist John Entwistle pursuing a second career in film scores and frontman Roger Daltrey pursuing an acting career in earnest after just about eking out Who Are You. Instead, The Who invited Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones to step behind the kit, and eventually tour in support of the Quadrophenia picture for a new generation of mod-revivalists at the decade’s close.
