Who - The kids are alright

As a kid I used to go bowling all the time, and the way I threw the ball toward the pins influenced me a lot once I picked up a guitar.

(Pete Townshend)

Do you want to know the truth about who Keith Moon is? Oh no, I won't tell you that. The truth doesn't exist. It's whatever you want to hear. I don't know what it is.

(Keith Moon)

Listen to 'Tommy' with a candle lit and you'll see your future.

(Cameron Crowe)

Intro – Struck by the Yardbirds

London, 1963. At eighteen, Pete Townshend isn't particularly fond of live shows. Driven by the need to forge his own, unique musical style, the young guitarist turns down most of the gigs populating the British scene. One evening, however, he decides to make an exception and goes to see a concert by the Yardbirds, whose ranks have just been joined, on guitar, by a young art student named Eric Clapton.

Pete is deeply struck by the fiery improvisations with which the band tears through blues classics but, above all, he loves the idea of positioning the amplifier at guitar height. Leaving the venue, he starts nurturing a vision: his current band, too, will be able, like the Yardbirds, to play classics and make them its own, in a way no other group does. The band of young Townshend's vision is called The Detours, but it will soon change its name.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Who.

The Detours

In 1962, Roger Harry Daltrey (London, 3/1/1944) is expelled from Acton County Grammar School. A classic teddy-boy, the lad is caught smoking in class more than once, his mind on his passion for music rather than on his schoolbooks. Roger plays an electric guitar he built himself and has recently formed an instrumental band called The Detours, poised between fifties rock and roll and rhythm & blues.

A few months later, he meets a peer who lives in his same neighbourhood, John Alec Entwistle (Chiswick, 10/9/1944), who owns a bass and an amplifier. Roger is struck by his new friend's solid musical grounding and so invites him to join his band.

John Entwistle also attends Acton County and is an old, close friend of Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (Chiswick, 19/5/1945), an introverted boy who grew up in the solitude of his visceral love for music. John then suggests to Roger that they bring his friend into the Detours too, a friend who has in the meantime received his first guitar as a gift from his grandmother.

Rounding out the young band are two other local lads: Doug Sanden on drums and Colin Dawson on vocals, the latter soon replaced by Roger himself after his swift departure.

While Pete enrolls at Ealing Art School to study graphic design, the Detours play several shows around London, earning their first, hard-won pounds.

Meanwhile, Richard Barnes, a friend of Townshend's, suggests the group change its name, proposing The Who, which is immediately accepted unanimously.

The new band decides to make some changes: Roger gives up guitar to focus exclusively on vocals and harmonica, while Doug Sandom is let go for having a style that's too static.

It's April 1963 when an odd-looking drummer named Keith John Moon (London, 23/08/1946) turns up at The Who's auditions for the vacant spot.

The young man wears outlandishly flashy clothes and shows up drunk, with his hair dyed red. Once on the small stage, he starts playing with such ferocity that he breaks the bass drum pedal and a pair of drumsticks. His air of madness convinces Pete, John and Roger, who decide to hire him, on condition that he pays for the damage.

The lineup of the newly formed The Who is now complete.

Mods & Rockers: The High Numbers

In the summer of 1964, the Times publishes an article detailing numerous violent clashes between gangs of mods and rockers in the areas of Margate and Hastings. The mods are part of a London youth movement deeply tied to the style of their image: they love sharp clothes, cut their hair in the French style, and express their sense of rebellion astride Vespa scooters. The hub of their amphetamine-fuelled nights is The Scene club, in the Soho district, where soul and rhythm & blues reign supreme.

A leading figure of the mod movement, Pete Meaden meets The Who that same violent summer, firmly convinced, after seeing them perform, that he can turn the four of them into the icons of "mod style".

Despite the scepticism of the teddy-boy Roger, the proposal is accepted and The Who change their name again, becoming, on Meaden's own advice, The High Numbers. Under this new name, they start playing at The Scene, performing rhythm & blues numbers every Monday night.

Very little time passes before The High Numbers fulfil Meaden's dream, becoming the most important mod band of the moment.

Meaden himself, together with Chris Parmeinter, decides to produce the group's first single, "I'm The Face/Zoot Suit" (a reworking of a Slim Harpo classic), which gets played on English radio in July 1964.

The trouble is that The High Numbers don't feel like mods at all, nor are they followers of the lifestyle championed by the movement. In particular, Pete Townshend is fascinated by the creativity of the Lennon–McCartney partnership, and has absolutely no intention of settling for mere reworkings of other people's songs.

The final straw comes after a failed audition for EMI, but above all after meeting two successful directors, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who are looking for talented bands for their new film. Lambert and Stamp are deeply struck by the energy the band gives off live and decide to invest in the four of them, taking over their management. Kit, in particular, immediately recognises Townshend's complex personality and starts constantly pushing him to create original music.

In January 1965, the reborn The Who sign their first contract with the American record label Decca.

Talking about my generation

With their first record deal signed, Pete Townshend now feels ready to abandon the long string of covers and start writing original music for The Who. Increasingly spurred on by Lambert and Stamp, the guitarist becomes aware of his own abilities and prepares to take the lead of the band, to the detriment of frontman Daltrey.

That same January 1965 saw the release of their first original single, "I Can't Explain", which definitively marked the deep gulf between the four musicians and the rest of the mod scene's bands. More than soul and rhythm & blues, Townshend drew his influence from the irreverent heroes of American rock and roll like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. The track shook up the English scene with its aggressive shout and a riff strikingly close to that of "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks.

The Who are wild, incendiary, but above all captivating for their eccentric, unmistakably "British" taste. Curiosity around the band grew exponentially a few months later with the release of their second single, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", a choral, hiccupping boogie that soon became another anarchic anthem.

The group caught the attention of young viewers on "Ready, Steady, Go!" with their final destruction of their instruments, which stirred up the usual outrage among the respectable classes.

It was, however, with the era-defining anthem of their third single, "My Generation", that the Who truly blew up London's 1960s youth. The track is distorted and thunderous, with Roger's amphetamine-charged vocal riding Entwistle's domineering bass line through to the explosive finale from Townshend and Moon.

Driven by a jittery clapping rhythm, "My Generation" vented, in revolutionary fashion, rage against the entire adult world, effectively rediscovering rock and roll's old fury with near-deafening force.

Hundreds of young rebels were swept up in the vortex of the slogan "Hope I die before I get old", sending the track to the top of every chart and adopting it as the era's one true generational anthem.

Riding that wave of enthusiasm, the Who shut themselves away in the Regent Street studios to record, together with Decca producer Shel Talmy, their debut album, released in December 1965.

My Generation (Brunswick Records, 1965) is the pyrotechnic snapshot of the band's early years, gathering all the sonic salvoes Townshend and co. had been unleashing on the city's stages.

Their early passion for soul and rhythm & blues covers finds a home in two James Brown makeovers, "I Don't Mind" and "Please Please Please", where Daltrey apes the "Godfather" and Townshend weaves pure blues solos. The guitarist never denied a certain admiration for the Lennon-McCartney partnership: "La La La Lies", but above all "The Kids Are Alright", entrust the melody with finding a personal take on the classic Merseybeat sound.

It's true, however, that the Who are far more aggressive and wild, and the word softness doesn't really feature in their musical vocabulary. "Out In The Street" opens with a flamenco guitar but quickly veers toward more distorted tones, which then find their fullest expression in the anthem "My Generation". Thanks to their unpredictable rhythm section, the Who can afford to rewrite the typical beat sound, as in "Much Too Much" and the Stones-indebted "A Legal Matter".

The band puts its instrumental chops to use venturing into the uncharted territories of psychedelia on "The Good's Gone" and, even more boldly, on the instrumental "The Ox", where bass, drums and piano (Nick Hopkins) run completely wild.

This, then, is the sonic collage that bears witness, with brazen confidence and real style, to the true birth of the Who.

The quickie of 1966

At the end of 1965, the Who held a series of promotional concerts across Northern Europe. During the trip, violent arguments broke out between Townshend and Daltrey over decision-making roles within the band.

Despite the release of their first album, the four were going through a period of tension as well as financial hardship, caused above all by the constant expense of replacing instruments smashed on stage. Matters were further complicated by a legal dispute with producer Shel Talmy (who wanted to keep producing the band indefinitely), which forced Lambert and Stamp to terminate their contract with Decca.

The Who thus sign a new five-year contract with Atlantic Records, which, between March and December 1966, releases three more new singles.

The wild aggression, however, seems to soften in tone. The incendiary riff of "I Can't Explain" becomes more melodic in "Substitute", while "I'm A Boy" and "Happy Jack" abandon the generational anthem for a more surreal taste, full of trombones, bass drums and falsetto vaudeville atmospheres.

It's Kit Lambert above all who tries to fuel his boys' creativity, pushing them to take risks, even at the cost of drifting away from the irreverent beat sound that made them famous.

The Who thus decide to follow their mentor's advice, going back to work at the Regent Street studios, this time trying to carve out space for individual songwriting.

A Quick One (Reaction, 1966), however, suffers from this lack of internal cohesion and comes across more as a collection of songs than a proper album.

The disappointment comes above all from Daltrey (who makes such a fuss about being the band's true leader), who writes "See My Way", a failed attempt to chase sounds somewhere between psychedelic and tribal. The album, on the other hand, gives Moon and Entwistle the chance to step out from the rhythm section's background and earn small songwriting roles. The bassist has fun with the macabre irony of "Boris The Spider", but doesn't go beyond the pop-soul melody of "Whiskey Man". Moon, meanwhile, confirms his crazed streak with the martial, hilarious progression of "Cobwebs And Strange" and pays tribute to the Beatles' sound on "I Need You".

The best moments are, naturally, the work of the more complex and creative Pete Townshend, who thus confirms his status as the sole artistic guide of the Who.

It's true that "Run Run Run" revisits the thunderous, distorted beat of the first album, but the guitarist shows stylistic growth in the melodic drive of "So Sad About Us" and, above all, in "A Quick One While He's Away". Here Townshend composes a kind of ten-minute mini rock opera, in which six small pieces fit together perfectly. A story of adultery is told in an ironic key over complex harmonies, between a cappella vocals, rock and roll progressions and distorted psychedelic digressions. The track is the definitive proof that the Who are not just brash mod leftovers, but have all the potential to create more complex, personal music.

American Clearance Sale

After the release of their second album, the Who embark on their first tour of the United States. While the "summer of love" explodes in the Haight-Ashbury district, back in England a certain album comes out about a strange "Sergeant Pepper".

The dreamy psychedelic atmospheres also influence Townshend's pen, as he writes "Pictures Of Lily", where near-hard guitar riffs are steeped in the acid of a story about masturbation. The single is released in April 1967, paving the way for the Who's incendiary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival two months later.

The guitar duel between Townshend and Jimi Hendrix captivates the hippie crowd, but above all the critics at Rolling Stone magazine.

It is, in effect, the prelude to the band's success on American soil, definitively sealed by the number-one chart position of the autumn single "I Can See For Miles", a fantastic choral progression between ethereal atmospheres and rock accelerations, driven by Daltrey's expanding voice and Townshend's lysergic guitar. These new musical insights open up a new path for the Who, proving that they are not just loud guitar-smashers, but a versatile band in constant expansion.

An expansion that comes through greater stylistic refinement in Townshend's compositional sensibility, as he writes an album that is less angry but more intellectually ambitious.

The Who Sell Out (Track, 1967), again produced by Kit Lambert, was recorded during the summer tour of the United States and comes across as a rather ambitious concept album.

Townshend's idea was to present a series of songs linked together by fake radio commercials. A sort of pop-art collage that, musically, builds a bridge between the surreal genius of Frank Zappa's "Freak Out" and the Beatles-style psychedelic atmospheres that were defining the second half of 1967. The Who "on sale" thus broadened their instrumental canvas for a more progressive sound that follows the path opened by the single introducing the album, "I Can See For Miles".

The band, however, doesn't give up its vibrant trademark sound, and, as in "Armenia City In The Sky", filters psychedelia through hammering, unpredictable drumming and near-hard rock guitar.

What's clear, though, is a general softening of tone, which becomes more varied and fluid. "Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand" (another song about masturbation) creeps in with an acoustic melody with a gypsy flavor. Townshend finds, more than riffs, refined and innovative pop architecture in the melancholy choral march of "Our Love Was" and in the ethereal piano of "Can't Reach You". The guitarist follows in the footsteps of early Pink Floyd on the lysergic organ notes of "Relax", and even indulges in the jazz romanticism of the acoustic watercolor "Sunrise".

While Entwistle plays with the Gregorian chant of "Silas Stingy", Pete seems to be chasing all his ideas alone. Ideas that are still muddled, but that are already beginning to interlock, as in the suite "Rael", built on continuous acoustic-electric variations, which would soon after be reworked for Tommy.

Tying the album together are the band's irresistible invented commercials: the irreverent fanfare of "Heinz Baked Beans", the shimmering pop of "Odorono" and the nursery-rhyme feel of "Medac".

The experiment, a highly original one, was nevertheless met with a lukewarm reception, though it would be reassessed years later, since The Who Sell Out is in fact an important record as well as the first sonic building block for the Who's future output.

The Pinball Wizard

By 1968, the Who were, by now, followed more in the United States than at home. Having shaken the heart and mind of the mod generation, their music had taken a different path in the wake of Pete Townshend's intriguing new sonic visions.

America's love for the band first showed itself through enthusiasm for the summer single "Magic Bus", a wild tribal dance à la Bo Diddley, then through their appearance at the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, where the Who delivered a wild version of "A Quick One While He's Away".

As a result, the prestigious Rolling Stone magazine asked Pete for an interview. To the American magazine, Townshend admitted he was seriously thinking about the narrative and musical structure of a genuine rock opera.

In fact, as early as 1967, the guitarist had begun writing fragments of songs about a deaf, dumb and blind boy named Tommy. These, however, were only confused hints that Townshend still couldn't piece together into something solid and coherent. Yet Pete knew well that the progression of "Rael" could be stretched further to become a whole record, a complete work.

The Who's leader needed to vent his creativity, but above all to seek spiritual balance for himself. A victim of abuse during his childhood, Townshend wanted to tell the world an intimate, autobiographical story that was, at the same time, generational and universal.

In search of a "door of perception", he began using hallucinogenic drugs, which had so heavily influenced the very psychedelia his band had recently embraced.

It was, however, his encounter with the Avatar Meher Baba that helped Pete realize his vision, as he diligently followed his spiritual teachings. The flair timidly hinted at on The Who Sell Out thus gained full self-awareness. Still backed by Kit Lambert, Townshend shut himself away at IBC Studios in London for the entire first half of 1969.

And it was in May of that same year that the Who revolutionized the music world with the double album Tommy (Track, 1969). Pete Townshend thus brought to completion over a year of work, effectively leaving the competition in the dust when it comes to rock operas.

Tommy surpasses in evocative power both the Pretty Things' lysergic Pretty Things' "S.F. Sorrow" and the Kinks' decadent Kinks' "Arthur", both of which nonetheless remain albums of tremendous musical scope. And, in part, the guitarist upends the very sound of the Who, who by this point have shed any rebellious streak to wrap themselves in the mantle of an increasingly bold and committed kind of music.

The progressive, psychedelic sonic tapestry of The Who Sell Out soars even higher thanks to the arpeggios of "The Acid Queen", but above all to the furious rhythmic whirlwind of "Pinball Wizard".

Even so, Tommy gives free rein to the band's instrumental prowess, which, under Townshend's direction, veers towards more pompous and grandiloquent architectures, as in the orchestral "Overture" and its reprise "Underture", where bass and guitar chase each other with masterful skill.

Taking its cue from "Alice in Wonderland", the work sets to music (or stages) the existential allegory of a boy endowed with extraordinary sensitivity, marking out the stages and bizarre encounters of his adolescence through to adulthood. Over the pounding bass and choir of "Go To The Mirror", Tommy finds his epiphany and, by smashing the mirror, frees himself from isolation and finds inner light thanks to the joyful, choral boogie of "I'm Free".

The strength of Tommy lies precisely in this perfect parallel between the unfolding of events and the musical narrative, which manages, like chewing gum, to continually reshape itself. Just as the melodramatic ballad "1921" evokes the onset of the boy's autism, the frenetic, lysergic "Amazing Journey" and "Sparks" accompany Tommy's journey towards the mirror that will free him.

In between, a series of bizarre events unfold, marked by the macabre irony of "Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About" or by the demented organ minuet of "Tommy's Holiday Camp".

Rebirth and purification from pain are finally achieved in the anthem "We're Not Gonna Take It", which effectively introduces the world to Tommy, the Pinball Wizard, a new messiah for the imminent Woodstock generation.

After the album's release, the world press is in turmoil, with the sense of standing before a work destined to define an era. Melody Maker writes: "The Who are now surely the band everyone has to reckon with". It is, however, with their spectacular performance at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969 that the Who climb to the top of the world, definitively cementing Tommy's status.

Having reached the peak of rock Olympus, the Who take the complex atmospheres of Tommy on the road across Europe. In February 1970 they take the stage at the University of Leeds for one of their most devastating and gripping performances. The industrious English city becomes the perfect setting for a return to the sacred fury of proletarian, suburban rock and roll, of which the Who had been worthy standard-bearers at the start of their career. Alongside Tommy's grandiloquent arrangements, in fact, the band reclaims live its raw, irreverent riffing and instrumental fire.

It's precisely this wild side that is immortalized on The Who Live At Leeds (Track, 1970), which needs just six tracks to rightfully stake its claim as one of the greatest live albums in history.

The band, by now, is a machine running at full capacity, with every instrument an indispensable piece of the mechanism. A telling example is the scorching hard-blues of "Young Man Blues" (Mose Allison), where the riff trades lines with Daltrey's raspy voice before exploding, together with the rhythm section, into a devastating progression.

The band cranks the volume right up, and so the melody of "Substitute" finds new life thanks to the throbbing bass and crashing guitar. Their early passion for American rockers pays tribute to Eddie Cochran with a heart-pounding version of "Summertime Blues" and shakes the walls with "Shaking All Over". It's the apotheosis of noise and feedback, which find a fitting outlet in the nearly 15 dynamite-charged minutes of "My Generation", but above all in a masterful version of "Magic Bus", which starts quietly and ends in a hard-boogie frenzy of rare power and intensity.

After Tommy, Woodstock and Leeds, the Who are living a golden era.

In March 1970 a new single, "The Seeker", is released — a hugely impactful saloon-style rock and roll number — but it's in August that the band gets another great satisfaction, playing at the Isle of Wight Festival. During the show, Daltrey introduces two powerful, melodic songs ("Water" and "Naked Eye"), presenting them as part of a mysterious new Who album whose making is "more or less halfway there".

Who's next?

A few weeks after the performance at the Isle of Wight, Pete Townshend goes back to work on a song called "Pure And Easy". Around the tears of his piano grows the beating heart of a new idea for another Who rock opera.

Overwhelmed and, at the same time, galvanized by the worldwide success of Tommy, the guitarist records some demos for a project called "Lifehouse".

Pete has, by now, stopped taking drugs, following the spiritual teachings of Meher Baba on a constant basis, but he's going through the onset of a nervous breakdown that doesn't help him bring his goal to completion.

"Lifehouse" is meant to come across as a science-fiction novel about virtual reality, in which a teenager faces a series of adventures discovering rock music. The script, however, is extremely confused, and Townshend can't make himself understood either by his bandmates or by Lambert himself, who had so strongly backed his projects. The musical fabric of the work is nonetheless at a very advanced stage, and the Who decide to move to the Young Vic Theatre to record Pete's new songs.

Despite his good intentions, Townshend decides to abandon the idea, but to keep the best material for a conventional, non-conceptual LP.

In March 1971, the Who fly to New York to record with Lambert, but, visibly unhappy with the results, they return to London to rework the album together with the seasoned producer Glyn Johns.

Thus, in August 1971, Who's Next (Track, 1971) is finally ready - which, in Townshend's own words, "in many ways is a perfect record: it has feeling, aggressive drive, energy, colour. And it's beautifully recorded". It may be a rather blunt verdict, but the album is indeed flawless, a fitting crown to a rather troubled gestation.

The Who lay down another fundamental stone of their sonic cathedral, this time offering a sound unlike anything else, absolutely groundbreaking for its era. Townshend develops his beloved themes of mysticism and revolution through a massive and original use of the synthesizer, exploiting every possible variation it allows. Hence the grandiose opening of "Baba O'Riley", which puts hard rock at the service of minimalist raga incursions (the track is dedicated precisely to Terry Riley) before fading into the metaphysical coda of the electric violin-guitar-drums march. The track is destined to become a landmark, just like "Won't Get Fooled Again", which sweeps away everything and everyone with a boogie organ joined by Townshend's explosive guitar. The pathos builds steadily up to the synthesizer solo, brutally cut off by Daltrey's torn scream and Moon's torrential drumming.

Between the album's two extremes lies a parade of flawless songs that play with constant shifts in tone and rhythm. "Bargain" is another vocal masterpiece from Daltrey, driving an electro-acoustic ballad of rare beauty. Townshend alternates with grace and elegance between intimate moments and more carefree ones. The echo of the piano in "Song Is Over" blends into the bittersweet "Getting in Tune", while "Love Ain't for Keeping" and "Going Mobile" break the dramatic mood with wild, gypsy-flavoured acoustic chords.

Entwistle delivers his finest song, "My Wife", setting aside his macabre style for a moment in favour of a hammering fanfare that will become a live classic for the band.

Finally, one of Townshend's purest melodies, "Behind Blue Eyes", half of it drawing an acoustic tear with Daltrey's desolate voice, and half of it jolting you out of your seat with its aggressive, driving closing phrases.

Who's Next has every credential to be considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time, where everything works exactly as it should. The riffs, the bass lines, the eclectic vocals and the thunderous drumming create a rare, dynamic, overwhelming balance. A rock record, in short, where tightness of sound and compositional excellence become one and the same.

With the new album quickly climbing the charts, the Who see a huge amount of money flowing into their pockets. Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon take the chance to enjoy their well-earned success among women, cars and wrecked hotel rooms.

The only one who keeps working tirelessly is Pete Townshend, who refuses to let go of his failed "Lifehouse" project.

With their fame now firmly established, the four also start considering the possibility of pursuing solo musical paths.

John Entwistle is the first to release, between 1971 and 1972, two solo albums, Smash Your Head Against The Wall (Track, 1971) and Whistle Rymes (Track, 1972), where he can vent the morbid irony he'd already been putting to use within the band.

Townshend, meanwhile, keeps recording demos for "Lifehouse" in the wake of his embrace of Meher Baba's philosophy, and arrives at his first solo record in 1972, Who Came First (Track, 1972), which contains some of the tracks left off Who's Next, reworked on his own.

After the effort of their last album, the Who go through a period of downtime to recharge their batteries. Kit Lambert, meanwhile, is increasingly in the grip of hard drugs and drifts away from the band, who also end up discovering certain financial improprieties committed by their manager.

Fans, however, still get their fix thanks to the irresistible rock-blues singles "Let's See Action" (October 1971) and "Join Together" (June 1972), which the band plays constantly during their explosive shows of this period.

At the same time, Pete Townshend feels ready to charge back into action with the Who, and he's already thinking about another ambitious project that, this time around, will actually be brought to completion.

Jimmy in Mod Land

Between late 1972 and early 1973, Pete Townshend starts developing the idea for a roughly twenty-minute piece called "Rock Is Dead-Long Live Rock". The long suite, however, keeps expanding its sonic framework until it becomes a new double album and a new rock opera. Townshend thus writes another sophisticated story set to music, about the London of the youth bands of the mid-Sixties.

The early experiences of the Who-High Numbers are relived through the misadventures of the mod Jimmy, in search of love and friendship in a fundamentally hostile city, on his painful path toward maturity. The elements are the classic ones of the mod world: scooter rides on the Vespa, fleeting romances, brawls, overdoses of pills. Pete himself admits in an interview: "I want to win back our early fans, but I also want to capture the sense of what happened to rock and to the generation that grew up alongside us".

Jimmy's suffering within a twisted, insensitive society is thus told across the seventeen new songs of Quadrophenia (Track, 1973), released in November after yet another troubled gestation. During recording at Battersea Studios, in fact, the old tensions between Pete and Roger resurface, especially during mixing. Townshend's idea is to use a new quadraphonic, four-channel technique, which, however, proves unsuited to the record. The sound of Quadrophenia, in fact, is extremely dense and powerful, and tends to considerably bury the singer's voice.

The album leans even more heavily on the band's towering musical stature and offers decidedly more sophisticated arrangements, with orchestral keyboards that often end up overshadowing the very guitar that had contributed so much to their sound. It's the progressive rock of the era itself, reinterpreted in a highly original and personal way, effectively making Quadrophenia an even more symphonic version of Tommy.

The work is rich in dense counterpoints and melodic interplay, and is structured around four main themes (one for each member of the band) which, in effect, embody the four personalities of the protagonist's schizophrenia.

The "tough guy" Roger drives the amphetamine-fuelled march of piano and guitar on "Helpless Dancer". The "romantic" John weaves the martial melodrama of "Doctor Jimmy". The obviously "lunatic" Moon gives a drunken swagger to the paradoxical "Bell Boy". "Love Reign O'er Me", the theme of the "hypocrite" Pete, instead opens with a heart-wrenching piano, is carried to its peak by Daltrey's keyboards and voice, before dying out in the tribal thunder of the drums. Over this framework, Townshend embroiders impetuous, moving instrumental passages that find release in the overtures "Quadrophenia" and "The Rock".

The album, however, remains very much a postcard memory of the original fury of "My Generation", and the Who don't give up on the blasting, angry riff. "The Real Me" introduces Jimmy's inner world with a magnificent hard-rock gallop. "The Punk And The Godfather" stutters nervously over a structure of keyboards, pulsing bass and clattering guitar. "5:15", then, sweeps everything away with a piano boogie enriched by horns tinged with rhythm and blues.

Here and there, Townshend slips in nods to acoustic folk (the gorgeous sadness of "I'm One") and pays tribute to the classic Who sound itself with the wild barrelhouse of "Drowned".

It's true that the heavy use of electronic keyboards at times dampens the underlying genuineness of the story, but Quadrophenia, in the end, wins you over with its attitude and daring, and stands as another artistic triumph for Pete Townshend's creative vision.

After finishing the album, the Who set off on an American tour. Keith Moon, however, is sinking deeper and deeper into a vortex of alcohol and anti-anxiety pills, especially after being left by his wife. During a show in San Francisco, the drummer collapses and the others are forced to replace him with an audience member for the rest of the gig.

The episode is a dramatic reflection of a tour plagued by mounting technical problems, caused by the sheer complexity of the album, which, unlike Tommy, simply fails to work live.

The whole of 1974 is a troubled year, with Townshend sinking into a pit of dissatisfaction and anger, losing his enthusiasm and freshness. The Who are thus forced to take another break, filling the year's gap in their discography with some of their still-unreleased material.

Odds And Sods (Track, 1974) is put together precisely to collect some of the tracks the band had recorded since their early days but never released. Despite a title that suggests a pile of minor leftovers, the album is a short journey through quality songs that finally find a proper official home. Even as scraps and leftovers, they'd make half of rock and roll happy.

After Quadrophenia, then, it's time to look back, and Odds and Sods reaches all the way back to the band's very first single, the boogie-blues "I'm The Face".

Then come the horns of "Postcard" and the galloping stride of "Now I'm A Farmer", both originally meant for an EP that never materialised.

What really makes this album great, though, is the decision to include some of the tracks Pete Townshend had recorded for the aborted "Lifehouse" project, which never found a place on the masterpiece Who's Next. "Pure And Easy", in fact, is perfectly in step with the spirit of that album, moving between gorgeous acoustic polish and electric surges swept along by frantic drumming. Drugs, frustration, failure: "Naked Eye" shines like a gem, powered by another stunning vocal performance from Daltrey.

The Who unleash the weapon of the piano ballad with "Too Much Of Anything", but above all, they return to set things ablaze with the visceral rock and roll of "Long Live Rock".

Odds And Sods thus manages to temporarily save the band from Townshend's creative struggles, but it feels like a watershed album, marking the line between the magnificence seen so far and the gradual musical normalisation to come.

Who Are You?

After an initial theatrical performance at the Fillmore East in New York, "Tommy" is picked up again in 1975 by producer Robert Stigwood and director Ken Russell for a lavish film adaptation.

The film comes out in March and, with some new additions from Townshend, retraces the dramatic story of the deaf, dumb and blind boy. The Who themselves appear as the protagonists (it's Daltrey who plays Tommy), alongside a parade of stars including Jack Nicholson, Tina Turner, Elton John and Eric Clapton.

A new wave of Tommy-mania explodes, and the film stays at the top of the charts for fourteen weeks, running continuously in cinemas for over a year. The icing on the cake is Pete Townshend's Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.

Yet, despite the accolades and the film's success, the Who are running on empty. If ten years earlier their epochal motto had been "I hope I die before I get old", Townshend is now approaching thirty and feels trapped in a situation with no way out. The live failure of Quadrophenia has done much to fuel the guitarist's sense of dissatisfaction and frustration, and he struggles to come up with a new idea for the Who.

Between stops on the 1975 American tour, the four of them find themselves recording Pete's new songs, but the overall mood is rather tense, and the constant clashes between Townshend and Daltrey are amplified by the British press.

The result of these small traumas is The Who By Numbers (Polydor, 1975) which, despite standing in striking contrast to all their previous work, is perhaps the most brutal and sincere record the band ever made.

Townshend's own compositional style shifts register: the new songs are deeply personal, sorrowful, and reflect a sense of distrust in the future. The guitarist's response to the tensions within his band is decidedly blunt, and it's spelled out in the country lilt of "However Much I Booze", where "there's no way out". It's the same old teachings of Meher Baba that are now pulling Pete into a genuine spiritual crisis, coinciding with a desire to mature musically and leave behind the old adolescent rock and roll for good. In the waltzing piano-and-guitar turn of "They Are All In Love", the old rage is discharged with a farewell: "Goodbye all you punks, stay young".

Daltrey's voice is still as moving as ever in the touching acoustic folk of "Imagine A Man", though it seems to strain on the higher notes. What the record misses most, however, is Moon's thunderous drumming, as he grows increasingly unwell following his collapse in San Francisco.

In truth, The Who By Numbers makes no attempt to recapture the band's incendiary live sound, with Townshend instead trying to carve out a new direction for his rock and roll. "Slip Kid", for instance, gives that same rock and roll a more elegant, and effectively subdued, dimension. It's also one of the few songs on the record actually built around guitar chords. Townshend fills the album with ballads, and the fluid, compact "Dreaming From The Waist", together with the ethereal drift of "How Many Friends", are lesser siblings of the more symphonic passages of Quadrophenia.

Even if the bite only really surfaces through the boogie and roll of "Success Story", the record's beauty lies precisely in this new, intimate and aching dimension. The pop hit "Squeeze Box" and the dramatically silly ukulele number "Blue, Red And Grey", however, are clear signs of fatigue that don't bode well for the future.

After the album's release, the Who hit the road again across half the world on a long tour that stretches into 1976. Despite their troubles, the band still manages to put on blistering shows, so much so that the gig at Charlton Athletic Football Ground makes the Guinness Book of Records as "the loudest concert ever".

Townshend, however, senses this is the beginning of a swift decline, given the relatively cool reception the new songs receive. And it's precisely during the 1976 tour that the guitarist starts suffering ringing and pain in one ear. The trouble is caused by prolonged exposure to excessively loud volumes, and a doctor strongly advises him to quit before he goes completely deaf.

The Who are thus forced to temporarily halt the string of concerts.

Townshend, however, has no intention of changing careers, and promptly proves it with a second solo record, Rough Mix (Polydor, 1977), made with Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces.

The period of silence is broken only in 1978, when the Who reconvene to record a new album.

Pete Townshend has, by now, shed his role as generational spokesman and is absolutely determined to forge a new sound for his band. These are, in particular, times of conflict between the old progressive "dinosaurs" and the new, angry punks, and the Who had ridden the wave of the former just as much as they'd anticipated the latter.

The goal of Who Are You (Polydor, 1978) thus becomes to mediate between two such opposite genres.

Townshend knows he can't keep riding the wave of Who By Numbers's ballads forever, and indeed he shifts his musical register almost entirely, seeking an original fusion of punk aggression and progressive elegance. "New Song", from this point of view, is a kind of manifesto for the new course, but the Who's renewed anger is no longer convincing, especially when it's drowned in a syrupy wash of synthesizers.

The whole album, in fact, seems to slip away from Townshend's own intentions, carving out its own path with the lyricism of "Had Enough" and the carefree stride of "Sister Disco".

If Who By Numbers could still stir emotion with flashes of class, the new record leans decisively toward a more commercial, easy-listening sound. "905" sounds like a Cat Stevens song catapulted into the digital age. The same synthesizer is no longer wielded by Townshend to build the metaphysical architectures of Who's Next, but instead to dress much blander songs, like the saccharine "Love Is Coming Down", in orchestral clothing.

The guitarist, however, manages to recapture his old originality with the martial experimentalism of "Guitar And Pen" and with the effective synth-funk gallop of the title track, which recovers some of the Who's old epic quality. An epic quality that, unfortunately, is struggling more and more to hold itself up: during rehearsals for "Music Must Change", Keith Moon can't keep time on the track because his psycho-physical condition has further deteriorated. Not a big problem for the song, which turns into an atypical slice of jazz, but a huge problem for the Who's future.

The night between September 7th and 8th, 1978. Keith Moon has just left a party thrown by Paul McCartney in honor of Buddy Holly. After going to bed with his girlfriend, he wakes her shortly after to ask for a late-night snack. She tells him to go back to sleep.

Keith, however, goes to the kitchen and makes himself a huge steak, which he washes down with an outrageous number of pills. Full, he goes back to bed. Neither he nor his girlfriend know that one of the most spectacular drummers in rock history will never wake up again.

The Kids Are Not Alright

After Moon's death, the Who go through a period of complete darkness. The new manager, Bill Curbishley, tries every way he can to convince the three of them to carry on, if only to honor the memory of their old, mad friend. Ironically, right in the band's darkest moment, a sudden double success arrives.

In May 1979, a documentary by Jeff Stein about the life of the Who is presented at the Cannes Film Festival.

"The Kids Are Alright" is hailed as one of the best rock documentaries ever made and becomes a huge success in the United States, especially on the wave of the release of the soundtrack of the same name.

The double album The Kids Are Alright (Polydor, 1979) is, in fact, a fitting sonic coronation of the English band's legend, with a carefully chosen and spot-on selection of material.

Across seventeen tracks, we relive the Who's journey toward world fame, starting with the explosive performances of "My Generation" and "I Can't Explain" and arriving at two blistering versions of the masterpieces "Baba O'Riley"/"Won't Get Fooled Again", recorded live at Shepperton Studios specifically for Stein's film. In between, crucial moments such as the masterful "A Quick One" at the Rock and Roll Circus and the seminal "Tommy" at Woodstock ("Sparks", "Pinball Wizard" and "See Me, Feel Me").

The record sells extremely well, a clear sign of a golden era that had carried the Who to the top of the world.

Almost a year after Keith Moon's death, however, The Kids Are Alright is also the splendid testament of a band that will never exist again in the same way.

In September, moreover, Franc Roddam's film "Quadrophenia" premieres at the Toronto Film Festival.

Unlike with "Tommy", the Who limit themselves to producing the film, which stars Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash and Sting. The film's soundtrack, however, features a substantial contribution from Townshend and Entwistle, who also select other artists' tracks such as "Green Onions" and "Louie, Louie".

Although Roddam ignores Jimmy's four personalities and focuses his attention on the clashes between mods and rockers, the film is a huge success and brings the original album back onto the lips of British fans once again.

This reignites a strong mod revival in Great Britain, which perhaps helps Curbishley convince "the mod band" to get back on the road.

The show must go on

In mid-1979, the Who kick off auditions to find a new drummer, though none of the three members are particularly thrilled about the idea of replacing Keith Moon. Phil Collins also shows up to try out, but in the end the coveted spot goes to Kenney Jones (London, 16/09/1948), former member of the Small Faces and Faces. Jones's style, however, is very different from Moon's acrobatic approach, and both his new bandmates and the group's old fans feel the difference keenly.

Keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick is brought in as a permanent member to round out the new line-up, along with, remarkably, an entire horn section.

The Who's comeback is thus met with huge enthusiasm, drawing massive crowds at London's Rainbow and New York's Madison Square Garden. It's merely the prelude to a new American tour that, unfortunately, is marred by a genuine tragedy. On 3 December 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, several fans are crushed in the crowd while waiting for the show at the Riverfront Coliseum.

The Who aren't told about the deaths of 11 people, in order to avoid further security problems, but once they learn the truth they are deeply shaken. Pete Townshend decides to carry on with the tour, but he begins to feel terrible, increasingly clinging to the bottle as well as to hard drugs.

After yet another unfortunate event, the band decides to take all of 1980 off.

To exorcise his demons, Townshend releases his finest solo album, Empty Glass (Atco, 1980), which contains intense, dramatic songs such as "Rough Boys" and "A Little Is Enough".

Curiously, while the guitarist rapidly spirals downward, the Who become the third rock band (after the Beatles and the Band) to appear on the cover of the prestigious Time magazine.

It's just an isolated flash of glory, though, because the band is actually moving forward without any clear direction. Townshend is gripped by panic and can't find new ideas for the group, haunted only by ghosts and memories of a glorious past brutally cut short.

And, this time, despair fails to turn into art, because the first record without Moon, Face Dances (Polydor, 1981), is by far the worst the Who ever made.

The album charts and sells well, but numerous critics attack Townshend, more or less fairly, for keeping his best material for himself and leaving his band with minor pop leftovers. Indeed, the record has a very different sound from the band's past work, featuring a string of flabby songs with none of the old fire, due to Jones's bland drumming. "Another Tricky Day", for instance, clearly suffers from the absence of Moon's explosive flourishes. Townshend writes songs with zero enthusiasm, and "Cache Cache" and "Did You Steal My Money" drag wearily through their docile choral arrangements.

Rather than a new musical direction, Face Dances simply feels like the bored work of a band that no longer really exists: the skimpy pop-rock of the hit "You Better You Bet" certainly isn't enough to keep the Who's name held high.

After the release of Face Dances, the Who go back on the road around the world.

During the various legs of the tour, however, Daltrey gradually becomes aware of just how desperate Townshend's situation is and, having reached his limit, decides to halt the shows so his friend can get serious treatment. The guitarist thus enters a rehabilitation programme and, under the guidance of Dr. Patterson, manages to break free from the spiral of drugs and alcohol.

Having found himself again, Townshend decides to go back into the studio to work on another record with the Who. It's true, however, that Pete feels he's doing it more out of contractual obligation than genuine enthusiasm, since by now the feeling with his bandmates has completely vanished.

Recorded between stops on the American tour of summer 1982, It's Hard (Polydor, 1982) is the true swan song of Pete Townshend and the Who.

In some ways, the album continues the "pleasant," commercial sound of Faces Dances, but in others it feels slightly more inspired and, at times, bolder. "Athena," for instance, offers the same easy catchiness, but manages to package it with greater elegance and swagger, amid flamenco guitars, martial drumming and horn flourishes.

Townshend goes back to using the synthesizer intelligently on the intriguing electro-funk of "Eminence Front," where a guitar line worth noting also resurfaces. Unfortunately, these are only brief flashes of light, since the album still suffers from a general lack of energy. The piano-synth experimentation of "One Life's Enough" really seems to prove the critics right when they accuse Townshend of saving his best material for his solo career. Entwistle, in fact, is let off the leash, but his rock tracks ("It's Your Turn" and "Dangerous") are nowhere near enough to make a great album.

It's Hard (the five stars Rolling Stone magazine gave it are baffling) barely manages to stay afloat, clinging to tracks like "I've Known No War," which recaptures some of the band's unmistakable, aggressive melodic edge. A melody that, sadly, will meet its sad end right here.

After releasing a new, autobiographical solo album, All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (Atco, 1982), Pete Townshend makes his final, agonizing decision: to embark on one last tour with the Who. It is, in fact, the musical event of the year, with an impressive run of sold-out shows in the world's biggest stadiums, and the farewell show, on December 12th in Toronto, is broadcast by hundreds of TV networks.

The idea of turning the Who into a "studio only" band is quickly dropped, and Townshend gathers his bandmates to tell them he's unable to write any new songs.

It's December 16, 1983: at a press conference, the guitarist announces to the world the definitive breakup of the Who.

Reincarnations: Live Aid, Tommy and Other Stories

With the Who disbanded and having gotten completely clean, Pete Townshend continues his solo career and, between 1983 and 1985, puts out two more albums: the demo collection Scoop (Atco, 1983) and the project White City (Atco, 1985).

The guitarist launches a genuine awareness campaign against drugs, and, driven by this surge of solidarity, decides to reform his legendary band for Live Aid, the massive concert organized by Bob Geldof in London and Philadelphia to aid the starving populations of Africa.

Introduced by Jack Nicholson as a "legendary band," the Who deliver a brief, intense performance of the classics "Love Reign O'er Me," "Pinball Wizard," "Won't Get Fooled Again" and the anthem "My Generation," which, unfortunately, doesn't make it to the worldwide broadcast in full due to a blown fuse at the BBC.

For the occasion, Townshend even writes a new song, "After The Fire," which is never played live but instead ends up on Roger Daltrey's new solo album, Under A Raging Moon (10 Records, 1985).

The Live Aid appearance turns out to be just a "one day-show," since Pete quickly goes back to his own musical life, releasing a second demo collection, Another Scoop (Atco, 1987), but above all, a musical adaptation of a children's novella by the writer Ted Hughes.

The Iron Man (Virgin, 1989) features the participation of prestigious musicians including Nina Simone, John Lee Hooker, and John and Roger themselves on "Dig" and "Fire."

In 1988, the Who receive a lifetime achievement award from the British Phonographic Industry and thus return to the stage for a very brief set that turns out to be Kenney Jones's last appearance with the band.

The Who's discography, meanwhile, is bolstered by rarities, singles and, above all, a new live double album, Who's Last (MCA, 1984), which documents the band's 1982 farewell tour, but which, in terms of force and intensity, is light years away from the incandescent Live At Leeds.

In 1989, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Tommy, the Who decide to get back together for a tour that will once again take the rock opera around the world. For the occasion there's another line-up change, with ex-Whitesnake man Simon Phillips taking over behind the kit from Kenney Jones.

Enthusiasm for the new tour grows exponentially, and every date sells out within days, especially the four consecutive nights at Giants Stadium.

The story of Tommy Walker is also staged in musical form over two nights at the UCLA Anfiteatro, with exceptional guests such as Elton John, Phil Collins, Patty Labelle, Billy Idol and Steve Winwood.

The massive event is later captured on a box set, Join Together (Virgin, 1990), containing the double live album of the tour.

The record fully reflects the quality of the whole operation and offers another chance to hear Tommy performed live in its entirety.

In their first year of eligibility, 1990, the Who are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Among the many voices is the belief that Townshend and co., alongside the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, deserve the prestigious title of "greatest rock and roll band on the planet".

They may be one of the most famous rock and roll bands in the world, but as the Nineties dawn, the Who remain split.

It is, above all, Townshend who continues on his own artistic path. In 1993 he produces a theatrical version of "The Iron Man" for children at London's Young Vic Theatre, and sets off on tour to present his new concept album, Psychoderelict (Atlantic, 1993). The record is built around a radio play, its story revolving around a middle-aged rockstar who, once again, is drawn from Townshend's own memories and experiences.

The tour (joined by Entwistle on bass for a handful of shows) experiments with actors sharing the stage with the musicians, but proves a financial failure and, naturally, doesn't draw anywhere near the crowds that the Who name would. A name still held dear in fans' hearts, judging by the excitement that greets rumours of a possible reunion to mark the band's 30th anniversary.

In 1994, Pete and John take the stage at New York's Carnegie Hall to celebrate Roger Daltrey's 50th birthday. It's really more a heartfelt tribute to the old group's music than an actual reunion, since the three surviving members soon go back to their respective solo careers.

A magnificent tribute to the Who instead comes in the form of a monumental retrospective box set, 30 Years Of Maximum R&B (Polydor, 1994), which spans from the earliest stirrings of Pete Meaden's High Numbers all the way to the band's last-ever cover, "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" (Elton John).

The real Who comeback arrives two years later, in 1996, when the organisers of the Prince's Trust ask Pete Townshend to take part in a huge charity concert to be held in the spring in Hyde Park, London. The guitarist, alongside other stars such as Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, accepts the invitation with the evocative idea of performing an acoustic version of the whole of Quadrophenia.

The new solo venture, however, is quickly dropped, and Townshend calls in Entwistle and Daltrey for a performance billed as the Who. The three are backed by Zak Starkey on drums, Bundrick and Carin on keyboards, and an additional guitarist, Simon Townshend. Adding extra shine to the evening, a small parade of exceptional guests take the stage to play the various characters in Jimmy's story: among others, David Gilmour, Gary Glitter and actor Phil Daniels, who provides the narration for the whole performance.

It amounts to a kind of personal vindication for Pete Townshend, who had never quite managed to make the complex arrangements of the live double album really work. And indeed, here too the Who run into some technical difficulties, but the show is received with tremendous enthusiasm and, in the end, proves a genuine success — so much so that it's repeated for six consecutive nights at New York's Madison Square Garden.

A new wave of freshness sweeps over the three, who, further spurred on by their nights at the Madison, decide to embark on a full-fledged tour of America and Europe. The "Quadrophenia Tour" thus makes its almost triumphant progress, with thousands flocking to hear the old mod exploits and, of course, the immortal music of the Who.

After the success of the Quadrophenia tour, the Who break up once again.

Pete Townshend returns to an intimate acoustic dimension and records a live album, Pete Townshend Live (Platinum Entertainment Inc, 1999), at Chicago's Maryville Academy, where he's joined by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder for "Heart To Hang Onto" and "Magic Bus".

It's, by and large, a very quiet period for the guitarist, who's thus gearing up for a new personal reckoning. At the dawn of the new millennium, in fact, Townshend finally realizes his long-awaited project, "Lifehouse". Pete releases a six-disc box set containing all the songs originally intended for the project, plus an eponymous radio play written with Jeff Young. Old and new songs alike are promptly brought to the stage of London's Sadler's Wells Theatre, where Townshend is backed by loyal musicians and the London Chamber Orchestra.

The vast wealth of musical material is later gathered on Lifehouse – Chronicles (Eel Pie Recording Production Ltd., 2000), which includes tracks unjustly left off Who's Next ("Relay", "Pure And Easy" and "Too Much Of Anything") along with grandiose orchestral flights of fancy. It's certainly not what Townshend had in mind thirty years earlier, but it's without a doubt another pebble shaken out of his visionary shoe.

The guitarist, however, isn't the only Who member keeping busy. With lesser fortune, John Entwistle organizes a few shows with his own band, while Roger Daltrey keeps carrying the legend around on a tour with the British Rock Symphony Orchestra.

It's still just the prelude to another comeback for the trio, who, for a charity cause, decide to reunite for a handful of Christmas shows at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire and Chicago's House of Blues. Zak Starkey is confirmed on drums, and he looks like one of the most plausible heirs to Keith Moon, with far more inventive and forceful hits than Kenney Jones.

The Who sound thus regains a touch of its old power, and classic tracks like "Magic Bus" and "5:15" shine once more on the live document From The Blues To The Bush (Musicmaker.com, 2000), which, however, is sold exclusively online.

The endless thread

The success of the 1999 charity concerts spurs the Who to carry on, this time without any further breaks. In the summer of 2000, another US tour kicks off, continuing in November in England with a splendid closing night at London's Royal Albert Hall.

The Who come out blazing with roaring versions of "Pinball Wizard" and "I Can't Explain" before being joined by numerous guests, including Paul Weller (the acoustic duet with Townshend on "So Sad About Us" is deeply moving) and Eddie Vedder, who outshines old lion Daltrey on "Let's See Action", "I'm One" and "Getting In Tune". The spectacular show was later released as the double album Live at Royal Albert Hall (Steamhammer, 2003).

The enthusiasm is so widespread that it even leads Townshend to consider the possibility of a new studio album with the band. Two tragic events, however, divert the guitarist's attention away from this intriguing new idea.

In October 2001, the Who take part in the massive benefit concert for New York City, brutally stabbed to the heart by the terrorist attacks of September 11th. The pain is raw, pulsing, and it's destined to well up again: exactly one day before the start of the new American tour, on June 27, 2002, John Entwistle is found dead in a room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.

The coroner's analysis reveals that the bassist suffered cardiac arrest brought on by a cocaine overdose.

The Who's dazzling, devastating rhythm section, in effect, ceases to exist forever.

The shock caused by Entwistle's death, however, doesn't seem to stop Townshend and Daltrey who, after a necessary postponement, head out on tour anyway with Pino Palladino on bass.

Palladino is skilled and, above all, well-seasoned (David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Elton John), but, obviously, he doesn't have John's lightning-fast fingers. Though instrumentally diminished, the American shows are met with the same enthusiasm as always, to the point that, in September, the English magazine Q names the Who “one of the 50 bands to see before you die.” Or before you get old.

In March 2004 a new retrospective compilation is released, but this time it's not only the past that surprises. The Who: Then And Now (Geffen, 2004) comes out to celebrate 40 years since their first official single, but it's also a first, tentative warning sign: the Who's music is back.

“Real Good Looking Boy,” with Greg Lake on bass, is a gorgeous, nostalgic ballad that skilfully blends the pianistic spirituality of Who's Next with the symphonic arrangements of Tommy. Townshend manages to craft a track of real emotional impact that, thanks to a calmer tone in Daltrey's voice, hadn't been heard in a long while. The same goes for “Old Red Wine” (the second and last unreleased track on the compilation), which sounds as if it came straight out of the Quadrophenia sessions.

The album becomes a pretext to go back on tour: the Who, in just 18 dates, perform in Japan, Australia, the United States and England, where they're given a triumphant welcome on the Isle of Wight on June 12th, thirty-four years after their incendiary appearance at the Festival.

During the spring of 2005, almost three years after Entwistle's death, the Who finally feel ready to make a new studio album.

Pete Townshend announces to the world that, after 23 years of silence, It’s Hard will finally get a successor, provisionally titled “Who2.”

The new material, however, struggles to take final shape, partly because of Zak Starkey's commitments as drummer for Oasis. Townshend's website announces that the album will suffer an indefinite delay, but in the meantime the guitarist publishes a science-fiction-flavored story in which an old rocker, Ray High (already the protagonist of “Psychoderelict”), guides three young people united by their passion for music. An idea thus begins to take shape in Pete's mind, as he increasingly considers turning the story into a full-blown rock opera, the new narrative backbone for “Who2.”

While Townshend keeps working tirelessly on the new album, the Who take part, on a London stage, in Live 8, Bob Geldof's new, gigantic charity event. For the occasion the band overhauls its line-up, with Steve White (Paul Weller's drummer) standing in for Starkey and Ocean Colour Scene's Damon Minchella taking over on bass from Pino Palladino, who's on tour with Jeff Beck.

The substitutions, however, prove more than up to the task, and the Who's brief set stirs the crowd with “Who Are You” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Finally, in October 2006, the intricate multimedia story of “The Boy Who Heard Music” finds its definitive musical shape, turning into the Who's first original album since It’s Hard.

The announcement causes a sensation and mobilizes old and new fans alike, who can download the first two singles from Endless Wire (Polydor, 2006) on iTunes. The sinuous, electric drive of “It’s Not Enough” and the tender, melancholic acoustic watercolor of “Tea & Theatre” bode well for an album that took over four years of hard labor to make. The record, however, turns out rather flat, almost sitting on its own laurels.

The Who (if we can still call them that) seem to want to set off a perverse game between obvious echoes of a glorious past that no longer exists and new sonic temptations. “We Got A Hit” and “Mirror Door,” for instance, faithfully echo the symphonic structures of the old Tommy, but Daltrey's feral howl has all but vanished, and the rhythm section can't give Townshend's otherwise good musical ideas their old force.

Things work better when the vocals turn calmer and more enveloping and the guitar limits itself to sketching out skeletal folk chords, as in the moving ballad “Man In A Purple Dress.”

What Townshend is trying to do is pick back up, twenty-four years later, “the endless thread” of his art, but the overall feeling is that too much time has now passed to avoid that almost irritating sense of déjà vu.

Endless Wire, in fact, at times falls into the trap of pure self-reference. “Black Widow’s Eyes” is nothing more than the typical Who-sound that has already influenced generations, not to mention the computerized rehash of the mystical intro of “Baba O’ Riley” in “Fragments”, which comes across as pleasant yet utterly pointless.

The new Who playing at being the old Who, essentially, ends up being boring. The album, in fact, manages to pick itself back up the moment Townshend and Daltrey accept that they didn't die before getting old and, above all, agree to change their sound. The rebel anthem thus becomes a bourgeois teapot, but still manages to earn more than one listen, as in the Waits-esque lament of “In The Ether” and the acoustic ballad “God Speaks Of Marty Robbins”.

The Who's new place in music comes, for instance, through the mandolin jig of “Two Thousand Years” and the martial, woozy banjo of “Unholy Trinity”. It's here that Townshend and Daltrey can calmly indulge their own myth without inevitably turning into “rock and roll dinosaurs”. To promote the album, the Who embark on a long world tour that, on 24 June 2007, brings them triumphantly to the Glastonbury Festival stage.

Who opens with a statement of intent: released in December 2019, it's the twelfth studio album of the band's career, or at least of the surviving half of it. On “All This Music Must Fade”, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend call for less musical saturation: too many releases every week scatter attention and leave no room for the depth that the art of the seven notes demands. Thirteen years on from “Endless Wire”, and well into their later years, the two bring in some great musician friends, among them Pino Palladino, Zack Starkey and Matt Chamberlain.

Roger and Pete don't let up, letting the melancholy d’antan of “I’ll Be Back” dissolve into the blues of “Ball And Chain” (a reworking of “Guantanamo”, a track Townshend had already released as a solo artist), into the alt-pop modernity of “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”, the country-folk of “Break The News” and the Latin (!!!) atmospheres of “She Rocked My World”. But in this huge effort to appear eternally young, there's no moment capable of drawing in new converts, even though the old guitar drive and swagger (“Street Song”, “Rockin’ In Rage”) never feel out of step or out of place, but sincere and genuine.

The standard edition of Who runs to eleven tracks, with three further (largely forgettable) songs rounding out the deluxe edition, among them “Get Nothing To Prove”, first recorded back in 1966, shelved and kept in the drawer (there must have been a reason…) until just a few months ago. In the days right after release, the album reached number two in the United States, Canada and Scotland, number three in England, and number five in Germany and Switzerland. A record unmistakably aimed at those who still carry an undying love for the Who, the fans who – judging by the numbers – have no intention of abandoning them in what could be remembered as their last artistic adventure.

Outro – And a hard rain's gonna fall…

Verona, the Arena. As the mod saga plays out on a big screen, over 13,000 people wait with bated breath for something that, perhaps, they haven't seen in more than thirty years. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are there, polished up, smiling. “I Can’t Explain”, “Substitute”, “The Seeker”: the first, unforgettable fragments of a past returning once again. The magic, in part, has already happened, but the surprises are far from over.

“It should be raining on you, not on me!”, Townshend jokes when, around 9:30 pm, a genuine cloudburst breaks out over the Arena. The concert is halted for over an hour, until the downpour turns into a light drizzle. The show can then carry on, and “Behind Blue Eyes” warms everyone's soaked hearts. Daltrey's voice, however, is a different story: it gives out on the chorus, and he doesn't want to go on. Negotiations begin with the singer, who in the end decides to risk his vocal cords and continue with the show. Townshend shakes up the setlist, picking classics sung by himself such as “Eminence Front”, “Magic Bus” and “Pinball Wizard”. In effect, it becomes the guitarist's own personal show, as he takes everyone by the hand with elegance and courage, steering the concert to the triumphant close of “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

Perhaps it was precisely that stroke of bad luck which, on a June night, helped Pete Townshend give a final, definitive celebration to the epic of his genius and the legendary music of the Who.

This long story is dedicated to John “The Ox” Entwistle and Keith “Moonie the Loonie” Moon

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