The Who

Essential Albums

  • Quadrophenia (2013 Remaster)
    Quadrophenia (2013 Remaster)
    Quadrophenia (2013 Remaster)

    You don’t need to follow the plot of Pete Townshend’s second rock opera to appreciate the grandeur of this double-LP. Capturing The Who's “maximum” live sound in the studio, songs like “The Real Me,” “The Punk and the Godfather,” and “Love, Reign O’er Me” come across with their knockout power fully intact. Roger Daltrey’s commanding vocals are matched by Keith Moon’s manic drum wizardry, John Entwistle’s melodic, plunging basslines, and Townshend’s windmill power chords.

  • Who's Next (Remastered 2022)
    Who's Next (Remastered 2022)
    Who's Next (Remastered 2022)

    1971

  • Tommy
    Tommy
    Tommy

    Though the rock songs on 1967’s The Who Sell Out had done well, Pete Townshend was increasingly bored by the idea of being a singles band—by making records just meant to earn radio play. Before that record’s release, he’d started to absorb the teachings of Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, whose classic God Speaks Townshend read after a friend told him that many of Baba’s teachings foreshadowed several of the songwriter’s own ideas. “Each theory that I had expounded, many to do with reincarnation and its inevitability when considered in the light of law of averages, were summed up in one sentence,” Townshend eventually wrote in Rolling Stone. “What was so sneaky about the whole affair was the way Baba crept into my life.” And, of course, his art. Townshend soon began devising a story of spiritual evolution, about a kid coming out of tough domestic circumstances in post-war Britain, only to become something of a spiritual superstar. That story would be told in 1969’s Tommy, one of rock ’n’ roll’s most accomplished early concept albums—apologies to Sgt. Pepper’s—and a fascinating, if fractured, mirror of Townshend’s own life and those of many of his rock peers. This was, as the band members admitted, Townshend’s trip—but they became fascinated by his idea, and essentially cheered him along. Tommy sprawls across four full sides, its 74 minutes and 24 overdub-heavy tracks moving from acoustic beauty to heavy soul, from Merseybeat charm to menacing proto-punk. Despite some cynical reviews, the album immediately expanded the rock lexicon and established The Who as its most audacious and eccentric big band. So much of Tommy’s staying power derives from The Who’s ability to walk the line between complicated concept and compulsive songs: Parts repeat, and the plot twists in ways that can sometimes be difficult to follow. But most of these tunes stand on their own. “Pinball Wizard” (in which Tommy’s secret talent is revealed) and “I’m Free” (in which Tommy’s quest to become a guru of sorts begins to bloom) would become two of The Who’s most enduring anthems. There’s also “Sally Simpson,” a folk-rock escapade that Crosby, Stills & Nash might have written, and “Sparks,” a prog miniature that builds to a mighty climax. Over the decades, Tommy’s scope and sound would fall in and out of favor, but the album remains an enduring affirmation that rock can serve as serious art, too—that there are brains behind the bands.

  • The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe)
    The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe)
    The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe)

    By the summer of 1967, the pirate radio stations that had been so crucial to the development of rock ’n’ roll—and to English counterculture as a whole—were on the chopping block, subject to a new parliamentary edict. At the same time, mod fashion began to fade. Both had been critical to the early success of The Who, whose members were starting to wonder what was next: Could they expand their sound beyond the quick hits of their so-called “Maximum R&B”? Luckily, Pete Townshend’s bigger ambitions had become clear on the group’s second album, A Quick One. That record’s centerpiece, “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” condensed an opera into nine record-closing minutes. And Townshend had started writing an opera, Rael, about an imagined future in which Communists take over of the world. Townshend didn’t lack ambition. But what The Who really needed was a hit. So he turned his attention toward another concept: A 40-minute rock record interspersed with commercial jingles and radio-station call signs. The result was 1967’s The Who Sell Out, a parodic tribute to the fading glories of pirate radio. When the members of The Who actually stick to the idea, The Who Sell Out is hilarious: There’s a silly little ditty-slash-sketch about baked beans (“Heinz Baked Beans”) and a compulsive R&B jangle about a woman cursed with malfunctioning deodorant (“Odorono”). These goofier bits are stitched together with strong songs about decidedly non-comedic topics: cheap cheaters (the thundering “I Can See for Miles”), generational friction (the slinking “Tattoo”), and the emotionally frustrated (the charming “I Can’t Reach You.”) The band members, though, were still restless kids, and they didn’t make it to the end with the idea intact, abandoning their jingles just after the start of the album’s second half. Still, the final songs on The Who Sell Out make for a remarkable run, and point toward the band’s future. A woozy organ line buttresses the psychedelic sting of “Relax,” while Townsend drops into gorgeous solo acoustic mode for the lovesick “Sunrise.” It all ends with a condensed version of Rael that’s full of soul and power, harmony and misdirection, and interlocking melodies—all touchstones that would serve The Who in the years ahead.

  • The Who Sings My Generation
    The Who Sings My Generation
    The Who Sings My Generation

    Though members of The Who considered this album a bit of a rush job, critics and fans alike regard it as one of the greatest albums of all time and certainly a debut unlike any other. Keith Moon's drums simply put the band over the top. His crash-and-burn style is so aggressive that he makes other bands sound mild-mannered by comparison. Only James Brown sported a group more ferocious, and that didn't scare The Who away from covering two of Brown's songs ("I Don't Mind" and "Please Please, Please"). While singer Roger Daltrey is overall more restrained than he'd be in the future, Pete Townshend finds a way to get his loud, smashing sound on record and bassist John Entwistle nails down active and adventurous lines. The instrumental "The Ox" shows just how far ahead The Who was in terms of feedback and intensity. "My Generation" captures all of the band's brutal thunder, while "The Good's Gone," "La-La-La-Lies," "Much Too Much," and "The Kids Are Alright" find a way to sandwich sweet pop harmonies into the chaos. 

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About The Who

Fans who hitched their wagons to The Who's star early on were in for a long, wild ride. After brief stints as the Detours and High Numbers, lead singer Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle, guitarist Pete Townshend (all schoolmates in West London), and drummer Keith Moon released their debut single as The Who, “I Can’t Explain,” in 1964. The pop-art-meets-maximum-R&B commandos quickly developed into rock's most dynamic live act, and a string of galvanizing hit singles—including "My Generation," "Substitute," and "I Can See for Miles"—followed, filled with guitars and drums sacrificed to the gods of feedback and distortion. (A prelude, perhaps, to The Who’s unparalleled post-show hotel-room demolition.) The band’s kinetic alchemy roiled throughout 1970's Live at Leeds, as Daltrey's working-class swagger and Townshend's windmilling power chords tottered on the rhythmic edifice of Entwistle's stealth virtuosity and Moon's inspired percussive lunacy. Their studio work displayed no less bravado and even more sophistication. Townshend's spiritually motivated Tommy took the rock opera mainstream in 1969, but it was 1973's Quadrophenia, a marvelous mirror gaze into their mod-movement roots, that became the musical masterpiece they would tour into the 21st century. Disillusionment and depression fueled some of Townshend's finest music, including much of 1975's The Who By Numbers, but tragedy followed with Moon’s death in 1978. Townshend broke up the band five years later, only to reunite for a 25th-anniversary jaunt in 1989—for all his misgivings, the show had to go on. Entwistle died the night before a 2002 US tour, but Daltrey and Townshend forged ahead with a replacement, encouraged by Entwistle’s son. In 2019, more than half a century after The Who proclaimed "I hope I die before I get old," the band released Who, a raucous rumination on the fates of aging rock stars.

ORIGIN
London, England
FORMED
February 1964
GENRE
Rock

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