Re: The Who Vs The Rest

[Slipkid@gnn.com (Ian Derby)]

>There can be no doubt of that! It is also true of Heavy Metal (no matter
> how
>bad it became) and Alternative. Ha! Even Zepplin were influenced by The
>Who...making the "VS" point moot, in my opinion.
>


I have to disagree with this.  First of all, there was a true blues movement 
coming out of Britian in the mid 60's while the Who were exploring the R+B 
angle in their music.  Zeppelin is clearly influenced by Cream and John 
Mayhall before the Who pop into the equation.  Since Jimmy Page was bred 
with one of the earliest brit blues bands (Yardbirds) I have to throw out 
the Who influence completely. 



The Who's lasting impact on rock music is on stage presence, and their songs 
that eventually influenced punk in the late 70's.  From this I would say VU 
had a clear influence on the US punk bands while the Who were all over the 
UK punk bands of the same period.  Comparing the Jam to the Talking Heads is 
a good start.   At least the UK bands didn't point fingers at the Who in the 
"dinosaur" class of bands while they used Zeppelin and Yes freely in how 
they were so out of touch.  Funny that the Who were around 4-5 years before 
both.  Today that's really forgotten, but I still see it as a compliment to 
how great the Who really were.  Why are we to argue about this anyway?  Rock 
critics place the Who with the Stones and Beatles which is where they 
rightfully belong.  Just because the newer bands don't acknowledge them 
isn't the point.  They pull little Who nuances live on stage every night and 
probably have no idea why.  Watching Peter Buck recently on stage (REM) I 
noticed a clear stage presence influence from PT (windwills not being one of 
them).  




As for the references to Van Halen, at least Sammy Hagar called the Who the 
"Greatest rock band ever" (or words to that effect) before introducing WGFA 
in a '88 concert encore.  





"I'm pissed off, I'm pissed off all the time" ---Ray Rhodes