Re: Solo Pete as Who, Duran Duran for a moment, Mark the Marxist, and more stuff

[William Spencer Watson <wswatson@indiana.edu>]

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Mark R. Leaman wrote:

> > Musically though, it almost seems like Pete was making a conscious effort
> > to avoid a Who sound and do something different.
> 
> I don't know about that. Give Blood and Brilliant Blues SCREAM Who to me.
> It is my own personal belief that BB is about the breakup...it certainly
> articulates the sentiments expressed by Pete in interviews regarding this
> subject. "It's time to live..." Pete felt the band was strangling him,
> right? "Don't want to be frozen..." THAT is almost exactly what he said
> about becoming an oldies band. "I know that now is the time to say/It's
> time..." Time to break up? He said he wanted to go out while they were
> still on top. "The brilliant blues/Have faded into sadness and pain/And now

Yeah, it's easy to imagine the Who doing "Give Blood."

Brilliant Blues seems pretty obviously about the breakup, especially when
one reads the notes on the back of the album jacket.  But couldn't this be
just as easily an argument for why he did NOT want the Who to do the song?
'The band's time has faded and now is the time for me to sing on my own.'
It could easily go either way:  Pete could be singing to the Who, or the
Who could have recorded it as a way of saying goodbye.  It's always been
my impression that around '84/85 Pete wanted absolutely nothing to do with
the Who, and that they basically weren't speaking with each other, until
Live Aid came along.


> Second Hand Love, Crashing By Design, Come To Mama and White City Fighting
> all would have easily been Who songs, too IMHO. The others could have been
> Pete Who songs.

I could see CBD and WCF as Who songs.  


> Maybe among critics. EG is so blantantly commercial that I can't imagine a
> Who fan who thinks it superior to the more intellectual WC, or ATBCHCE for
> that matter.
> 
Really?  I've always thought EG would finish ahead of WC in any poll,
whether of Who fans or otherwise.  But maybe that's been done before......
WC is pretty commercial too.  Face the Face and Give Blood were both minor
hits, weren't they?  The only thing on WC that doesn't sound so commercial
to me is Come to Mama.


> WGFA is every bit as powerful acoustic, for instance, and I'll never
> forget the impressive job Roger did (Raleigh NC) with The Kids Are Alright,
> both vocally and playing (by himself) on acoustic guitar.
> 
That Raleigh show was a good one wasn't it?  I was lucky enough to be
there.

> 
> More stupid lyrics for the masses, this one `specially for Bill:
> 
> "The union of the snake is on the climb..."
>                                    Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran

I can still hear it blasting from my sister's bedroom, every square inch
of which was covered with Duran Duran photos.  In our teenage sibling
rivalry, I would answer her with The Who.  We've since made up!

Bill
>