No Keith vs. No Kit

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

> One thing I hate is an asinine statement such as this.  How
> could a manager
> with weak production skills be more damaging to the Who's
> artistic momentum
> than Keith Moon's death.

I'll stand by what I said. Let's say you had just seen The Who in 1975 and
were somehow magically whisked to their 2000 shows without knowing about the
intervening years. What might surprise you most after you'd been told Moon
had died? Well, of course you might wonder who that turtle was playing
guitar or wonder why Roger hadn't aged that much or think, "you know, Zak's
no Moon but he's not bad." What I think might most surprise you is that,
except for two songs, you'd be familiar, very familiar, with everything they
played.

And the reason for that I put to the absence of Kit Lambert. Did he make
lousy sounding recordings? Sure he did. But what made him so very valuable
to The Who was he set the height of the hurdles The Who had to jump. It was
he who, up to Tommy, pushed Pete to think of himself as an artist and
fulfill his artistic vision through The Who revolutionizing rock music into
a form that could stand up to the creations of his father, the orchestral
composer Constant Lambert. He began to pull away from The Who and, more
importantly Pete, after Tommy and the results caused Pete, more than
anything else, to stop seeing The Who as his major artistic outlet. First
Lifehouse collapsed when Kit was too drugged and uninterested to explain it
to the rest of the band. And Quadrophenia's production flaws and problems
with its live staging led to hurled accusations. Accusations not thrown at
Kit, who could stand them and deflect them, but at Pete who took them to
heart and decided never to tackle a project like it with The Who were he
would be the one accountable.

This is what killed The Who, not Keith's death. The Who could find another
drummer, even if, never one so good. But they never found anyone who could
nurture Pete's art and direct it through The Who like Kit. And that's why a
1975 visitor would have known all but two songs of the 2000 show.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm