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Re: Empty Glass



> > This is all starting to seem like an "Imaginary Tale" from a comic 
> > book!
>
> Don't you think that's fun?

Oh, I'm having a blast!  ;-)  Seriously, I don't mind a bit of speculating.
It *is* fun.  Useless, sometimes ultimately depressing, but fun.  

> There was plenty of good "Who" material available at the time.

This discussion makes me want to research Pete's decision to embark on a
solo career in the first place.  Why does it seem he's always fighting
with The Who?  Not members of The Who, but with the concept & entity that
is The Who.  What motivated Pete to sometimes bite the hand that fed him?
Did he simply think he had enough good tunes in him to satisfy both out-
lets?  Was it a good opportunity to discretely worm his way out of The Who?
Darn it!  When's that damn autobiography of his coming out?!  Perhaps we'll
have a better understanding then.

> By Numbers has always been my least favorite Who album, and I love 
> Pete's soft solo stuff.  It just didn't work with The Who for me.  

I used to think that way.  Now I like it.  It made more sense when I passed
the age of 30.  You're in your mid-30's, aren't you, Jim?  And you still
have trouble with WHO BY NUMBERS?  I think Daltrey & Moon shine on that
album.

> Who Are You works much better for me musically, 

That's weird.  It's the other way around for me.  I see WHO BY NUMBERS as
being much stronger than WHO ARE YOU.  On all fronts.

> Those songs really stick out to me as Daltrey singing Pete's ideas.  The
> best Who songs make you feel like Roger's breathing life into Pete's 
> words, but not those.

Right.  Again, that brings to mind what I call that cloudy division be-
tween a Who song & a solo Pete song.

> So, yes, Pete starved The Who of material by putting more creativity 
> into his solo career than the group.  

Well, I'd be willing to bet he spent as much time & effort on Who songs
as he did his solo songs.  I don't think he did more "creatively" when
he wrote his solo tunes.  It comes down to actually *choosing* which songs 
go where - solo album or Who album.

One might argue that EMPTY GLASS contained better songs than say FACE 
DANCES because Pete wanted his first true solo album to be kick-ass & get
some airplay.  Then, afterwards, mostly mediocre songs began turning up on
Who albums *as well as* his solo albums.

So maybe Pete only had that small batch of kick-ass songs at the end of the 
'70s. They went to EMPTY GLASS, & the well dried up.  Otherwise, one could
argue that CHINESE EYES should've been a stronger album.   

> I never really thought of it like that, because I saw it more as his 
> writing changing in a way that didn't really suit the band.  

True, that can't be ignored.  I think *all* these reasons must be taken 
into account when one is looking for any semblance of an explanation.

> But your analysis shows that they really could have put out one hell of 
> an album in 1980, if they had been able to keep focused on The Who.  

"They?"  You mean Pete.  It all boils down to Pete.  It always has.

> But, hey, with everything that had gone on, and how long they had been
> doing the same thing, we're lucky they survived at all, so I'm not
> complaining.

Beggars can't be choosers.  ;-)


- SCHRADE in Akron

Every scientific truth goes through three stages: first, people say it
conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before;
lastly, they say they always believed it. 
	- Louis Agassiz (1807 - 1873)