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Re: The Who Vs The Rest
>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