Re: Last Two Albums

[mleaman@sccoast.net (Mark Leaman)]

>Yes, you make my point for me.  Pete had long complained about the fact that
>the Who were getting his best material and he did not want this to continue.
>As a result his later solo efforts were strong i.e."Empty Glass", etc.  Pete
>was getting tired of carrying the load with the Who, wasn't up to tackling
>the ambitious projects of the past, got little help from his bandmates and it
>showed - FD and IH didn't get Pete's best stuff and IH was made purely to
>fufill their MCA record contract! (they had already gotten the advance).
> Given these facts it's understandable that FD and IH turned out to be weak
>efforts.

JJM:

But you missed the point after all. IT'S HARD is a good album, with better
material than most bands were putting out at the time, and with a
performance again that was better than the majority.

>I don't really know what that response means.  You seem to be saying that the
>sales are proof enough that IH was a success and not a failure.  

That's right.

>IH is better than" Who Are You?"  I could not disagree more.  WAY went 4
>singles deep, had arguably their best song in years (the title track),
> featured much stronger contributions from Entwistle and by the standard you
>seem to rely on most, reached #2 in the US.  IH, on the hand, was an album
>made because they had to, managed but two singles, featured Kenny Jones not
>Moon and had songs like "One Life's Enough", "A Man  Is A Man", "Why Did I
>Fall For That" and "Cry If You Want".  I'd love to have seen the look on RD
>and JAE faces when Pete offered up material like this (particularly "One
>Life's Enough") for the Who.

Yes, IH is better than WAY. WAY was half an album at best, and the rest was
very weak. IH was more like 3/4 great material. Cry If You Want and A Man Is
A Man are both fine songs. Not to mention Cooks County, It's Hard, Athena,
Dangerous, etc. etc.
I see you mention Moon...whose performance was very weak on WAY.
BTW, now I see that you are suddenly using sales ("4 singles deep") to prove
your point. And I wouldn't say that Entwistle's songs on WAY are stronger
than the ones on IH, either.

>"Briefly" means for a relatively short period of time.  It charted and
>reached #8 in the US (not exactly Led Zepp like sales) and faded fairly fast.

Is Zeppelin now the sales barometer to go by? If so, then The Who never
touched them (which, of course, is ridiculous).

>Pete is on record as having said the Who were "dead dogs creatively."
>They packed it in because FD and IH were proof enough that the gas tank was
>empty, the spark was gone and they had fulfilled their obligation to MCA.  Of
>course Pete wanted to do solo albums - what would you have expected him to do
>retire and stop making music? 

Well, Townshend has said a lot of things, a lot of which contradict the
other statements. HE was the creative force in The Who (along with
Entwistle, who wrote three great songs for IH). So if he's saying that his
spark was out, then he wouldn't be doing solo albums.
BTW, The Who were under contract with Atlantic, not MCA.
Instead, he wanted to do solo work INSTEAD of Who albums. That's the real
reason they broke up, and it's obvious.


                   Cheers                   ML

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."  L. Long