Who article from Thursday's London Telegraph

[Brian Cady <cadyb@home.com>]

Available on line at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000140326706927&rtmo=LlbllNLd&atmo=llllP14x&pg=/et/00/8/3/bmpete03.html

The article also contains a link to TheWho.net!

Smash, bang, crash - the Who are back

Roger Daltrey says the Who sound as good as ever. Pete Townshend thinks
they're a spent force. This clash of visions hasn't stopped them
embarking on a world tour and planning their first new album in two
decades. Neil McCormick reports:

I've waited a long time to see this. At a windswept open-air stadium in
the state of New York, in front of 30,000 roaring fans, the Who are
delivering a set of wild and reckless rock and roll. Stocky and bearded,
John Entwistle stands imperiously stage left, fingers gliding up and
down the fretboard, virtuoso bass runs rumbling into the night. Roger
Daltrey, who has roared his throat raw and hoarse, holds stage centre,
swinging his microphone above his head like a demented lasso artist,
daring anyone to come close. Behind him, Zak Starkey, son of Ringo,
occupies Keith Moon's drum seat with fearless confidence, flaying those
tom-toms to within an inch of their life. And buzzing all around the
stage with restless energy is the strange figure of Pete Townshend. 

Dressed like a distinguished pallbearer at a state funeral, but throwing
shapes like a hyperactive punk on speed, he attacks his poor
Stratocaster guitar as if it might be forced to yield up the secrets of
the universe, thrashing out power chords with his windmilling right arm,
bending notes hopelessly out of tune with a whammy bar, squeezing the
last drops of feedback from his amplifier before (apparently incensed by
the guitar's failure to surrender its mysteries) he lifts the Strat
above his head and brings it down on the stage with a force that cracks
the neck and sends a shockwave through the stadium.

The crowd roar and Daltrey grins with astonishment as Townshend enacts a
ritual of autodestruction long absent from his repertoire, smashing that
guitar again and again until there is nothing left but some broken bits
of wood and a scrawl of electric noise. Then he spits on it and stalks
off stage.

OK...I know Townshend has got through an awful lot of guitars in his
time and perhaps this really was nothing more that a moment of high
theatre, an act of showmanship certain to delight an audience keen to
rekindle the fires of their collective youth...but I'm not sure. If this
outburst of musical violence retains the power to astonish, it may be
because (now more than ever) it is a genuine expression of Townshend's
tormented relationship with his band, his audience, his muse and,
ultimately, himself. 

When Townshend wrote My Generation in 1965, requiring Daltrey to deliver
the epigrammatic line "I hope I die before I get old" with all the
nihilistic arrogance of youth, the Who could not have begun to
comprehend the albatross they were hanging around their necks. Their
generation are close to pensionable age now, but the Who are back on the
stadium circuit once again, delivering sets so musically vigorous,
emotionally committed and artistically vital they might be designed to
defy reproach for the group's unexpected longevity. 

Looking remarkably fit and well-preserved backstage, Daltrey certainly
proves unapologetic about the return to the stage of a band who haven't
released an original recording since the (ironically rather weak) It's
Hard album in 1982. "We did the Quadrophenia tour with a big ensemble
three years ago as a kind of experiment in arena theatre, and it was
very successful, but it wasn't the Who as I like to see them," the
former Rock God announces while sipping from a cup of tea.

"This is the way the Who works best: stripped down, four-to-the-floor,
in the raw. And as long as you are in a condition where you can still
perform it, well, you know you are going to get criticised for being 56
years old, but everybody out there is getting older. The music itself
grows with you, it lives and breathes and it changes. We've been
deliberately under-rehearsing, so a lot is improvised onstage and there
is the occasional cock-up, but it sometimes leads to the occasional
spark of brilliance, which is what we search for. And I'm biased, I
know, but I think we've been finding it a lot on this tour."

The Who's acknowledged leader, however, does not seem to share his
colleague's uncomplicated perspective. "It's over, there is no question
that it is over in my mind, and it was over a long time ago," Townshend
announces emphatically when I enquire whether this represents an
artistically valid development in the Who's career. "It's practically 30
years since the Who have made a halfway decent record."

Townshend's reputation as one of rock's most visionary thinkers and
creative artists is long established. Articulate and passionate, his
delivery underpinned with ironic humour and a strong sense of the
dramatic, he proves a fascinating conversationalist, even if he doesn't
leave a great deal of room for actual conversation. He has a tendency to
embark on long and involved monologues bursting with so many ideas you
hardly dare interrupt lest he loses one of the many threads and it all
collapses into an impenetrable mess.

Speaking to Townshend about the Who, it is hard to escape the sense of
tapping into an ongoing internal debate, in which he tosses back and
forth the pros and cons of the band that has been part of his life since
1964. "When the Who's early energy faded we became a stupendously good
stadium rock band, but it was a very, very wearing place to be and it
ended in 1982," he says. "And it ended in a whimpery way that for me was
humiliating, traumatic, kind of tragic and also hurtful because I felt
that too many people wanted me to take the blame. But the fact was that
I believed the Who was a completely and utterly spent force with no real
visceral, physical or spiritual energy left."

So what, you could be forgiven for asking, is Townshend doing back
onstage playing Won't Get Fooled Again? This was a question to which he
is unable to provide a particularly convincing answer. He acknowledges
elements of "the nostalgic, the sentimental and the purely fiscal" in
the Who's continued existence, but suggests "mostly it's about a group
of friends and musicians, and I suppose rights-holders, finding ways to
try to be with each other in the present day". With this, Townshend
checks himself, before adding: "If you talk to Roger you might get a
different picture."

Daltrey could be said to represent the earthy, vigorous, common man
element of the Who's identity, in contrast to Townshend's role as
intellectual, visionary idealist. Once, perhaps, their differences were
blurred by the madness of Keith Moon (whom Daltrey describes as "the
band's alter ego") but now, following the long period of mutual
antagonism that settled in after Moon's death, they seem to have come to
appreciate one another's qualities and treasure a friendship that
stretches back to schooldays. "It would be wrong for me to contradict
what Roger says, believes and feels because I want to support him,"
Townshend says with touching diplomacy. "If he can do what he wants to
do, I am here for him." Whether this loyalty will extend as far as
recording another Who album remains the burning question. 

Townshend claims to be enjoying this tour (which begins in the UK in
November), perhaps more than any before, in part because he feels
liberated from responsibility. "I take delight in being inventive and
creative on the stage without feeling I have got any agenda to live up
to," he says. "I think we're a shit-kicking band. And I know everyone's
kind of looking at me and thinking, 'Well, come up with something', but
I know what I'll do is go home and write a string quartet or something!"

Time and again, Townshend reiterates his uncertainty about his ability
to write material to match the Who's classics. He talks perceptively
about how the drive for his best songs stemmed from exploring
"adolescent rites of passage", and admits that, as far as he is
concerned, "the vein ran dry after Quadrophenia. I never got close to
that standard again". Somewhat surprisingly, however, he reveals that
the Who will be going into the studio when this tour ends next year,
where they will work on material of Daltrey and Entwistle's and, if he
can find the inspiration, perhaps Townshend's, too. 

"In order to try to do it I've got to be prepared to fail," he says.
"And I don't know that I am. But we will see what Roger and John and I
can come up with. What we might make today is a nice rock record, but I
don't know quite what it will connect with. We're going to do it,
though. We're going to see what happens."

The UK leg of the tour starts on Nov 2. Tickets: 0115 912 9242 
 
        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
         http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm