Our Tarnished Who

["Schrade, Scott" <sschrade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Is The Who's image tarnished beyond repair?  Despite all the great
music, the raising of Rock to a higher level, the charitable efforts,
etc., will The Who forever be thought of as a greedy bunch of money-
grabbers who, after initial brilliance, quickly sold out, embarked
on countless "reunion" tours, disregarded the deaths of fans & long-
time band members, & cheapened the integrity of their music by allow-
ing it to be used in advertising?  Upsettingly, the answer is "yes."

I'm afraid all of us will be labored with the task of defending The
Who to "non-believers" until we're dead.  And others will have to keep
defending them after we're gone.

It seems that ever since the release of TOMMY, which irked many "hard-
core" fans up to that point, the Who's career has been peppered with
"events" which have alienated more & more Rock fans & critics alike.

Sure, their fan base has grown (and continues to grow) but let's face
it, our mighty Who is looked upon as a joke to many (many!) in the gen-
eral public.

And we can say, "Oh, fuck the general public.  What do they know?"  But
they're the ones writing the articles.  They're the ones talking in bars.
They're the ones voicing their opinions.  And *their* numbers are growing,
too, I'm afraid.

And the horribly sad part about all of this is that The Who's wonderful
body of work will be cast aside in favor of flippant comments & venom-
ous summations.  No matter how much we make our case about how great such
& such an album is there will always be people who will say, "Yeah but
didn't they....." and bring up some embarrassing facet of The Who's his-
tory.  Their genius will slowly slip away from people's minds & all that
will remain will be the jokes & the controversies.

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic here, but I feel, as we seem to be ap-
proaching the final act of this play called The Who, that this band will
forever be remembered more for their fumbles than their game-winning touch-
downs.

<sigh>


- SCHRADE in Akron