The Who

The band's sounds and performances

On stage

The classic era

From around the time the band settled on its classic line-up in the mid-sixties, The Who performed as a Rock power trio modified by the addition of Roger Daltrey as a lead singer who did not play an instrument other than the occasional use of a tambourine or harmonica. From the beginning the band drew attention because all three instrumentalists — guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon — would often play lead parts, sometimes simultaneously, or the guitar or bass might assume the role of percussion while the drums added spice rather than driving the beat. The result was music more cacophonous and often more sophisticated than conventional perfomances in the Rock genre.

Related Topics:
Power trio - Roger Daltrey - Tambourine - Harmonica - Guitarist - Pete Townshend - Bass - John Entwistle - Drum - Keith Moon

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Moreover, all but Moon were competent vocalists, and shared the vocal workload. Daltrey was the official front man, centered on the stage, and served as lead singer for most songs. Entwistle sang his own compositions, and contributed humorous role-playing vocal phrases in songs such as "Summertime Blues". Townshend sometimes took over as lead singer from Daltrey, or the two took turns during a song, singing alternate verses as in "Naked Eye" or exploiting a distinctive format in many of Townshend's compositions where Daltrey would sing the verses and Townshend would sing during a bridge or interlude that contrasted stylistically with the rest of the song, as in "Bargain".

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The surfeit of singers also let them use three-part harmonies in rich choruses such as the "Listening to You" motif in Tommy, and to provide a chorus of ethereal background "Ahhh"s in songs such as "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Odorono". They also used background vocals in other creative ways, such as the clever staccato "Laugh laugh laugh"/"Lap lap lap" syllables echoing the sense of the lead vocal in "Happy Jack" and the humorous "Cello cello cello" chorus purportedly inspired by being unable to afford a string section when going into the studio to record "A Quick One, While He's Away".

Related Topics:
Tommy - Staccato

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Later changes

In 1971 they began supplementing their stage act with pre-recorded

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synthesizer "continuo" parts in order to cover material such as "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" from that year's Who's Next album. In addition to feeding the synthesizer tracks to their stage monitors, drummer Keith Moon would wear headphones to ensure that he heard the recording clearly enough to sync the band with it. When they first introduced these recordings technical difficulties sometimes severely disrupted concerts, causing the band members' notorious tempers to flare onstage.

Related Topics:
Synthesizer - Continuo - Baba O'Riley - Won't Get Fooled Again - Who's Next - Stage monitors

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After the death of Keith Moon in 1978 The Who gave up the power trio format, with new drummer Kenney Jones formerly of the Small Faces, and began touring with a keyboardist, usually John "Rabbit" Bundrick, and a small horn section, none of whom were officially members of the band. They soon scaled back to just a keyboardist backing the band, but returned to the inflated touring line-up, even adding a second guitarist and back-up singers, on the 1989 tour. The 1996 and 1997 tours also featured this expanded line-up which helped them bring to life their classic rock opera Quadrophenia. Beginning in 1999 The Who returned to the power trio format with only a keyboardist augmenting the sound and then added Pete Townshend's brother Simon Townshend on second guitar and backing vocals in 2002 (who had also played the Quadrophenia shows).

Related Topics:
Keith Moon - 1978 - Power trio - Kenney Jones - Small Faces - Keyboardist - John "Rabbit" Bundrick - Horn section - 1989 - 1996 - 1997 - Quadrophenia - 1999 - Pete Townshend - Simon Townshend - 2002

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The Who began their career by covering and imitating Rhythm and Blues hits, and never completely abandoned those roots. Even after moving on to other types of material they continued to perform R&B classics such as "Young Man Blues" and "Summertime Blues" throughout their performing career, including their late reunion tours.

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Other aspects of their performances

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The musicians of the Who were also natural showmen: singer Daltrey was a dynamic front man, twirling his microphone on the end of its cord, while Townshend played crashing chords on his guitar with great windmill-like sweeps of his arms and the maniacal Moon battered his drums powerfully. Through all that mayhem, Entwistle stood still, often for the entire length of the show, seemingly bored by the whole affair, playing intricate, powerful, innovative bass lines as if he had the stage to himself. The band members also punctuated their performances with jokes, tricks, and over-the-top introductions to the songs; Townshend once commented that only the cessation of touring saved them from degenerating into a vaudeville act. During performances, they would often chat with members of the audience between songs.

Related Topics:
Windmill - Vaudeville

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In the early days, The Who was most famous for smashing their instruments at the end of their concerts, and would often throw the damaged remains into the audience. One of the most famous times this happened was on The Smothers Brothers Show, when Moon rigged his drum set with double the normal amounts of explosives. This would signal that the band had given all it had, and generated some coveted souvenirs as a side effect. Townshend cites his art school mentor Gustav Metzger as an influence, who had developed a concept called Auto-Destructive Art. Although The Who mostly stopped smashing their instruments around the time of Tommy, they would occasionally do it long afterwards.

Related Topics:
The Smothers Brothers Show - Gustav Metzger - Tommy

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They were also notorious for how they treated their hotel rooms and dressing rooms, particularly Moon. The band was arrested for this on at least one occasion, in Montreal, and were for many years banned from the Holiday Inn hotel chain. Led Zeppelin, a hard rock act of the same era, was equally famous for their wild antics and parties in their lodgings, but the Who were generally considered the worst in this category.

Related Topics:
Holiday Inn - Led Zeppelin

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The Who's live performances were traditionally extremely loud. For most of the 1970s they were listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest Rock band in the world, measured at 130 decibels, though other bands have since taken over that dubious honor. Townshend's later partial deafness and tinnitus is well known; popular legends hold that the members of the band suffered permanent hearing loss from their loud concerts, or that Townshend's right ear was damaged as a result of being too close to the drum kit when Moon detonated an oversized concussion bomb in it at the conclusion of a performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. Townshend, however, maintains that the true cause was listening to the music at high volume through headphones.

Related Topics:
1970s - Guinness Book of World Records - Decibels - Tinnitus - Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - Headphones

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Various members of the band wore "trademark" dress on stage and in photo shoots at various periods of the band's history. During the 1960s Pete Townshend sported a jacket made of a Union Jack. (Reportedly the Irish Republican Army threatened to blow up the band on stage if he wore it at an appearance in Ireland, but Townshend had planned ahead and provided himself with a jacket more sympathetic to Irish nationalist sentiments.) At the end of the decade he switched to a simple jumpsuit or boiler suit, and appears wearing it in the Woodstock footage. For a period John Entwistle wore a Halloween-style skeleton suit in concert. From the late 1960s through most of the 1970s Roger Daltrey appeared in a fringede buckskin jacket or vest, and can be seen wearing it in most film footage of the era.

Related Topics:
Union Jack - Irish Republican Army - Jumpsuit - Boiler suit - Woodstock - Halloween - Buckskin

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In the studio

Sounds

The Who's studio sound was originally quite similar to the modified power trio sound of their age fact, albeit recorded with overdubs and other standard studio tricks. (One of the two guitar solos on "I Can't Explain" was purportedly dubbed in by Jimmy Page.) As the sixties progressed their studio sound was progressively modified by the use of overdubs to add complete additional parts without the need for additional musicians, rather than simply as an ordinary studio technique for capturing clean takes of vocal and solo parts. The added parts were usually additional guitar and keyboard parts for Pete Townshend, though horn parts by John Entwistle were added to a few songs. When Tommy came out in 1969 the mix included not only electric guitar, bass, drums, and three-part vocals, but additional tracks for acoustic guitar, piano, organ, and horn, as if performed by six or eight instrumentalists rather than the actual three. As a result of this expansion many of their recorded songs have a dense sound with rich textures and fine details that can only be appreciated through careful headphone listenings.

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Tommy also featured some of Townshend's early use of synthetic sounds, a recording of the click and fade of a piano note or some sort of percussion instrument dubbed in from a reversed tape to give a reversed sound that grows louder up to a sharp cut-off, used in the song "Amazing Journey". His interest in synthetic sounds blossomed when he acquired an early ARP synthesizer and used it very aggressively on the 1971 Who's Next album. Though other keyboard instruments continued to be used in the band's recordings, and they briefly returned to a leaner sound for the 1975 The Who By Numbers album, Townshend's adoption of the synthesizer and the near-simultaneous maturation of studio recording equipment and techniques led to a big, solid, "modern" sound that became the signature of the post-classic era Who.

Related Topics:
Percussion instrument - ARP

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Genres

The studio albums of the sixties chronicle the phases of the band's ventures into several sub-genres of Rock music. Their 1965 My Generation UK album (Released in US 1966 in slightly altered form, "The Who Sings My Generation") features covers of popular Rhythm and Blues songs performed with a heavy sound that The Who promoted as "Maximum R&B". On their 1966 A Quick One UK album (Released in US 1967 in slightly altered form, "Happy Jack") they abandoned R&B in favor of an experiment in Pop music as an aural counterpart to the Pop art movement. By the time of their 1967 The Who Sell Out album they had mostly abandoned the Pop experiment, instead offering a mixture of psychedelic music and other songs of no specific sub-genre characteristics. With their release of Tommy in 1969 they permanently gave up their experiments with sub-genres, and settled on a mainstream Rock sound, albeit well toward the "hard" end of the spectrum and featuring many of the characteristics of progressive rock, though not actually participating in that movement.

Related Topics:
My Generation - Rhythm and Blues - A Quick One - Pop art - The Who Sell Out - Psychedelic music - Tommy - Progressive rock

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In the background of those major trends in The Who's music there were several other minor tendencies. Keith Moon always wanted to play Surfer Music, and two or three tunes in that genre eventually appeared on the band's B-sides or collection albums, such as the tune "The Ox" from My Generation. As time passed Pete Townshend increasingly incorporated Jazz motifs into his composition, singing, and playing, but even when present they tend to be masked by the Hard Rock sound of the band in ensemble. Finally, as with most of the early British Rock musicians, the members of The Who were greatly influnced by Country Music, though the genre rarely appears in their recordings unless transformed almost beyond recognition.

Related Topics:
Surfer Music - My Generation - Jazz - Country Music

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