Who Are You was the last Who album Keith Moon played on; he would die two weeks after the album finally came out. Listening to the songs, one gets the impression that Pete had already used some of his better ideas on Rough Mix. Many of the songs deal with the importance of music, the result of yet another stab at Lifehouse. Pete doesn’t seem to reach any conclusions, positive or negative, and the album—while admittedly successful—is disjointed.
“New Song” crashes in with a good start, but soon ends up in a wash of synthesizers. “Had Enough” is John’s, a little too close to the Quadrophenia title. At least Roger was happy to sing one of John’s songs for a change, even if he wasn’t thrilled about the string arrangement, courtesy of Pete’s father-in-law. (This song would be ripped off in four years’ time by Asia on their first album.) “905” is also from a futuristic opera John was writing that fits just barely into whatever the Lifehouse plot was this time. “Sister Disco” has some great movements, with clever use of synthesizer with classical overtones, but to this day nobody seems to possibly understand what it’s supposed to be about. “Music Must Change” is the big statement, somewhat related to the opening track, but spread around a jazzy idea that helps set it apart from the rest of the album.
“Trick Of The Light” is one of John’s best, and perhaps the best on the album. Again sung by Roger, it appears to concern the aftermath with a hired escort, and almost poignant now considering John’s last night on earth. However, “Guitar And Pen” is easily the worst. It careens around an annoying Gilbert & Sullivan arrangement that takes too long to finish, with obnxoious vocals to match. “Love Is Coming Down” is the token pretty ballad that doesn’t quite fit Roger’s voice or the audience. Still, it’s a guilty pleasure around these parts. The title track is still classic after all these years, though if you’ve gotten used to hearing it daily on Classic Rock radio, you may have long tired of it.
As an album Who Are You hasn’t aged well, and the bonus tracks on the first reissue weren’t very revealing. “No Road Romance” is a stark Pete demo that sounds of a type with his 1975 material. An early runthrough of “Empty Glass” shows promise, yet it’s doubtful Roger would ever have sung it. The rest are alternate mixes or versions of the last three songs on side two, none very exciting.
It would have been a shame to end the band on this note, and fans still argue about whether The Who should have kept going. But they did.
About 47 years after Who Are You was first released, it made an odd selection for a Super Deluxe Edition, but even odder was what they chose to fill up six more discs and a Blu-ray with the standard assortment of hi-res mixes. (A two-CD distillation non-super deluxe edition offered the album plus a smattering of extras from the big box for those who want to spend even more money.) Glyn Johns’ original mixes (which Roger apparently hated) of seven songs appear on the second disc, along with new Steven Wilson mixes of some tracks, using Pete’s vocals in some cases and removing the orchestra on others. The third disc includes all the extras from 1996, single edits, and a pile of Entwistle demos, two of which had already appeared on a reissue of his 1972 solo album. Unlike every other Super Deluxe set from the band, none of Pete’s demos were included, which is even more maddening once you’ve sat through four more versions of “Guitar And Pen” and six of the title track. After a bootleg recording from a 1976 show where Pete noodled over the framework of that song for the first time, we hear a disc’s worth of the mostly sloppy rehearsals for their filmed appearance in The Kids Are Alright, including a not-bad version of “Run Run Run”, along with “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from the film itself, plus other songs from that final performance with Keith.
However, the balance of the remainder—including two full discs—are devoted to recordings from their 1979 tour, when Kenney Jones had taken over the drums. At this point they weren’t so much promoting the album as they breaking in the new guy; plus, with The Kids Are Alright and Quadrophenia in theaters, interest in the band was high. Most of the recordings come from a show in Michigan, with some excerpts from Philadelphia. Both of these were within a week after the concert in Cincinnati where eleven fans were trampled to death, which is one reason why Roger and Pete keep asking the crowd to make more room. They play well, and Kenney has more fire than he’d show on the albums. Rabbit Bundrick covered keyboards, and they even had an unobtrusive horn section. A lengthy “Music Must Change” is an unexpected highlight, and they jam on songs that would eventually become “How Can You Do It Alone” and “Dance It Away”. These discs probably should have been a standalone release, but apparently it made more financial sense to fill up the box with it.
The Who Who Are You (1978)—3
1996 remaster: same as 1978, plus 5 extra tracks
2025 Super Deluxe Edition: same as 1996, plus 75 extra tracks (and Blu-ray)
No comments:
Post a Comment