Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Who
Posted by Mike_H on 8 May 2011 - 3:25am.
were far better as a Pop band than they ever were as a Rock band.
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Well...
...they certainly had a run of almost 20 consecutive incredible singles from I Can't Explain 1n 1965 to Let's See Action in 1971. So I suppose that makes them a pop band.
No one except the Fabs and the Stones came close to that.
Their albums meanwhile (like all UK bands of the time except the Beatles) were patchy affairs with moments of brilliance.
Only Who's Next and, at a stretch, Tommy really hold up as really great rock albums.
Live At Leeds was wonderful too, of course, but do live LPs count?
The last time I saw the Who live I was struck by how great their early singles were and remember thinking we'll never see the like of them again.
Fabs and Stones?
Cliff and the Shads? They're none too shabby in the pop single genre.
Hmmm...
No one respects Cliff & the Shads more than me, but their best singles were not consecutive and Cliff especially produced a lot of dross between the gems.
I feel the Who, Stones and Fabs' singles were more consistently brilliant, not to mention genre defining.
The Kinks
As Pete would agree.
Disagree
Their best two albums, Who's Next and Live at Leeds, are pure rock (especially Leeds).
Coincidentally
I have just taken them off my ipod as I realised that I never play them. I much prefer their 60s singles and find their later stuff increasingly laughable.
Led Zep are another band that have gone as I don't find their stuff a fraction as exciting as I thought I did when I was fifteen. And that was in the early nineties rather than at the time of release.
Completely agree.....
....they were better looking and wore better clothes as well.
My cut off point for them (and pretty much everyone else) are the 'Dogs' and 'Magic Bus' singles in '68.
'Tommy' was far more acoustic and melodic than I remembered it when it got a spin a few years ago but, alas, the numerous stage productions and the dire film can never truly rescue it, and the Leeds, Who's Next, Lifehouse, Quad stuff just sounds like dull plodding prog rock to me.
It's why I'm always curious when the 60s and the 1970s get lumped together in a sentence.
The 50s and 60s, I get.....but the 60s and the lumpen dirge afterwards are polar opposites.
I agree
about the differences between the 60s and 70s. I think the two main changes were the emergence of "rock" as an accepted stance (in the 60s it was all just "pop") and a sweeping change in recording trends (50s/60s = echoey, wet, live ; 70s = warm, dry, layered, smooth).
The Who are typical of that change in stance and sound.
My two favourite Who albums are...
Who's Next and Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, so I guess that's a 1-1 draw. Love 'em both.
Meaty Beaty...
As a pop hits compilation, "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy" is pretty much unbeatable in my opinion, for sheer excitement. The inside of the gatefold also features a picture of the punters entrance to the long-since-demolished Railway Hotel in Wealdstone. One of the great lost venues, where I saw a good few good bands.
"A Quick One" and "The Who Sell Out" are superb pre-rock albums but I'll admit "Who's Next" and "Live At Leeds" are great rock albums.
MBB&B unequivocably swings it in pop's direction for me, however.
For George Starostin..
..the music critic, the Who are one of a only very esteemed handful who make the 'A' list and here are the reasons why:
http://starling.rinet.ru/music/index.htm
Couldn't agree more
Pop trumps rock, always.
Not for me...
...it doesn't! That said, I've always thought of the Who as pop-ish rock. I don't care for metally stuff at all, but there's a certain epic, uncontrived quality about early 70s rock (the Who, Mountain, et al) that's delightful. Ditto the Gods of fusion from the same era.
To me, the Who performing live in the early 70s - using their 60s singles as vehicles - is a perfect marriage. And when will they ever get around to releasing San Francisco 1971 in full?
Agreed
in part: the Who live in 1970 were indestructible, as Live At Leeds demonstrates. But personally I think they crossed that line into rock pantomime quite soon after that: the key moment being when they started using synthesiser backing tracks.
The Who Sell Out is a favourite of mine
It´s the best of their earlier, er, not rock opera ones, and almost as good as Live At Leeds and Who´s Next. It tends to get overshadowed, which is unfair.
The Who were simply the best
Psychedelic Pop Prog Operatic Mod Rock band ever...
I always thought they were a heavy R&B band who happened
to be popular.
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere is far, far removed from anything else that 1965 threw out inc the Stones.
Never put together a "classic" LP though despite the run of utterly impeccable singles from 1964 - 1971
Hmm
No-one seems to have mentioned Quadrophenia. That, Who's Next and Live at Leeds are my favourite Who platters.