Monday 2nd October

Then Keith died.  The drummer from the Who dieD shortly after ‘Who Are You’ was released.  The band were at the height of their fame, nobody could touch them, they had a brilliant repertoire of songs and a great songwriter.  And yet, they would never be the same again.

Pete Townshend has had a habit of constantly looking back, at the birth of The Who, of the Mod days and recycling old material.  Nothing really wrong with that.  But The Who seems to be put on a back burner, while Pete pursued more of a solo career.  As did Roger, and to a degree John.  The band eventually recruited Kenny Jones, who used to be in The Small Faces as their new drummer and recorded a couple of albums – ‘Face Dances’ and ‘It’s Hard’ – a few good songs, but this was The Who; a few good songs weren’t half good enough really. So the band took to touring, playing Tommy and Quadrophenia and Greatest Hits shows.  Sold out concerts followed sold out concerts.  Then John died.  By then the live band had been augmented by quite a few extra players anyway.

But they had one last album to surprise us with.  ‘Endless Wire’, which is actually quite good, even if some of the songs are a bit hard to understand.

And so the duo continue with the occasional concerts and tours.  Who knows if there will ever be any new material, or of it will be any good – they are well into their Seventies now.  But looking back, what a great achievement – to have come out of the Sixties, just a pop band, and developed into one of the greatest rock bands ever.  They may even have invented punk.  But also listening again, it is surprising just how many ballads they recorded, how much of their music was acoustic guitar, how varied their songs were, how each song (almost) had great moments.  Long live Rock, and long live the Who…