The Who

•→http://genius.com/search?q=the+who⇐

Why don’t you all f-fade away   (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
And don’t try to d-dig what we all s-s-say  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
I’m not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-generation (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)

This is my generation – This is my generation, baby

People try to put us d-down   (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)

This is my generation – This is my generation, baby

We’ll be fighting in the streets with our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again …

The change, it had to come – We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same and history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution . . .

I’ll move myself and my family aside if we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?

There’s nothing in the streets looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution . . .

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss  same as the old boss

◊→ ‘Baba O’Riley’ ↓ ‘Teenage Wasteland’⇐

   ⇔    

… I don’t mind other guys dancing with my girl
That’s fine, I know them all pretty well
But I know sometimes I must get out in the light
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don’t, I’ll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they’re alright
The kids are alright

I know if I go things would be a lot better for her
I had things planned, but her folks wouldn’t let her

•→ Tommy ←[Live] ⇓ (…lyrics)

◊  Paul Crowder’s  Amazing Journey ↓

 The Story of  The Who ⇐(clip_2007)

§  Keith Moon

←Keith Moon←

¤  John Entwistle  ⇔‘ Thunderfingers’←

•→ Pete Townshend & Steve Luongo chat about John Entwistle←

This is the director’s cut of Steve Luongo’s interview with Pete Townshend for «An Ox’s Tale» which features an additional 15 minutes from their very candid 3 hour + conversation.

Some of this footage is also featured in «Amazing Journey» 

◊→’ Call Me Lightning’  ↓ [1969]

∇   A Quick One (While He’s Away)  ⇓

◊   ‘Behind Blue Eyes’  ⇓   [1971]

No one knows what it’s like  to be the bad man
To be the sad man  – Behind blue eyes
No one knows what it’s like  to be hated
To be fated  to telling only lies
But my dreams  – They aren’t as empty  as my conscience seems to be 
I have hours, only lonely  –  My love is vengeance that’s never free

No one knows what it’s like  to feel these feelings
Like I do  – And I blame you
No one bites back as hard  on their anger
None of my pain and woe  can show through
But my dreams  . . .

When my fist clenches, crack it open – Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news – Before I laugh and act like a fool
If I swallow anything evil – Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket – Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it’s like  to be the bad man – To be the sad man  – Behind blue eyes.

      ◊→  5.15  ↓ (1973)

 – Why should I care?  Why should I care . . .

♦→ ‘Squeeze Box’  ⇓  [1975]

Mama’s got a squeeze box she wears on her chest
And when Daddy comes home he never gets no rest

‘Cause she’s playing all night and the music’s all right
Mama’s got a squeeze box – Daddy never sleeps at night

Well the kids don’t eat and the dog can’t sleep
There’s no escape from the music in the whole damn street

‘Cause she’s playing all night . . .
She goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out
… Mama’s got a squeeze box – Daddy never sleeps at night

She goes, squeeze me, come on and squeeze me
Come on and tease me like you do – I’m so in love with you
Mama’s got a squeeze box – Daddy never sleeps at night

She goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out
‘Cause she’s playing all night . . .

∇     ‘My Wife’   ⇓   [1977]

My life’s in jeopardy
Murdered in cold blood is what I’m gonna be
I ain’t been home since Friday night
And now my wife is coming after me

Give me police protection – Gonna buy a gun so
I can look after number one
Give me a bodyguard, a black belt Judo expert with a machine gun

Gonna buy a tank and an aeroplane
When she catches up with me won’t be no time to explain
She thinks I’ve been with another woman
And that’s enough to send her half insane
Gonna buy a fast car – Put on my lead boots
And take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money
But I’ll still be alive

All I did was have a bit too much to drink
And I picked the wrong precinct
Got picked up by the law and now I ain’t got time to think

Gonna buy a tank and an aeroplane . . .

And I’m oh so tired of running – Gonna lay down on the floor
I gotta rest some time so I can get to run some more

She’s comin’ ! ! !

∇   ‘You Better You Bet’  ⇓   [1981]

∇   ‘Naked Eye’     ⇓  [2017]

Take a little dope and walk out in the air
The stars are all connected to the brain
Find me a woman and I lay down on the ground
Her pleasure comes falling down like rain
Get myself a car,  feel power as I fly
Oh now I’m really in control
It all looks fine when you look with the naked eye
But it don’t really happen that way at all
Don’t happen that way at all!

You sign your own name and I sign mine
They’re both the same but we still get separate rooms
You can cover up your guts but when you cover up your nuts
You’re really admitting that there must be something wrong
Press any button and milk and honey flows
The world begins behind your neighbor’s wall
It all looks fine when you look with your naked eye
But it don’t really happen that way at all
Don’t happen that way at all!

You hold the gun and I hold the wound
And we stand looking in each other’s eyes
Both think we know what’s right
Both know we know what’s wrong
We tell ourselves so many many many lies
We’re not pawns in any game
We’re not tools of bigger men
There’s only one who can really move us all
It all looks fine when you look with the naked eye
But it don’t really happen that way at all …

∇   ‘Ball & Chain’     ⇓  [2019]

•  London 2012  The Who / Olympics Finale ⇒

‘Great’ Britain,  midgeted by Brazil at the Olympic Games until The Who turned up. . .

[. . . «Baba O’Riley»]

Out here in the fields  –  I fight for my meals  –  I get my back into my living
I don’t need to fight  –  To prove I’m right  –  I don’t need to be forgiven
Don’t cry  –  Don’t raise your eye  –  It’s only teenage wasteland

Sally take my hand  –  Travel south crossland – Put out the fire  –  Don’t look past my shoulder
The exodus is here  –  The happy ones are near – Let’s get together  –  Before we get much older

[. . . «We’re Not Gonna Take It»]

See me,  feel me – Touch me, heal me  . . .

Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet

Right behind you, I see the millions  

On you, I see the glory
From you, I get opinions  

From you, I get the story . . .

[. . . «My generation»]

People try to put us d-down  (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)
Just because we get around   (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation)

I’m not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
I’m just talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-g-generation

This is my generation  –  This is my generation, baby . . .

♦→  SuperBowl XLIV Half-Time Show  ⇐  2010

↓   Medley  .  .  .

•  «Pinball Wizard»

•  «Baba O’Riley»

Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals – I get my back into my living
I don’t need to fight to prove I’m right – I don’t need to be forgiven
Don’t cry  –  Don’t raise your eye  –  It’s only teenage wasteland

Sally take my hand  –  Travel south cross land
Put out the fire and don’t look past my shoulder
The exodus is here  –  The happy ones are near
Let’s get together  Before we get much older

Teenage wasteland – oh yeah, it’s only teenage wasteland . . . We’re all wasted

•  «Who Are You»

•  «See Me, Feel Me»    –   See me, feel me, touch me, heal me . . .

•  «We won’t get fooled again»

We’ll be fighting in the streets  with our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on, they  sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution – Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play  just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray – We don’t get fooled again …

♦  Endless Wire Tour  ⇓  [Glastonbury_2007]

1. I Can’t Explain 
2. The Seeker 
3. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere 
4. Fragments 
5. Who Are You 
6. Behind Blue Eyes
   
7. Baba O’Riley 
   
8. Relay  
9. You Better You Bet  
10. My Generation 
    
11. Won’t Get Fooled Again 
12. The Kids Are Alright
    
13. Pinball Wizard 
14. Amazing Journey 
15. Sparks 
16. See Me, Feel Me 
    
17. Tea & Theatre 

• end scene from the movie [1979]⇒

←Quadrophenia – Can You See the Real Me?

[doc_2012]  ↓

In his home studio and revisiting old haunts in Shepherds Bush and Battersea, Pete Townshend opens his heart and his personal archive to revisit ‘the last great album the Who ever made’, one that took the Who full circle back to their earliest days via the adventures of a pill-popping mod on an epic journey of self-discovery.

But in 1973 Quadrophenia was an album that almost never was. Beset by money problems, a studio in construction, heroin-taking managers, a lunatic drummer and a culture of heavy drinking, Townshend took on an album that nearly broke him and one that within a year the band had turned their back on and would ignore for nearly three decades.

With unseen archive and in-depth interviews from Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, John Entwistle and those in the studio and behind the lens who made the album and thirty page photo booklet. Contributors include: Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Ethan Russell, Ron Nevison, Richard Barnes, Irish Jack Lyons, Bill Curbishley, John Woolf, Howie Edelson, Mark Kermode and Georgiana Steele Waller.

•  ‘Guantanamo’  ⇑  [2015]

Down in Guantanamo  we still got the ball and chain
Down in Guantanamo  we still got the ball and chain
The pretty piece of Cuba rezoned to cause men pain
When you light up in Cuba you won’t feel the same again

Down in Guantanamo – Still waiting for the big cigars
Down in Guantanamo – Still waiting for the big cigars
Been a breach of promise – Still guilty with no charge
There’s smoke in the forest and the humor is cooking large

Down in Guantanamo  we still got the ball and chain
Down in Guantanamo  we still got the ball and chain
There’s a long road to travel for justice to make its claim
Let’s bring down the gavel – Let the prisoner say his name

We still got the ball and chain . . . We still got the ball and chain
Let the prisoner say his name

*********************************************

←Pete Townshend interviewed by Alexis Petridis [The Guardian, 9 October 2012]

¤  Pete Townshend  ↓  ‘Who I Am’  

¤  Listen to Pete Townshend read from his autobiography  ‘Who I Am’ →

•  CHAPTER 12

–   TOMMY: THE MYTHS, THE MUSIC, THE MUD

The Who were to play on day two of the festival, the last show on Saturday night, following Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin. Someone suggested that, because of problems on the local roads, we should leave early for our set. Karen and I made a quick decision that the baby needed peace and quiet, so I would go to the festival site alone. I slipped into my Doc Martens and my white boiler-suit, and we climbed into a limo. Our drivers said the helicopters had stopped flying when the charter company realised they weren’t going to get paid. Wiggy’s ears pricked up. He was responsible for collecting our fee.

It took ninety minutes to drive two miles along a road so muddy that occasionally we needed to be pushed by passers-by. The road was littered with abandoned motorcycles and cars, some still containing tents and other belongings. It looked like a wartime flight. John and Keith were behaving strangely in the car. We’d only been in the hotel for fifteen minutes and they’d managed to score dope.

The scene greetings us at the backstage area of the festival was horrific. The entire parking area was a slurry of thick, gelatinous mud. The backstage crew were covered in it, and their travels back and forth to the stage were traipsing mud everywhere. As I got out of the car I slipped and sank up to my knees.

There were no dressing rooms available so we went to a tent with a hot-water machine, tea-bags, instant coffee and a coffee dispenser. I helped myself, and within minutes realised the water had been spiked with acid. It was fairly dilute, but as the low-level trip kicked in about twenty minutes later I noticed a photo of Meher Baba posted high on a telegraph pole. It was a wonderful moment. The image was ubiquitous at the time. Meher Baba as a young man, handsome, long-haired, Christ-like. It felt like a sign to me that everything would be OK.

Then tragedy struck. As I gazed at the photo a young man, barefoot and shirtless, clearly out of his head, leapt up on the roof of an ambulance parked under a telegraph pole and gracefully shinned up some thirty feet. As he touched the photo he screamed and fell backwards, landing on top of the ambulance. The telegraph pole was in fact a power line. Then paramedics ran out to attend to the unconscious man. When I went into the first-aid tent to investigate I thought I had walked into the set of M*A*S*H. There were cots of patients everywhere, mainly young people on bad trips, but some injured, mostly kids suffering from bouts of terror.

Back outside the tent I saw the faces of John and Keith peeping out from the back window of a station wagon. They waved and grinned; later I learned that each of them had a girl’s mouth around their cocks.

I walked alone on the edge of the main field where most of the audience gathered. Rumour had it that over a million people had come to Woodstock, and it looked like half that number were scattered on the hill. The light was fading fast as I entered an eerie woodland scene: naked fairies dancing between the trees, dealers carrying trays of readymade joints, tabs of acid, hash, grass and rolling papers.

As I broke through the woods I came across the open area where most of the campers were strewn about. Thousands sat listening to the music pulsating up the hill from the stage, as though in a natural amphitheatre. The sound system wasn’t bad, but neither was it designed to cover such a massive area. Occasionally someone would try to engage me, sometimes a loved-up soul on trip, smiling and kind, sometimes another over-stocked boy like the one on the pole, demanding money or drugs, threatening violence, then laughing and running away at lightning speed like a woodland sprite.

The highlight that night had been Sly and the Family Stone, who had whipped the crowd into a muddy lather with ‘I Want to Take You Higher’. Instead of acid they must have been doing cocaine: the music was urgent, dark and powerful. By now, in the early morning hours, Janis Joplin was finishing her encore, ‘Ball and Chain’, which would cap the last set before ours. She has been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn’t at her best, probably due to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she’d consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible.

As our turn on stage approached, I worried about losing the effect of the stage lights. I asked someone what time the sun was gonna rise. As we set up our gear and began to play, some of the people in sleeping bags started rubbing their eyes and sitting up. As usual, I was pounding around like a frothing pony, fighting to keep my Gibson SG in tune, constantly fiddling with my amplifiers.

Whoever was doing the lights had chosen white lamps for Roger, so his long, curly hair looked like golden fire. He was mostly singing with his eyes firmly closed. Suddenly someone appeared at Roger’s feet holding a big film camera. Roger nearly tripped over him, so I pushed the invader back down into the press-pit in front of the stage. It turned out to be Michael Wadleigh, filming the documentary that would make Woodstock legendary.

Vulnerable now, Roger moved in ways that seemed to mean something deeper. His whirling microphone and mythical poses suggested frustration and pain, his sweat an angelic sheen that evoked an Old Master painting. By contrast, John and Keith were laid back. They’d dropped acid and consorted with a couple of friendly fans, and it showed. Skilled musicians that they were, however, they were still able to follow my lead.

As we started to play ‘Acid Queen’ I put myself in character, imagining myself as the black-hearted gypsy who had promised to bring Tommy out of his autistic condition but was actually a sexual monster, using drugs to break him. As I walked to the mike stand, someone stepped in front of me, trying to stop the music. It was Abbie Hoffman. ‘This is a crock of shit,’ he shouted into the mike, waving his arms at the audience. ‘My friend [the Detroit poet] John Sinclair is in jail for one lousy joint and …’ He got no further.

Still playing the ‘Acid Queen’ intro, and still feeling malevolent, I knocked Abbie aside using the headstock of my guitar. A sharp end of one of my strings must have pierced his skin because he reacted as though stung, retreating to sit cross-legged at the side of the stage. He glowered at me, his neck bleeding.

I finished the song and looked over at him. «Sorry about that,» I mouthed.

‘Fuck you,’ he mouthed back, and left the stage.

I was always absurdly territorial about our performance space. This may have been instilled in me as a little boy with my father’s band, the Squadronaires: the stage was sacrosanct.

By the time we hit ‘I’m Free’ most of the audience was on its feet. Before I knew it, Roger was singing ‘See me, feel me, touch me, heal me’ to waves of young people who suddenly realised that Tommy was music unwittingly designed for precisely this kind of festival, for this particular moment, for them. At one point Keith shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, Pete. No more!’ I went into a long, feedback-rich guitar solo as the sky behind the hillside began to pale with the first signs of dawn. Ebullient but weary, I struck my guitar on the floor a few times, tossed it into the audience and The Who went back to London.

◊  Pete Townshend  ↓  Lifehouse Chronicles – Disc 3

0:00 – Baba M1 (O’Riley 2nd Movement 1971)
3:04 – Who Are You (Gateway Remix — From Shepherds Bush Empire 1998)

12:09 – Behind Blue Eyes (New version 1999)
16:06 – Baba M2 (2nd Movement Part 1 1971)

19:24 – Pure and Easy (Original Demo Reworked 1999)
28:40 – Vivaldi (Baba M5 on Psychoderelict) with Hame 1999)

31:22 – Who Are You (Live and Uncut at the Shepherds Bush Empire 1998)
44:09 – Hinterland Rag (Piano Rag for Three Hands — Yamaha Disklavier 1999)

46:58 – Pure and Easy (New Version 1999)
51:45 – Can You Help the One You Really Love? (Demo 1999)

56:49 – Won’t Get Fooled Again (Live and Uncut at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire 1998)

•  Pure and Easy  [lyrics]