Sixty-one years after forming in London, England, The Who (www.thewho.com) will perform the first show of its The Song Is Over: North American Farewell Tour at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise on August 16.
It’s what amounts to a local dress rehearsal, something touring acts sometimes do as beachside tuneups in our cylindrical coastal state, where the road toward the Southernmost Point in the United States qualifies as the road to nowhere else.
The Who’s original lineup of lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, guitarist/vocalist Pete Townshend, bassist/vocalist John Entwistle (1944-2002), and drummer/vocalist Keith Moon (1946-1978) first convened in 1964 as perhaps the best-singing band since The Beatles. That famed quartet headlined the British Invasion, along with fellow never-say-die group the Rolling Stones, through the 1960s. Yet now only Daltrey (who’s 81 years old) and Townshend (80) remain from The Who.
The Fab Four burned out rather than fading away in 1970 due to internal differences, but the Stones and The Who have soldiered on through five-and-a-half decades of death, egos and other mayhem since — for better and for worse — while eventually becoming tribute acts to themselves in the process.
Both the Stones and The Who were more pop than rock in the mid-’60s, and followed up groundbreaking 1969 albums (Let It Bleed and Tommy, respectively) by arguably peaking creatively as harder-edged acts during the subsequent decade. The Who released one of the all-time great concert albums, Live at Leeds, in 1970. An extended version in 1995 featured additional selections from Tommy, not to mention some of Moon’s best-ever speed-king thrashing.
The following studio gems included the titanic Who’s Next (1971) and double album Quadrophenia (1973), an arguably better rock opera than Tommy if a far inferior resulting film. It was that five-year period from 1969-1973 when The Who were at their creative apex in the studio and their loudest, most bombastic and best live.
Shows from that era showcased superb songwriting, mostly by Townshend but also occasionally Entwistle; choir-like three-part vocal harmonies by the two musicians with Daltrey (and occasional vocal comic relief by Moon), and the questionable destruction of instruments and amplifiers. Townshend smashed his gear with his own two hands; Moon sometimes planted explosives inside his drum kit that would even detonate while he was playing. It was punk energy before punk, as the ahead-of-its-time band somehow also blended in jazz-like horns, orchestral string sections, futuristic synthesizers, and rock elements from folk to metal.
Tommy resurrected The Who’s middling career as the only album of its kind, even to this day, and Live at Leeds snarls with the energy of a still youthful band playing early hits, surprising covers, and a blistering “Amazing Journey/Sparks” medley from Tommy on the 1995 reissue. Townshend then took the best parts of an aborted multi-media project called Lifehouse, including the layers of synthesizers he’d crafted, for Who’s Next. And Quadrophenia, from Entwistle’s titanic bass line on the opening “I Am the Sea/The Real Me” salvo to Daltrey’s impassioned screams on the closing “Love, Reign O’er Me,” is an incredible audio ride.
Then came the pop experimentation of The Who By Numbers (1975), and the top-selling Who Are You (1978), before Moon the Loon died later in 1978 at age 32. With his excesses, it’s amazing that he lived even that long. An incredible showman, he would have trouble even getting a gig in the modern era because of those excesses, both personal and musical.
Moon usually had the drumming industry standard hi-hat cymbals, though not always, yet he rarely used them, preferring to shimmer on his ride and crash cymbals throughout verses, bridges and choruses. Entwistle had to be a great bassist not only to keep up with Moon, but to make his furious drum rolls and cymbal cacophony sound grounded within the songs. Along with Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), Ginger Baker (Cream) and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), Moon was part of the wave of blues-based British rock drummers who made audiences notice them rather than keeping simple time a la The Beatles’ Ringo Starr and the Stones’ Charlie Watts.
And Moon’s death was perhaps when the song should’ve been over. When Bonham died two years later at the same age, his quartet packed it in. But The Who decided that Moon, whose performances had deteriorated because of drug and alcohol abuse, should be replaced to cash in on the success of Who Are You.
The band’s 1967 album The Who Sell Out, with its tongue-in-cheek cover of Townshend applying deodorant and Daltrey hawking baked beans with a hairdo that perhaps inspired Florence Henderson’s on The Brady Bunch, suddenly became a case of art imitating future life. And also a sign of who was considered most important and, unwittingly, who would be left decades later (Moon and Entwistle were relegated to the back cover with facial cream and leopard-skin attire, disrespectively).
“We are more determined than ever to carry on,” Townshend wrote in a statement issued shortly after Moon’s death, “and we want the spirit of the group, to which Keith contributed so much, to go on, although no human being can ever take his place.”
At least they didn’t go with drum programming (until later on studio recordings). Moon’s replacement selection would be a very human Kenney Jones, formerly of The Faces and vocalist Rod Stewart’s solo career. More meat-and-potatoes than Moon’s Tasmanian Devil approach of barely controlled chaos, Jones’ previous work was impressive. And while the thought of replacing the increasingly slow, erratic and sloppy Moon with a more rudimentary drummer might’ve made sense in theory, things certainly didn’t gel in the recording studio. And this wouldn’t be the band’s last drummer issue.
The Who, like many ’70s acts, simply didn’t creatively translate into the plasticine 1980s among the spandex and hair spray; Culture Club and Milli Vanilli, and hearing more with one’s eyes than ears on music videos. Face Dances (1981) featured Townshend’s embarrassingly pandering pop hit (and video) “You Better You Bet,” perhaps only beaten to the bottom four years later by another former rock band, the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, with “We Built This City.” It’s Hard (1982) was also flaccid, highlighted by the closing “Eminence Front,” and Entwistle’s signature bass line within it.
Nicknamed “The Ox,” Entwistle’s muscular playing and musicality — he arranged the parts for horn sections on tour and was the one-man horn section on Quadrophenia — often grounded Moon’s space explorations. Yet he and Daltrey questioned Jones, who had been Townshend’s choice.
Townshend had started recording under his own name in 1979, and become disillusioned with touring. A supposed farewell tour (a term that should be legally binding) by The Who seemingly ended things in 1982, until now, 43 years later. The best subsequent release by the band or any member thereof would be Townshend’s graphic White City: A Novel (1985). Daltrey and Entwistle, comparatively, always struggled to gain traction with their solo catalogs.
But the song still wasn’t over. The Who would non-farewell tour again, both before and after its 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1996, Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey became the group’s touring drummer, starting decades of a more controlled version of Moon’s pyrotechnics that lasted into this year.
In 2000, the band performed at what’s now the iThink Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, and Entwistle and Starkey held the show together. Daltrey had trouble reaching the right notes, and Townshend played sloppily by comparison. The heralded co-leaders were The Who’s weakest links.
Entwistle never wanted to get off the road. And sadly, he didn’t. The night before the start of The Who’s tour in June of 2002, he died at age 57 after overindulging in a powdered substance in a hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. The bassist had created a legacy as a one-of-a-kind musician and vocalist. Yet he wasn’t the lead singer or guitarist, so the song still wasn’t over. Daltrey and Townshend chose currency over respect, immediately plugging in bassist Pino Palladino and insisting that what should’ve amounted to a “Who Cares?” tour must go on through September of that year. As long as the dynamic duo was up front, everyone else was expendable.
Like Starkey, who eventually became the victim of Daltrey and his lead singer’s disease this March at The Who’s charity show for the Teenage Cancer Trust at Royal Albert Hall in London. As seen on YouTube and Facebook videos, the vocalist stopped the band mid-song, said he had trouble hearing, and blamed Starkey — The Who’s drummer for nearly 30 years — for all to hear.
“He blamed it on the drums being too loud,” Starkey said, “and then it got made into this huge social media thing.”
And Daltrey never thought the same about Moon? Starkey was rehired, then fired again after Townshend caved, replaced by Daltrey’s solo touring band drummer Scott Devours. Wonder whose idea that was. It all caused the normally passive, 85-year-old Starr to flash a non-peace sign in defense of his son.
“I’ve never liked the way that little man runs the band,” Starkey quoted his father as having responded.
Ironically, Daltrey sang “Hope I die before I get old” in The Who’s anthemic 1965 hit, “My Generation.” The singer has always had a somewhat volatile relationship with Townshend, complaining that his and others’ arranging, engineering and production techniques buried his vocals on albums like Quadrophenia and Who’s Next. They didn’t. Townshend’s higher vocal range also often made him a co-lead singer, and his showmanlike leaps and windmill guitar playing upstaged Daltrey, whose moves included not much more than a strut in circles and a hand-held microphone cord twirl.
Townshend is a visionary composer and an excellent guitarist, especially in his rhythm playing. He’s also a multi-instrumentalist who was credited with “remainder” on Quadrophenia after Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon’s contributions were listed. He just shouldn’t have handed Daltrey the reins, among a few other documented questionable life decisions. The remaining duo is now accompanied by as many as eight additional musicians and vocalists on stage, resulting in better-sounding touring shows of recent vintage. Yet the two original members haven’t concocted much that was memorable as co-leaders on their version of The Who’s only 21st-century recordings, Endless Wire (2006) and Who (2019).
Or that much beyond Moon’s death, actually. In 1979, The Who released a single, recorded with the original lineup in 1972, called “Long Live Rock.” “Rock is dead,” Daltrey lamented in its refrain. And so it was, at least in their case. And realistically, considering the genre’s decline since, maybe universally. Who knew?
If You Go
See The Who’s The Song Is Over: North American Farewell Tour at Amerant Bank Arena, 1 Panther Parkway, Sunrise.
When: 7:30 p.m. August 16
Tickets: $89-$573
Info: 954-835-SHOW, www.amerantbankarena.com