Keith seemed as impetuous as ever, on the wagon one minute, off the next. Roger was angry with the world at the time. Recording the album seemed to take me nowhere. I felt detached from my own songs, from the whole record. "We played cricket between takes or went to the pub. Parker and Steve Grantley's The Who by Numbers. He had to, not because the tracks were weak or the music poor but because the group was so useless," Townshend said in Alan G. "Glyn worked harder on The Who by Numbers than I've ever seen him. Realizing their rather chaotic state would make recording more of a slog than normal, they enlisted producer Glyn Johns to help wrangle the sessions into shape, and as the weeks dragged into months, Johns earned every penny of his paycheck even though the album's aesthetics were less intricate and synthesizer-driven than the recordings that had preceded it. 3, 1975 - nearly two years after Quadrophenia, and a relative eternity during the speedier release cycle that was the norm at the time. "Whether our music should change, whether we should let the Who tradition just bash on until it got really boring, whether we should try and force change by starting labels and working with other bands."Īs Who fans are well aware, the band opted to forge ahead with their seventh studio album, The Who by Numbers, which arrived in stores on Oct. "Before the emergence of punk, the Who were the only band who actually sat round a table to decide 'Should we go on or not?' Would we be doing music a favor if we just fucking stopped? We actually considered that," Townshend told NME"Around the time of The Who by Numbers, we used to have really quite heavy conversations about where music was going to go – particularly in this country – and whether we should be involved in it, and the problem with living in America and living that Hollywood lifestyle and whether we should try and force him to come back to England. For guitarist Pete Townshend, who wrote the bulk of the material, the question proved particularly vexing. Grumbling that "nobody wanted to listen to what we were doing" after Tommy came out, Daltrey argued to Rolling Stone, " Who's Next holds up much better, but nobody wanted to take it seriously because it was just nine songs and no great thing about a bloody spastic."įurther complicating things was the band members' increasingly critical view of where the Who stood - or should stand - in a turbulent musical landscape that had grown to encompass styles that seemed to exist in contrast to the growing complexity and maturity of the band's own work.
0 kommentar(er)
