Roger Daltry, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon are…THE WHO! And they’re pretty friggin awesome. They created the first rock opera, and are credited with being the first band to smash their instruments on stage (they didn’t just smash them they put explosives in them and blew them up).

Their costumes were pretty snazzy too

 

These guys were the epitome of rock and roll in their time. They used to throw parties in the hotels they stayed at when they were on the road. These weren’t just your ordinary, run of the mill parties. Did they have drugs? Yeah, it was the 70s. Did they blow up the hotel bathrooms, drive cars into the pool and get banned from every Holiday Inn in the United States…for life? Yup.

They lived the true life of a rock star, but you can’t just stigmatize their music as “rock”. There are few bands in the world that constantly defy categorisation. The Who is one of them. You could call them a raw punk outfit doing acoustic folk, or a reggae influenced heavy metal band and both would be right. The Who did whatever they wanted with their music and, going against what so many other bands did, they were the ones starting the trends, not following them.

To me The Who’s music is art. Their songs are all full of meaning, full of spirituality. Their songs have a way of speaking to me, creating some sort of emotion inside that comes back everytime I listen to it. Each time I hear one of their songs its as if I’m hearing it for the first time.

I can’t think of a better example of this than their album Quadrophenia, more specifically the song Love Reign O’er Me. From the opening piano solo playing with the sound of falling rain to the final crash of all the instruments at the end, this song really shows the meaning that they put into their music. Take a listen for yourselves: