The Who – The Who are a classic rock band best known for their mega-selling album Tommy
Tommy is a rock opera centered around a child with “special needs”, a role Roger Daltrey was born to play.
Notable Accomplishments: Married the thrill of rock and roll with the yawn inducing boredom of opera; Managed to continue touring after every founding member had died of an overdose; Wrote a classic song for television crime drama CSI: Miami consisting entirely of the following lyrics, “YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Why They’re Good:
Who’s Next is a stellar rock album, and a perfect example of what bands should aim for when in the studio. Track after track of blistering rock played loud and well. Also, Keith Moon played drums like a six-armed alien from planet Fuckyeah.
Why They’re Not As Good As Led Zeppelin:
Pete Townshend. You can ignore his idiotic public interviews and statements (although if you do, don’t ignore the one where he claims to be a woman), and although I don’t understand why people would do this, I guess you can also ignore the fact that he was caught purchasing child pornography. Seriously. He claimed he was “doing research”. Uh-huh. Try this line the next time you get caught playing with yourself and see how believable that is.
But what you can’t ignore is the fact that Pete Towshend was batshit insanely in love with the dreaded “concept album” (cue scary music). After Tommy, he attempted a reprise with Lifehouse, which was so fucked up and incomprehensible that he finally admitted that even he didn’t know what it was about. They stripped away the bullshit, and Who’s Next was the result. Yet he somehow never quite figured out that the Special person concepts he kept coming up with got in the way with what little good music he had left in him. Hey, Pete, here’s a concept for you: A bunch of good, loud, rocking songs that are held together by the fact that no one has to listen to you screech some bullshit narrative about a crippled kid while enjoying them. That, by the way, is called a rock album.
