By now, a nonopera by the Who is its own kind of concept album. While The Who by Numbers pretends to be a series of unconnected songs, it's really only a pose; there's not a story line here, but there are more important unities -- lyrical theme, musical and production style, a sense of time and place.

Quadrophenia and Tommy helped Peter Townshend sharpen a writing style that was already one of the most personal and interesting in rock. Because the Who is itself so stylized -- alone among their early-Sixties peers, they sound like no one else, neither Chicago bluesmen nor Memphis rockabillys -- Townshend always had to seek themes and characters, as well as musical ideas, that were pure rock & roll. The tension between Keith Moon's wild drumming, Roger Daltrey's barely on-key vocals, Townshend's own limitations as a guitarist and the composer's skill and introspection made him one of the toughest, most compact writers in rock. Like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty and very, very few others, Townshend has a very specific idea of what rock & roll is about and what it's for. Everything he does -- which is nearly everything the Who does -- is informed by it.

Original album advertising art.
Click image for larger view.

But The Who by Numbers isn't what it seems. Without broadcasting it, in fact while denying it, Townshend has written a series of songs which hang together as well as separately. The time is somewhere in the middle of the night, the setting a disheveled room with a TV set that seems to show only rock programs. The protagonist is an aging, still successful rock star, staring drunkenly at the tube with a bottle of gin perched on his head, contemplating his career, his love for the music and his fear that it's all slipping away. Every song here, even the one non-Townshend composition, John Entwistle's "Success Story," fits in. Always a sort of musical practical joker, Townshend has now pulled the fastest one of all, disguising his best concept album as a mere ten-track throwaway.

The disguise is effective partly because it is mostly musical. Along with the story line, Townshend has thrown out the Arp synthesizer -- which is supposed to be his instrument -- after his success with it on Who's Next and the Tommy soundtrack. It's a great diversion; he keeps us busy noticing its absence so that the story sinks in subtly, rather than batting us over the head with it, as he did with his operas.

Much has been made of the Who's internal dissension over the past few months. Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle have devoted themselves to glaringly inferior solo projects, while Townshend, save for whatever additional music he wrote for Ken Russell's Tommy, seems to have been almost completely inactive since Quadrophenia. Not surprisingly, this album seems more Townshend oriented than even the operas, although -- since Nicky Hopkins has been brought in for some brilliant keyboard work -- Townshend may appear less often than on any of the group's other recent records.

Part of his presence is in the vocals. As a singer, Townshend originally patterned himself after Daltrey, though lately he has developed a guttural range which Daltrey doesn't have. But they are still so close to one another that it is often difficult to tell who's singing what. Clearly, though, Townshend sings more here than he has before and he sings better as well. While Daltrey has always been too frequently flat, emotionally and musically, Townshend brings great fire and passion to songs like "Blue and Grey" and "They Are All in Love." He is in the great tradition of rock's classic nonvoices, like Young and Dylan. Daltrey has his moments, certainly, particularly on "How Many Friends," but it is now clear that if Daltrey decided he'd rather make bad movies, the Who could function acceptably as a trio.

There is no song on By Numbers with the impact of "Won't Get Fooled Again" or "Pinball Wizard," although there are moments reminiscent of all the classic songs in almost every track. That's unfortunate, because the Who has always seemed at its best as a single group. Both "Success Story" and "In a Hand or Face" come close to the old crashing, barely controlled Who, but this record is much more disciplined, in general, and much more restrained.

The best songs are closer to "Behind Blue Eyes," slower numbers which aren't quite ballads. Almost every track is filled with enormous anguish, bitterness or fear, conveyed most perfectly in "They Are All in Love," "How Many Friends," even the faintly sanctimonious "Imagine a Man."

Townshend apparently oversteps only once, on "Blue Red and Grey," which is ostensibly simplistic enough to have been written by John Denver. It is kicked along by his ukulele and the repeated declaration, "I like every minute of the day." Like a lot of Townshend's songs, though, there's a catch at the end: "And so you see that I'm completely crazy/I even shun the South of France."

Not that the record is witless; no Who album has ever been. "Squeeze Box," for instance is the Who's ultimate sex joke, even better than "Pictures of Lily" in its way. Its sound, complete with a banjo break that sounds as if the Who is ready to refight the Civil War with the Band, is a real departure, close to jolly rockabilly. Entwistle's "Success Story" is full of his usual sardonic epigrams: "He deserted rock & roll to save his soul"; "I'm your fairy manager/You shall play Carnegie Hall"; "Six for the taxman, four for the band"; "Take 276... You know, this used to be fun." "In a Hand or a Face," prototypical Townshend, begins with a verse pillorying pop mysticism, the sort Stevie Wonder sells: "Ain't it funny how they're all Cleopatra/When you gaze into their past/When you find out about their birth sign/You realize there was no need to have asked."

But there is an ominous quality even in the midst of the jokes. Townshend has always been the rock & roller most concerned with how he fits into the world. In a way, The Who by Numbers is only an interim report in the continuing saga of stardom and failure, of the weird characters who strive for fame and wind up with disaster even when they make it. Sell Out remains the definitive statement on the rock artist, placing him in context next to the baked bean commercials and half-hideous, half-beautiful station identification jingles. But Tommy is as much star as prophet -- and he fails at both -- while Quadrophenia 's Jimmy was clearly shooting for center stage when he wound up on that rock. Even Who's Next, which seems so anticonceptual, is obsessed with these things, fore and aft; it begins with "Baba O'Riley"'s "teenage wasteland," ends with "Won't Get Fooled Again"'s half threat, half promise to do something about it.

"The real truth as I see it is that rock music as it was is not really contemporary to these times," Townshend recently told an interviewer. "It's really the music of yesteryear. The only things that continue to keep abreast of the times are those songs that stand out due to their simplicity." There is no better summary of what The Who by Numbers is about: Townshend has always been his own best critic.

As angry as it is desperate, the album moves from song to song on pure bitterness, disillusionment and hopelessness. Not only the aging rock star of "Success Story," "they Are All in Love," "Dreaming from the Waist" and "However Much I booze" is frustrated. Even "Slip Kid," the latest in the line of Townshend's quintessential teenagers, finds that the only answer is: "There's no easy way to be free." Which wasn't even the question.

For the rock & roll star protagonist, "The truth lies in my frustration." In song after song, he's confused, "dreaming of the day I can control myself," unable to figure out what it's all worth, much less what it means.

In "How Many Friends," he despairs of anyone telling him the truth -- maybe he really is over the hill -- but, in "However Much I Booze," he realizes that even those who try don't have a chance. "Dish me out another tailor-made compliment/Tell me about some detriment I can't forget." The shreds of utopian optimism in Tommy, the exhilarating moments of discovery in Quadrophenia are gone now: "Take 276. You know, this used to be fun." Always before, the Who have been able to ride out of these situations on power and bravado -- now, they wonder if they still have enough of either.

"Where do you fit in a magazine/Where the past is a hero and the present a queen?/Just tell me right now, where do you fit in/With mud in your eye and a passion for gin?" I don't know what magazine Townshend might have had in mind when he wrote those words -- he makes a cute little raspberry where the title ought to go -- but they might give pause to every reader and writer in the rock & roll part of this one, not to mention to every subject of it. As ex-Beatles solo albums rush forward in feeble proliferation, as the Rolling Stones stagger into their second decade with songs drawn almost exclusively from their first, as the Who stumble onward, another of Townshend's thoughts in that interview quoted above sounds truer than ever: "It's like that line in 'The Punk Meets the Godfather'... 'you paid me to do the dancing.' The kids pay us for a good time, yet nowadays people don['t really want to get involved. Audiences are very much like the kids in Tommy's Holiday Camp, they want something without working for it."

What they want is what the Who, as the ultimate manifestation of a certain part of the heart of rock, has always promised: a way out of their obligation to the ultimate piper, Time. From "My Generation" to The Who by Numbers, time and aging have been Townshend's obsession, as if he were trying to live down the statement that made him famous: "Hope I die before I get old." If this is his most mature work, that's because he has finally admitted that there is no way out, which is a darker and deeper part of the same thing. Typically, the Who face the fact without flinching. Indeed, they may have made their greatest album in the face of it. But only time will tell.

- Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 11/20/75.

Bonus Reviews!

The Who By Numbers is the most confusing album ever from this supremely gifted band, and, that being the case, the only way I can think of to deal with it is to share the random observations of this longtime Who freak after several days of intense listening.

1. It is not a concept album, but several of the songs do indeed seem to be linked thematically. Peter Townshend appears to be exploring the problems he's articulated in the press lately -- trying to reconcile the contradiction he set up for himself when he wrote "My Generation." "Hope I die before I get old," he declared in song, and now, ten years later, he is "old." But, as the Stones observed, what can a poor boy do except play in a rock-and-roll band? Peter is genuinely concerned about what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Who's stance -- never mind the fact that, remarkably, the band still appeals as directly and powerfully to teenagers as it did when it first started out. "However Much I Booze," in which Townshend discusses this quandary most openly, is an excellent song, despite the self-doubt which could have easily reduced it to yet another whining bit of rock-star self-pity. It features the best vocal he's ever done, and the guitar break following his furious cry of "Won't somebody tell me how to get out of this place?" is positively thrilling.

2. "Slip Kid," the album's opener, is probably the finest song the band has done since Who's Next, an absolute masterpiece full of marvelous unexpected rhythmic changes and structural vocals, and matchlessly imaginative guitar work. It is also the most consciously atypical piece Peter has written in ages. I haven't the slightest idea what the lyrics are about, except perhaps that they are an extension of the sentiments of "Won't Get Fooled Again," only this time seen from the other side: this is not the rock star talking, but a street kid.

3. "They Are All in Love" has the prettiest Who harmonies since "Behind Blue Eyes." Just lovely.

4. There is a lot of filler here, some of it harking back to older styles ("Squeeze Box," a Sell Out -period bit of whimsey done as a vague sort of c-&-w) and some ambitious failures that seem to me forced attempts at the kind of Big Statements Townshend thinks his audience expects. "Imagine a Man," in particular, is rambling and confused, as is "In a Hand or a Face," a treatise on callousness that is only partly redeemed by some crunching power chording (lifted, oddly enough, from "Wasp Man," the band's humorous Keith Moon-penned B-side of a few years ago).

5. John Entwistle's usual one-song-per-album is a minor success, bo now means as good as "Boris the Spider" or "My Wife," but typically funny. "Success Story," as its title suggests, is about a band in the precess of making it, and it has some excellent lines ("Back in the studio to make our latest Number One/ Take 276... you know this used to be fun"). It also boasts a sizzling bass figure, perhaps motivated by John's publicly stated annoyance with people who continually mistake his playing for Peter's guitar work, and i general it rocks along quite satisfyingly.

6. "Blue Red and Grey" is the Who's first excursion into the fey Twenties music-hall territory exemplified by Paul McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-four" (and since beaten to death by both him and a host of lesser talents). Featuring Townshend on ukulele (!) dispensing platitudes about how he digs every minute of the day, its brevity cannot disguise the fact that it is easily the worst thing they have ever committed to vinyl.

7. When the album is good, it's terrific. When it (more often than not) isn't, it's still quite listenable; the band's playing is superb throughout, and Glyn Johns' production is characteristically excellent.

8. Peter's fears notwithstanding, the Who are not getting old, they are by no means becoming stagnant or self-parodying. Although this is probably their weakest album so far, its problems are not the result of repetition of familiar riffs but of a certain tentativeness about the new directions they are exploring. It may also, simply, have been a rush job, the band's collective energy being frittered away while Roger busied himself working on his solo LP and Ken Russell's latest film, Keith recorded a solo in Los Angeles, and Entwistle fronted his abortive group tour.

9. The Who are still the spirit of rock, as The Who By Numbers, regardless of its inconsistency, amply testifies, and you should get the album immediately.

- Steve Simels, Stereo Review, 1/76.

First new LP from one of the few supergroups in the world in nearly two years, and undoubtedly their best since the classic Who's Next four years ago. What we have here is a fine collection of songs -- raucous rock and acoustic, smooth flowing ballads. No concept here, except the making of the kind of Who album their legions of fans like best. Daltrey's totally distinctive voice, Peter Townshend's unique chord style of guitar playing, John Entwhistle's subdued but effective bass, and Keith Moon's manic drums: All play an equal part. After a dozen years, the Who are the only unit still retaining the same personnel they had during the initial British musical invasion. The four make music well together, and when it comes to rock and roll, which is what we have here, there are few better. Best cuts: "Slip Kid," "However Much I Booze," "Squeeze Box," "Blue Red And Grey," "They Are All In Love," "How Many Friends."

- Billboard, 1975.

This record is more depressing than my dispassionate grade would indicate, not just because from the Who we expect better -- do we, really? -- but because its runaway fatalism invites dispassion. Peter Townshend has more to say about star-doubt than David Crosby or even John Lennon -- he's not only honest but exceptionally inquisitive, and he's got a knack for condensing complex ideas. But despite their apercus songs like "However Much I Booze" and "Dreaming from the Waist" circle around so obsessively that they end up going nowhere; I don't expect answers from the seeker, but I do expect him to enjoy the questions. No surprise that the two songs that break out of the bind are "Blue Red and Gray" (which means satori) and "Slip Kid" (about one more imagined teenager). B+

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

The Who By Numbers functions as Pete Townshend's confessional singer/songwriter album, as he chronicles his problems with alcohol ("However Much I Booze"), women ("Dreaming from the Waist" and "They Are All in Love"), and life in general. However, his introspective musings are rendered ineffective by Roger Daltrey's bluster and the cloying, lightweight filler of "Squeeze Box." In addition, Townshend's songs tend to be under-developed, relying on verbosity instead of melodicism, with only the simple power of "Slip Kid," the grace of "Blue Red and Gray," and John Entwistle's heavy rocker "Success Story" making much of an impact. * * *

- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

Like the still fresh The Who Sell Out and Live at Leeds , Townshend's confessional The Who by Numbers is also essential. * * * *

- Steve Knopper, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

Reader's Comments

No comments so far, be the first to comment .