Photo by Jim Summaria – Contact us/Photo submission, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5574716

This year we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Who’s pioneering rock opera, Tommy.

The Who were a re-working of an earlier band, the Detours. With their classic lineup in place and a new name, The Who — Pete Townsend, John Entwistle, Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey — became an instant hit. The band’s first single, “I Can’t Explain,” hit the top 10, and “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” managed similar success while also introducing radio audiences to new sounds like guitar pick scratching and toggle switching courtesy of Townsend’s inventive approach to rhythm guitar. By the time the band released “My Generation” in the fall of 1965 they scored their biggest hit ever and cemented their place among the best bands in rock’s greatest era.

For me, Live at Leeds is the definitive The Who platter. That said, Tommy is a truly unique project and one of the most ambitious albums ever made. It boasts a wide-ranging song cycle by one of rock’s most ambitious tunesmiths including classics like the title song and “Pinball Wizard.” Playing the character Tommy also gave Roger Daltrey the inspiration he needed to push past his stage fright and become one of the most dynamic front men of the rock era.

Check out this long interview of Pete Townsend talking about Tommy…

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From The Who Archive at Trinifold

While we’ll never settle the Beatles/Stones question it’s easy to forget the greatness that was The Who. Of course, the band is still putting out music, but, for me, something is missing — that something, of course, is Keith Moon and John Entwistle.

That said, there are records that I revisit every year. At the beginning of summer I always spend a few weeks with Dr. Dre’s The Chronic in my car. It’s usually around the fall when I feel the need to break out The Who’s Live at Leeds which makes any short list of the best live albums of all time.

Well today I woke up to the special surprise that The Who have a new single out, anticipating their 50th anniversary hits collection. Here’s the word from Rolling Stone…

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Who will release a career-spanning greatest-hits collection, titled The Who Hits 50!, that will feature the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band’s first new song in eight years. Described as “a classic Who rocker,” “Be Lucky” is the Who’s first original since their 2006 comeback album Endless Wire. The Who Hits 50! arrives October 27th, just a few weeks before the band’s anniversary tour of the same name kicks off in Europe.

Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are joined by drummer Zak Starkey, bassist Pino Pallodino and keyboardist Mick Talbot on the new track. “Be Lucky” was produced by Dave Eringa, who previously worked with Daltrey’s Going Back Home, the singer’s collaborative LP with Wilko Johnson. The Who also revealed that the band’s royalties from “Be Lucky” will benefit Daltrey and Townshend’s Teen Cancer America charity, which the group recently showcased on the Stand Up to Cancer telethon.

The new single doesn’t sound like a lost track from Who’s Next but Roger sounds great and the harmony tracks make this unmistakably a Who single. Here’s “Be Lucky”…

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For those readers who are unfamiliar with Mod culture, let’s begin with the Wiki:

Mod (from modernist) is a subculture that originated in London, England, in the late 1950s and peaked in the early to mid-1960s. Significant elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits); music, including African American soul, Jamaican ska, British beat music, and R&B; and motor scooters. The original mod scene was also associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night dancing at clubs.[4] From the mid-to-late 1960s and onwards, the mass media often used the term mod in a wider sense to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable, or modern.

The Who’s adopting of Mod signs, symbols and fashion is part of what separated the band from the rest of the post-Beatles flood of British Invasion rock bands. Pete Townsend’s art school sensibilities and his uncanny intuition for trends and fashions found The Who adopting the style and attitudes of British Mod Culture in the 1960′s, and their 1973 album Quadrophenia found the band creating their second rock opera, looking back and telling the story of the birth of Mod in Britain. Mod culture experienced a revival with the release of the Quadrophenia album and the band’s 1979 film of the record effectively marked the end of Mod.

From modern jazz to Georgie Fame, from The Who to The Jam, The Who, The Mods, And The Quadrophenia Connection tells the story of Mod culture using The Who and their classic album as the narrative spine of the film.

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