Word: groups
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...songs are as powerful as anything the punks or the new wave set down. There are other supergroups, like the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac, who turn out a kind of well-tooled pop that beats The Who in the charts. There are even other hard-rock groups, like Led Zeppelin, that lay down a kind of sugar-lined bombast that can razzle-dazzle the record buyer. The Who's cumulative sales exceed 20 million records. The members' individual wealth?Townshend, Entwistle and Daltrey are all millionaires several times over?is nothing to sulk about, even if the band...
...instruments. "Sometimes I got the feeling," says Entwistle, 35, "that the people wished we would just come out, smash up the lot and leave." An additional, sadder change occurred when Keith Moon died of drug overdose at 31; he was replaced on drums by Kenny Jones, 31. The group still puts My Generation across with enough swagger and insinuation to get you giddy or make you feel like you are being stalked down a dark street. When Townshend, 35, called himself "the aging daddy of punk rock," he was not being entirely facetious. Who music can match the tough street...
...individualistic as those Townshend compositions are, they remain a group statement. Townshend, who has no use for modesty, insists, "I can still use The Who more effectively to speak to people heart to heart than I ever could on a solo album." Daltrey observes, "Did you ever notice that nobody ever does Townshend's songs? The Who are the only people who can play them. That's one reason we've survived. None of us is very good on his own. It's only as part of The Who that we're great...
...uneasy alliance. When Drummer Keith Moon was alive, he was like a self-contained chain reaction, "our little bit of nasty," as Daltrey calls him. Moon died of an overdose of Heminevirin, a drug he was taking to combat his alcoholism. Moon's passing forced a crisis within the group, the three surviving members re-examining their loyalty to rock, and to each other. Daltrey told Townshend: "Keith's life and death were a gift to the group. A sacrifice to allow us to continue." Townshend recalls thinking at the time, "How can I agree with something as 20th Century...
Daltrey got the band together. At 15, he left school in London, took a job as a sheet-metal worker that he held for five years. He also made his own guitars and formed a group called the Detours. On the street one day, he spotted "this great big geezer with a homemade bass that looked like a football boot with a neck sticking out of it," and recruited Entwistle on the spot. Soon after that, Daltrey decked the Detour's lead singer and took over the vocals himself. Now the Detours needed a rhythm guitar player. Entwistle mentioned...