On 18 August 1978, The Who released their eighth studio album Who Are You. It had been three years since the release of their last album The Who By Numbers, and anticipation was high.
Commercially, Who Are You was a triumph, peaking at No 2 and going twice platinum in the US and Canada, while reaching No 6 and achieving gold status in the UK. But the album had a mixed reception from critics.
Some reviews at the time bemoaned Pete Townshend’s infatuation with synthesizers and strings, while others questioned the elaborate and progressive arrangements. Drummer Keith Moon also came in for some flak, for the absence of his usual explosive power.
But on the tracks where The Who really rocked, most critics agreed that their old brilliance shone out. And nowhere was this more evident than on the album’s standout, barnstorming title track.
This album would be Keith Moon’s swan song. Tragically, within three weeks of its release, the mercurial drummer was dead. Many fans view the album’s title track as a powerful testament to Moon and the classic, revered line-up of the band.
By the time The Who began work on the Who Are You album in September 1977, they were not in good shape. Moon and Townshend were reportedly descending deeper into drug and alcohol abuse, and Moon’s health was of particular concern.
His drumming had deteriorated and his performances on most of the sessions were allegedly substandard. In his 2012 memoir Who I Am, Townshend wrote of Moon: “Musically his drumming was getting so uneven that recording was almost impossible, so much so that work on the Who Are You album had ground to a halt.”
Another overriding concern for Townshend was The Who’s place within the music climate of the time. In the three years since the release of The Who By Numbers, the emergence of punk had set in motion a profound shift.
While The Who were one of the few acts cited as an influence by bands such as the Sex Pistols and The Clash, Townshend grappled with the band’s relevance within the changing vista. To his credit, Townshend took punk seriously and sought it out, but equally he resolutely refused to be cast off as an irrelevant rock dinosaur by the new brigade.
“The amazing thing was that the concerts were so hectic, so violent,” Townshend told the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio programme in 1979. “Particularly in the first six months of the thing, with bands like The Clash, The Vibrators and Sex Pistols. I mean, the Sex Pistols couldn’t actually play in public. It was that bad, they had to play unannounced concerts.”
Consequently, continued Townshend, very few people including himself actually saw the Pistols play live.
“But I saw several other bands. I used to go to clubs and stand and get insulted. Just stand there and just endure these snotty little kids saying ‘boring old fart!’”
One of the clubs Townshend frequented was The Speakeasy Club at 48 Margaret Street in London’s West End. On the evening of 20 January 1977, following a 13-hour business meeting with Allen Klein, the record executive and former manager of both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Townshend walked through the club’s bizarre theatrical entrance in time to catch the chaotic, high energy stage antics of Jon Otway and Wild Willy Barrett.
The smoky, dimly-lit basement was a late-night sanctuary where music execs and rock royalty rubbed shoulders with the prime movers of the emerging punk movement. Which is how Townshend soon wound up chatting to guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols.
For all the hardline ‘Year Zero’ doctrine of punk, the three musicians got on famously. Townshend was impressed by the Pistols, while Jones and Cook appreciated the fact that Townshend treated them as equals from the same west London roots.
The three reportedly bonded. So began an epic drinking session which ended with Townshend passing out in a Soho doorway. He was spotted by a passing policeman, who recognised him and said he would let him go if Townshend could safely walk away.
The events of that evening would inspire the song Who Are You.
“Who Are You was written about meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols after an awful 13-hour encounter with Allen Klein…” Townshend wrote in the liner notes to the Who Are You album. “In one sense the song is more about the demands of new friendship than blood-letting challenge.”
Townshend demoed an early version of the song in his home studio at Goring-on-Thames, utilising guitars, piano and synths.
The album version of the song was recorded at the band’s Ramport Studios in Battersea. Glyn Johns and Jon Astley co-produced Who Are You, which was mixed at Olympic Studios in Barnes, south-west London.
Listening to the song Who Are You almost 50 years since it was recorded, it sounds surprisingly timeless. It’s a brilliantly assured and visionary composition from Townshend and even in its full-length 6:20 album version, the arrangement is taut and dynamic, with dramatic contrasts of light and shade.
Synths predominate although their use is largely rhythmic – strident, pulsating patterns that power the 156bpm song along. For all the concerns about Keith Moon, his playing on this track is outstanding, with powerful rolls and fills on the toms.
The song opens with a thick, pulsating synth pattern, handclaps and sixteenths on the hi-hat. Graceful bass motifs from John Entwistle and nifty, echo-drenched guitar riffs and lead lines from Townshend are woven within.
18 seconds in, the falsetto harmonies of the song’s main chorus hook enter the mix: “Who are you – who, who, who, who” over an E-D-A-E chord sequence.
For all the subtle nuances of the intro, when it drops down into the first verse at 0:42 – over an E-D-A-C-G chord progression – it is an out-and-out 4/4 rock track, albeit one with a mean, muscular groove.
On this song, Roger Daltrey delivers one of his most aggressive and gritty vocal performances. The first verse is essentially an account of what happened to Townshend following his night out with Steve Jones and Paul Cook.
“I woke up in a Soho doorway/A policeman knew my name/He said, ‘You can go sleep at home tonight/If you can get up and walk away.’”
At 2:16 and 5:43 on the album version, Daltrey spits out the line: ‘Who the fuck are you?”. This appears at 2:14 and 4:27 in the single edit version, while the US edit conspicuously omits this profanity, with the line changed to: “Who the hell are you?”
The swearing on the album and single edit versions was seemingly not picked up by some radio stations, which may have been due to Moon’s thundering tom fills obscuring at least one of the expletives.
By the time the third chorus kicks in at 1:57, the whole thing is flying, fuelled by some high-end staccato guitar rhythms from Townshend.
At 2:21 the bass and drums all but drop out for a spacious instrumental section, which features some atmospheric harmonics, jagged guitar squalls and squelchy synth stabs.
Throughout the song, John Entwistle creates some beautifully deft melodic touches high up the neck of the bass and there are subtle flourishes of piano from Rod Argent, who was called in at the last minute when session player John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick fell out of a taxi at the studio door and broke his arm.
In his 2012 memoir Who I Am, Townshend reportedly quipped that Bundrick’s ] injury was due to him drunkenly throwing himself out of the vehicle to avoid paying the fare.
At 2:56, thick modulated synth and Townshend’s power chords pick up the pace before Townshend introduces a melodic guitar pattern. Then, at 3:45, the whole band kicks in. From there it really builds. “And I really wanna know” roars Daltrey over and over again.
By the 4:30 mark, it’s difficult not to be struck by how great The Who sound. The seamless, driving interplay between Entwistle and Moon is invigorating while the choppy, aggressive attack of Townshend’s guitar work really makes the track soar. Above it all, Daltrey delivers a vocal performance that is as impassioned as it is intense.
Who Are You was released as a single in its shortened 5:01 version on 14 July 1978 in the UK and in its even shorter, expletive-free 3:24 US version on 5 August 1978.
The song was first performed live in its entirety on 15 December 1977 at the Gaumont State Cinema in Kilburn, north-west London, although no synths were involved and the song featured only a portion of the lyrics.
However, the band did reportedly play a very early version of the song at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on 21 October 1976, which was Keith Moon’s last North American performance with The Who.
Delving back through The Who’s rich back catalogue, it seems unlikely that Who Are You is regarded with quite such reverence by fans and critics as songs such as Baba O’Riley, Won’t Get Fooled Again, My Generation, Substitute or Behind Blue Eyes.
But it is well up there as one of The Who’s classic signature songs and is a bold and visionary work that remains exciting and relevant. And as a document of one of the last great recorded performances by Keith Moon and the classic line-up of the band, it stands as a compelling and thrilling achievement.
