One of the greatest live bands of all time, The Who rarely captured that excitement on record. This was the one exception.
When I was at boarding school, where this song was often played on the common-room record player, my fellow pupils loved to anticipate the bit where the vocals come back in after the lengthy instrumental passage towards the end, trying to synchronise with Roger Daltrey’s epic roar of “YEEEEEEEEAH!” (which you can find here at 7.50).
I don’t think The Who ever came close to capturing their primordial live sound on record (apart from on actual live recordings like Live At Leeds and Live At Hull) and I’m not crazy about any of their albums, which seem to be over-conceptualised and overblown, especially the so-called ‘rock operas’ Tommy and Quadrophenia (though both have some great individual songs). No one likes to say it but they were, essentially, a great Singles Band.
I saw them live at Charlton football stadium when I was a teenager in 1976 – my first (and last) sighting of the incredible Keith Moon. He was a legendary figure and I was struck not only by the mayhem he created with a drum kit, and the comic banter he provided, but also by just what an amazing lead guitarist Pete Townshend was; something not always apparent from their studio records.
When I last saw them in 1999 at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a period when I assumed they had little left to offer, they kicked off with a visceral 1-2-3 of Can’t Explain, Substitute and Anyway Anyhow Anywhere that was like an electrical joint. I was astounded at their energy: they were basically The Sex Pistols of their day – all barely controlled (and, at one point, uncontrolled) aggression when Townshend, then aged 55, started a fight with someone in the crowd who had jeered Daltrey about the American Express ads he had made.
The nearest they came to recreating the live experience was on Who’s Next, which produced this song – arguably the best in their repertoire. Rather than post the abridged single version, or even the eight-and-a-half minute album version, this is the version from the film The Kids Are Alright, filmed at Shepperton Studios on 25 May 1978 – the actual last live performance Keith Moon ever made before his death three months later.