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If there are diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place, then we need to learn to value the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
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The Who: Who are you « Previous | |Next »
May 15, 2009

The Who's final album with Keith Moon was not one of their best. It was the last reasonably interesting Who record. Part of the genesis Who Are You is another attempt to revive the 1970's Lifehouse project. The film footage of the band apparently recording this song was filmed at Ramport Studios in June, 1978

I've always liked/enjoyed this song. It is a long way from the volcano of violence on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart, but the core of The Who was always Townshend, the band's guitarist and main songwriter.



I stopped listening to the band with Who's Next. So I haven't heard the recent Endless Wire. Strangely Greil Marcus was kinda impressed at the time.

Townshend has said

"'Who Are You' was written about meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols after an awful 13-hour encounter with Allan Klein who, in my personal opinion, is the awesome rock leech-godfather. In one sense the song is more about the demands of new friendship than blood-letting challenge. Roger's aggressive reading of my nihilistic lyric redirected its function by the simple act of singing "Who the fuck are you..." when I had written "Who, who, who are you..."Steve and Paul became real 'mates' of mine in the English sense. We socialized a few times. Got drunk (well, I did) and I have to say to their credit, for a couple of figure-head anarchists, they seemed sincerely concerned about my decaying condition at the time.

Cook and Jones, supposedly arrogant young punks working out their rock & roll Oedipal complex, were thrilled to meet Townshend and horrified at what he had to tell them: the Who were finished, used up, wasted. The incident left Townshend passed out in a Soho street, which is where the song begins. Townshend (in the voice of Roger Daltrey) wakes up with one enormous question: Who are you?

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:58 PM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

Great video!

Keith Moon was the man with the Who. They totally ruled it!

He was in a pretty bad way by this stage health wise. Didn't he die a few weeks after the album was released?