And the title track was held a year, to appear on Pete's vastly superior solo album All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes.
Perhaps this will illustrate my point about Kenney: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=467770960339272
I'm pretty sure we can all figure out Kenney could have rocked, but since Who's Next, Pete wanted a metronome used for recording. I'm not exactly sure what songs all have that thing on there, but Keith began to suffer for it with the 70's albums and most certainly Kenney did too. Both were great drummers (almost on equal level IMO) if you let them do their thing. Also, Kenney locked in with Ronnie Lane best.
Vastly superior ? I don’t think so. Chinese eyes is a good record but there are a couple weak tracks (“Uniforms” comes to mind first). Every tune on a Face Dances was solid (How Can You Do it Alone being the worst but still a decent track despite the lyrics).
I really like the song how it was first performed on the 79 tour. Shame they didn’t record it that way. Almost a completely different song from what ended up on Face Dances.
Face Dances Part 2 was not written until after the Face Dances album had already been released. To my knowledge, there's no evidence that Pete ever held back any song from The Who and then later used it on a solo record. To the contrary, several of the songs on his solo records had been rejected by The Who. I agree. Chinese Eyes has a few really great songs, but also a lot of filler. Face Dances is stronger overall, though there isn't any one song on it that's as good as "Slit Skirts."
Listening to Kenney with the (Small) Faces, he seems like an obvious choice for replacing Keith, but, in practice, it just didn't work out. If he had ever let loose on a Who track the same way he did on (I Know) I'm Losing You, I don't think he'd be so abused by Who fans.
It's funny, but you often hear similar comparisons about Ron Wood's playing in The Faces vs. his later work in The Stones. A common observation is that what The Stones want from him is a little different than his role in The Faces, and he plays the way they want him to. I think a similar argument can be made about Kenney. This is just my opinion based on comments Pete has made over the years and what he's done musically...and I'll admit right now up front that I'm not nearly as informed as most people here probably...but I get the impression that Pete wanted post-Moon Who to take a somewhat different musical direction from the Moon years. For lack of a better word, I think Pete wanted a more "normal" drummer going forward, rather than someone to emulate the way Moon played and duplicate his previous role in the band. That's just my impression and gut feeling, but I think if anyone doesn't like the direction post-Moon Who went in, they should probably direct it at Pete rather than Kenney. He's the band's musical leader after all, and I'm sure he had a pretty clear idea of what sort of rhythm section he wanted for new albums, etc. and was in a position to control that. Mark
Kenney could have cut loose a LOT more with The Who. Townshend simply wouldn't let him. He wanted the anti-Moon. He did that again by getting Pino to play bass. He's the anti-Entwistle. It's a running theme with Townshend.
Our good friends at Wikipedia tell us: Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1, that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds. In Who terms, this is called the Law of Jones. Any Who discussion, even one about a 1968 archival release, will eventually turn into a discussion of Kenney Jones.
Glyn Johns took most of Keith's cymbals before recording Who's Next. That's why his famous "cymbal wash" is so abscent from that era of the band.
Are you sure about that? I know Johns had concerns about the size of his kit later, but I didn’t think that was the case circa 1971. Keith’s kit wasn’t that big at the time to begin with.
Almost absolutely, yeah. Saw a picture of his drumkit during the WN sessions, it was even funny : five toms or snares for each cymbal, and so forth. I believe Glyn also said so in an interview, as well.