The Who: Moving On- 2019 North American Tour / New Album

I suppose his daughters were pale and weedy in their hush puppy shoes as the “I” narrator of the song sings.

 

Fair point. But I didn't give various explanations of what the song is about. Pete did. All I did was say "coming of age" is one of the explanations he has given. To be honest, I don't know what the song is about--I totally get the homoerotic interpretation, and frankly, I lean toward that reading of the lyrics myself. But it could also be about vampires.

 

New shortish interview with Pete....

Pete Townshend of The Who: The Metro Interview

 

Good interview, thanks!

 

More here - two new songs to be played - probably same as Wembley

The Who to Introduce New Music During Fall Orchestral Tour

 

In the liner notes to coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking, I find it telling that "Rough Boys" is the only song on the compilation he doesn't discuss thematically. As I recall, the entry is all about how he layered the guitar tracks, which is interesting, but c'mon Pete, what are you not talking about?

 

Perhaps the same thing he was talking about in How Many Friends.

I'm feelin' so good right now
There's a handsome boy tells me how I changed his past
He buys me a brandy
But could it be he's really just after my ass?

 

enough is enough......

 

That's our Pete! I was such a Who fan at 15 or so, way back when in the early 80s, the ambiguity didn't even bother me then. "Whatever man, just do that windmill thing!"

 

The older I get the more apparent it becomes just how odd the sexuality of Townshend’s writing was, from the get-go. I’m A Boy, Pictures of Lily, A Quick One, etc. And that’s before you even get to Tommy.

 

Have you read his autobiography? He did go through some weird stuff with his grandmother or aunt, can't remember which. He says he asked John to write songs on certain subjects for Tommy, because he couldn't do it.

And generally speaking, for all those guys, I don't think growing up working class in a war-torn England was a ton of fun. Although they certainly made up for it later.

 

I haven’t read his autobiography, but it’s pretty clear that something awful happened to him as a child that is reflected in Tommy and, perhaps most directly, in Behind Blue Eyes.

No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

 

He's also said that as a kid, you couldn't ask questions about the war. He asked one of his relatives, his grandfather or someone, "Why would the Nazis do such a thing?," and the response was, "Don't talk about it!"

 

His grandmother and her friends, his “uncles”.

 

I think that’s about how you, as a celebrity, cannot trust people. They feel like they own you.

“How many friends have I really got
You can count ‘em all on one hand
How many friends have I really got?
How many friends have I really got,
That love me, that want me, that take me as I am”

Roger was fine with singing “How Many Friends” and Moon cried when he heard the lyrics. Daltrey had issues with the lyrics for “They’re All In Love” though.

“Girl In A Suitcase” is also a really weird song from around that same period. It always reminded me of those two songs, definitely could have been on the album, but it was rejected. I think it’s about touring but it’s got a kind of weird serial killer vibe or something.

 

The Who by Numbers feature probably some of Pete's best lyrics, as well as some beautiful arrangements (with piano great Nicky Hopkins contributing), suprisingly without any synthesizers, and some powerful vocal performances by Townshend.

And really, those lyrics so personal you can see a pretty clear line between this record and Empty Glass, both in sound (straightforward rock) and in lyrical content (personal lyrics about his many troubles).

I've tried more than once to transform Who by Numbers into a Pete solo record, and this is what I came up with:

Slip Kid
However Much I Booze
Squeeze Box
Dreaming from the Waist
Imagine a Man
-
Keep Me Turning - from Rough Mix, demoed for the album but rejected
They're All in Love
Blue, Red, and Grey
Girl in a Suitcase - from Another Scoop, demoed for the album but rejected
How Many Friends
In a Hand or a Face

It's really the version I mostly listen to now, as I love Girl in a Suitcase, such a nice little tune, and don't really care for Entwistle's Success Story

 

Who By Numbers is a really strange album, isn’t it? The first Who album to have really personal lyrics. It has no synths, even though it comes between Quad and Who Are You. It’s really a loose concept album about having a mid-life crisis (even though Pete was only 30 when they released it). For some reason, I really liked WBN when I was a teenager, even though it’s very much a depressed adult album.

“To Barney Kessel” was also written for WBN.

 

The most touching lyrics of his career. Too many males can relate all too well.

 

He specifically denied that song was about him though. It’s supposed to be told from Jimbo’s perspective. He even said something like (I’m paraphrasing), “People think all my songs are about me but they aren’t. Everybody thought ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ is about me but it isn’t.”

But he does have blue eyes and I think it contains some allusions to Meher Baba in the lyrics too.

It is telling though that he made Entwistle write the abuse songs for Tommy though.

 

In the Blur box set, Graham Coxon recalls of the Parklife era, “I suppose Damon was writing characters because he didn’t want to talk too much about himself.” With the implication that the characters were a way of writing about himself. Townshend can say that Behind Blue Eyes was written from the perspective of a character in a movie that never got made, and maybe he honestly intended for that to be so, but I hear his own voice seeping through.

 

I agree that that is telling, although I think the same underlying trauma seeped into Pete-penned songs ranging from I’m A Boy to A Quick One to Behind Blue Eyes to How Can You Do It Alone.

 

I love By Numbers. It has its own feel, and yes it is personal, a nice breath of fresh air between their masterpiece and Who Are You. Over the years I have grown to like Face Dances more and more, and for some reason I think of it and By Numbers as being closely related in feeling.

 

I guess "Girl in a Suitcase" could be about a girl's picture, but I always thought it was about a blow-up doll. Am I crazy?

 

I think that's Jumbo.

Even if he isn't intentionally singing about the abuse of his childhood in "BBE", I think he is certainly using elements of his relationship with his bandmates - always feeling like he was perceived as the bad guy, a theme that follows right through to "They're All in Love" and "Cache Cache".

 

Behind Blue Eyes strikes me as being about something deeper than band politics.