Pages tagged “the who”

What do Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl and Wayne Coyne all have in common? These three shaggy-haired frontmen of big-name alternative-rock outfits have signed on with their respective bands to pay homage to The Who for this year’s VH1 Rock Honors.

In February, we reported that a new Who album was in the works, full of tracks that harkened back to a better time, a simpler time, when The Who was, well, The Who. Just this morning it was announced that the band will be doing an album of Motown covers.

Wait a minute, weren’t the Who supposed to write new material for this one? Well, Pete Townshend might still write some. But the rock legends will mainly cover R&B classics, many of which they believe audiences might not even be familiar with yet.

“We’re digging through lots of material and seeing what will work,” T-Bone Burnett told RollingStone.com. “There’s an incredible treasury of songs in the mode of what they used to play.” Burnett is producing the project and has tentative plans to jaunt over to London this fall to begin recording.

In other Who-news, Amazing Journey just came out on CD, dual-disc DVD and vinyl. Also, for those who just happen to be in London, the band will be performing an acoustic set at a benefit to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust. The non-profit helps to improve quality of life of adolescents fighting cancer. Other acts performing at the event include the Fratellis, Muse, the Futureheads and the Raveonettes.

Look at that: The Who has both heart and soul (see what we did there?).

Related links:
TheWho.com
TeenageCancerTrust.org
Paste: Feature: T Bone Burnett: This Little Life of Crime

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Two years ago The Who marked its comeback to the studio with Endless Wire. Now, Pete Townshend has begun to talk of plans for a follow-up. Reportedly, Townshend and Roger Daltrey both have started writing individually, in hopes of producing an album that reflects a classic Who sound.

“Roger is working on his own idea for an album for us, with the producer T-Bone Burnett, who is an old friend of mine,” Townshend said recently on his blog.

The Who would be in good company should Burnett decide to produce. Aside from his 2002 Grammy win for producing the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou, he also produced Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand.

Other plans for The Who in 2008 include a possible run of dates in Japan to support the recently released documentary, Amazing Journey. Townshend also mentioned the possibility of playing a few festival dates, though fans should not expect a tour anytime soon; writing the new album seems to be his top priority.

Related links:
Paste review: The Who – Endless Wire
Billboard: The Who mulls next album, revisits classics
TheWho.com

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If you’re a Japanese or Australian fan of The Who and have been hoping that the band will visit your country, then, um, you won’t be fooled again. That’s because the band is planning a trek to Japan and Australia next year. Roger Daltry and Co. recently completed 13 months of touring around their first album in 25 years, Endless Wire.

Daltrey recently told Reuters that he knows that the boys are not as young as they used to be: “We don’t want those long hiatuses that we used to have. We feel at this time of our lives it’s too precious a thing to take liberties with time. When you’re young, you’ve got that time. When you’re old, you haven’t.”

Daltrey said that guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend has been writing new songs, but of course, it’s impossible to know how long the next album gap will be. In the meantime, you can purchase the two-disc DVD Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, a documentary about the band that will be out on November 6.

Related links:
TheWho.com
TheWhoMovie.com
YouTube: The Who performing “My Generation” at Monterey Pop

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The rock opera enthusiasts of The Who have been given their own epic narrative for two documentaries, coming to a music DVD section near you on Nov. 6. Released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, is marketed as a thorough re-introductory tale and/or primer for casual fans and newcomers while Amazing Journey: Six Quick Ones details the band's musical abilities and mod/pop art senseabilities.

Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who premiers Sept. 12 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hopefully, some modern-day musical innovators will soon adapt the feature into their own guitar-driven adventure, in a glorious full circle of rock*.

*Although not as glorious as this circle of rock.

Related links:
TheWhoTour.com
The Who on MySpace
Universal Studios

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Admirable but flawed return from one of rock’s most iconic bands.

The Who brand—once symbolic of the enduring power of rock—has aged poorly. There have been too many songs sold to television, too much scandal, too many final tours, too much death, and too little new material from Pete Townshend. Here to rectify the latter is the band’s first studio album since 1982’s It’s Hard. We can be thankful for the record’s mature outlook, and that Townshend and Roger Daltrey (the only surviving members) sound comfortable in their skins. But the songs are mostly weird (two rants were inspired by a viewing of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ; a clunky neo-Tom Waits vocal on “In the Ether”), overly familiar (the synth pattern from “Baba O’Riley” pops up twice in a “new” track) or simply bland (roughly half the remaining songs). A couple sparks flare, mostly during the mini-opera “Wire & Glass,” including the energetic power pop of “We Got a Hit” and the loping, bittersweet title track. But the record is ultimately sad in a way that has nothing to do with art—the sound of creativity spent.

Touring to promote the first new Who album since 1982's It's Hard, Pete Townshend led the band's current formation before a packed house at Chicago's United Center. The guitarist made an earnest case for his special fondness for the city, thanking the crowd for turning out in force.

The show began with snapshots of the band's distant past, coupled with a glimpse of the near future. Townshend and Co. charged into their debut single, "I Can't Explain," as images of their younger selves (including late bassist John Entwistle and late drummer Keith Moon) flickered on screens overhead. Following the mod anthem "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," Townshend introduced "Fragments," the first track from the forthcoming Endless Wire. The song began with undulating synthesizer loops reminiscent of "Baba O'Riley," tapping into the Who's mid-‘70s FM rock history before unfolding into a lush chorus featuring harmony between Townshend and lead vocalist Roger Daltrey.

A particular highlight of the evening was a rendition of the band’s mini-opera, heard on this year's import-only Wire & Glass EP. These segments ranged from the bluegrass snatches of "They Made My Dreams Come True," to the cathartic pop of "We Got a Hit," culminating in a tale of rock nirvana titled "Mirror Door." The songs followed Townshend's recent novella, The Boy Who Heard Music, while updating themes from his Lifehouse and Psychoderelict projects. Although Townshend thanked people for the indulgence, the new material proved a worthy addition to the Who canon.

It soon became apparent that Daltrey was having difficulty with his voice. Although he soldiered through anthems such as "Who Are You" and the new "Mike Post Theme," swinging his microphone and striking iconic poses in his everyman attire, by the forty-five minute mark, the frontman sounded like he was gargling the broken glass he cautioned against previously during "Fragments." After an acoustic duet and one more song, Daltrey excused himself from the stage.

That's when things got interesting.

Townshend, unclear of the problem, made winking references regarding the pair's age, saying, "Hopefully Roger has gone backstage to get some oxygen." Resigned that the band would have to forge ahead without its fearless singer, Townshend lashed into "My Generation" with a ferocity that seemingly reverse aged him by decades. Some forty years after first penning the line "I hope I die before I get old," the leaping, sixty-one year old Townshend declared that he couldn't die, and neither could the rest of the crowd.

The song evolved into "Cry If You Want," during which the modern Who proved to be a living, breathing band, and not simply a classic rock jukebox. During the song, the band explored various musical twists, and prominently featured John "Rabbit" Bundrick's organ and Zak Starkey's powerful drumming. Starkey, son of Ringo Starr, did the family name more than proud on "Real Good Looking Boy," while bassist Pino Palladino was featured during the aforementioned "My Generation." As remarkably skilled as this rhythm section is, Moon's and Entwistle's absences were nonetheless conspicuous in every beat and note.

Daltrey eventually returned to the stage, apologizing for the state of his voice and hinting at an allergic reaction to something being smoked nearby in the front rows. After "Won't Get Fooled Again," the band skipped its pre-encore exit, and Townshend asked the crowd to imagine that the band had gone backstage to indulge in all manner of rock star excess. To Townshend's list of vices, including coke snorting, blood transfusion, and copious amounts of brandy, Daltrey added Benadryl.

Concluding the set was another acoustic duet, Endless Wire's elegant "Tea & Theatre." The characters within the song recalled their lives in much the way Daltrey and Townshend might today. "We did it all, didn't we?" Daltrey sang fondly, his voice rejuvenated by tea and antihistamines.

Hard Rock International is set to make rock history at the Hyde Park Calling concert on Sunday, July 2.

For the first time, legendary rock band The Who will allow their entire live set to be broadcast as a 99-cent pay-per-view download to benefit various causes supported by Pete Townshend’s Double O charity, including the Teenage Cancer Trust, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation for underprivileged children.

Hard Rock Café will be broadcasting the concert at its locations in New York, Chicago, Orlando, Hollywood, Rome, Barcelona and Paris. Viewers will be able to download the set from thewholive.tv.

At 2:00 a.m. on Aug. 30, 1970, The Who took the stage in front of 600,000 revelers at the Isle of Wight Festival off the southern coast of England. The three hours of ensuing nocturnal brilliance and mayhem were partially captured for posterity by filmmaker Murray Lerner, whose documentary Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 has just been re-issued in glorious Surround Sound with a new 40-minute reminiscence from guitarist Pete Townshend.

The “partially captured” caveat is the key. The Who played for three hours, but the concert footage captures less than an hour and a half of the performance. Needless to say, plenty of film was relegated to the cutting room floor, and this fact becomes most apparent in the long medley from Tommy, which features only half the songs actually played. Even more problematic, the songs that are here have been truncated and spliced to bits, and fans of the first (and arguably best) rock opera will surely notice the ham-fisted editing and jarring transitions.

Otherwise, this is what you’d expect: an absolutely essential document of what may have been the era’s best rock ’n’ roll band performing at the peak of its powers. The band reprises several of the early Mod classics (“I Can’t Explain,” “My Generation,” “Magic Bus”), tosses in a few mostly forgettable songs from an aborted project that failed to see release between Tommy and Who’s Next, blazes through a couple live favorites (“Summertime Blues,” “Young Man Blues”) and offers the truncated Tom version of Tommy. Roger Daltrey, bare-chested and sporting a buckskin jacket, does an exemplary job of playing the strutting, swaggering frontman. Townshend breaks into his patented windmill power-chord strums, gyrates wildly and is the main contributor to the smashing (literally) finale. Keith Moon pummels his drum kit into oblivion. And John Entwistle stands stock still and plays his bass, but at least he’s wearing a cool skeleton shirt. It’s all marvelous rock ’n’ roll theatre.

The re-mastered sound is a delight, and Townshend is at his typically articulate, prickly, opinionated best in the interview. It’s unfortunate that the concert itself was put through the musical equivalent of a Cuisinart.