By David Ross.The Beatles were uncanny craftsmen, but their music interests me almost not at all these days. I listen to a Beatles album once every few years. I invariably feel awed, bored, and irritated. The irritating part is the self-importance of the whole shtick (this self-importance later became fully obnoxious in John Lennon’s insufferable “Imagine”). Nobody can deny that the Beatles were peerless in their ability to craft albums, but the music itself, for all its endless melodic invention and vast tonal spectrum, so often seems hollow. The long suite that ends Abbey Road is at once the most amazing feat in the history of rock and the most abstract and elaborately empty. In the end, the Beatles’ preeminence is a Baby Boomer phenomenon. I don’t believe it will entirely survive the transition to a post-Boomer culture.
On the other hand, I never tire of the Who. I love to feel the whiplash of their sonic overdrive: the skittering cannonade of the drums, the waves of guitar thunder, the endless frisky invention of Entwistle’s bass. In terms of instrumental prowess and cohesion, the Who far exceed the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and even Led Zeppelin. The band’s defining idiosyncrasy – in many ways the secret of its success – was the unique reversal of the guitar and bass parts. So often Townsend establishes the rhythm or adds tonal effects while Entwistle carries the melodic burden. Watching the Who play live, one realizes that what sound like guitar parts – power chords, dashing melodic runs – are actually bass parts. The primacy of the bass gives the Who’s music such underlying movement and momentum. The most dynamic aspect of the music is buried deep in the tonal structure and speaks to some primal lobe of the brain, the part that remembers the pulse of the womb. Jimi Hendrix was the greatest rock instrumentalist of all time, but Entwistle may be in his quiet way the second greatest.
Above, the Who perform a kaleidoscopic mini-suite as part of the Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus, a 1968 made-for-TV extravaganza that also featured John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Jethro Tull. The Stones sat on the footage until 1996, allegedly because the Who so utterly upstaged them. We now know how long it takes the wounded rock star ego to convalesce: 28 years.
Equally magnitudinous is the Who’s performance at Woodstock (see here), which somehow manages to dwarf the audience of 500,000. The Woodstock version of the “See Me, Feel Me” sequence from Tommy is a career highlight. Rarely has a band been at once so powerful and so soulful. Like no British band before them, they here enter Otis Redding territory.
Posted on November 18th, 2011 at 1:46pm.
The greatest band ever. I’ve seen them nearly half dozen times. Starting in the seventies all the way to as recently as 2006. Sadly the real heart..when you really felt the power of The Who was live and that died in 2002 with John Entwistle. I still loved them in 2006 but I’m also glad I saw them with John Entwistle.
“In the end, the Beatles’ preeminence is a Baby Boomer phenomenon. I don’t believe it will entirely survive the transition to a post-Boomer culture.” This may not be the most ignorant statement I’ve read about The Beatles’ music, but if it’s not, it comes close. I get it. You’re a Who fan. So am I. And they made some of the greatest music in rock history. This entire post, though, is like a rock equivalent to a “baseball is boring” essay and seems pointless.
Phil,
I am, of course, a Beatles fan, which is why I describe myself as invariably feeling “awed” when I listen to any one of their albums. At the same time, I think there are subtle but meaningful points to be made against. To say, “This doesn’t work for me,” is to begin to figure out what does work and why. To say, “This doesn’t work for me anymore,” is to begin to figure out how one’s changed or how the culture’s changed. These are the dynamics of all aesthetic discussion. To compare the Beatles and the Who is compare the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which Nietzsche thought well worth discussing.
As per the specific point: Will the Beatles survive the Baby Boomer culture? Don’t be too confident. Who imagined, in the year 1870, that fifty years would deliver Lord Tennyson to his doom? Who imagined, in the year 1955, that the great modernists would soon be unseated by an anti-elite counter-revolution? Culture is a very precarious navigation. Nearly everything eventually falls by the wayside. Already much of the Beatles’ music feels dated: “All You Need is Love,” etc.
“This entire post, though, is like a rock equivalent to a “baseball is boring” essay and seems pointless.” I should have added “in comparison to football” in quotes in the previous post.
@John – The Who was a thrilling live band. I saw them, I believe, three times. The last time was on the 25th anniversary tour (1987?) in a football stadium, and they projected to the back of the place. There are a lot of people that thought the heart of the band died with Keith Moon, but Entwistle was to me equally important to their sound. I never saw Moon play with The Who, but did see him and Townshend join Clapton for several numbers in an encore of one of Clapton’s 465 Ocean Boulevard tour shows. It was a fantastic experience.