I grew up being aware of The Who. Kieth Moon’s passing was an event I wasn’t really conscious of, happening a year or so before I truly became conscious of happenings in the world of rock and roll. 1981’s “You Better You Bet” from the album Face Dances was the first single by The Who I remember hearing regularly upon its release. At the time I knew their drummer had died and a replacement, Kenny Jones, had joined the band. I was a bit familiar with the band through several of their singles (“My Generation” or “Who Are You” for example), but it was 1981 when I started to really pay attention and become aware of The Who.
“The Kids Are Alright”
After the band’s next album, 1982’s It’s Hard, the band was looking to call it quits as their tour began. By this time, however, I had become much more aware of the band and it’s history. I still had not acquired any albums by the band yet.
Their tour was rolling through Seattle and the opening act was The Clash. This was an opportunity to see two of the greatest bands in the history of rock and roll, and I knew it at the time. The Clash was a band with a few albums under its belt and was finally garnering some mainstream success while never letting go of its working class punk origins. The Who were “the loudest band in the world” and had created some of the greatest anthems in rock music. How could this not be of interest to music fans?
By this point in time I was paying attention when The Who came on the radio. Songs like “Magic Bus” or “Squeeze Box” or “Love Reign O’er Me” would be getting regular airplay. And I liked what I was hearing. A lot. My best friend at the time had Live At Leeds and I listened to that album quite a bit.
“Magic Bus”
(A little bit more history – at this point my mother had recently remarried and my new step-father had his two kids from his previous marriage come to live with us. My step-sister is about a year younger than I am. And over the intervening years the “step-” portion has left my vocabulary.)
So there we are in 1982, my (new step-)sister and me wanted to go see The Clash and The Who perform in the Kingdome. This was going to be a great concert. It was going to be our first major concert. What was the problem? We were still in our early-mid teens and attending a major concert like this, by ourselves, was “iffy” at best. My mother was going to allow us to go if we could name two songs by The Who. She wanted to see if we actually wanted to see the bands or if we were succumbing to peer pressure. The problem was, the only songs we could think of were ones that sort or rallied against the establishment, such as “My Generation” or were perhaps too aggressive, such as “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” and we were afraid if we put those songs forth as examples of the band she would disapprove and not allow us to go. Little did we realize, because we were young and stupid, that my mother was rather familiar with The Who and The Clash, so this really was a test to see if we were going to the concert as fans or just because it was “the thing to do” and we failed the test miserably.
“You Better You Bet”
We didn’t get to go – because we were too afraid to be completely honest.
I would get to see The Who, but it would be much later in life, 20 years actually, but that’s another story. And of course by that time I was a full-fledged fan of the band.