The article introduces the Who and their music, and explores how this kind of loud – indeed potentially damaging – music could find enthusiastic audiences, first among the band’s local fans in 1964-1965, and then across the Atlantic.ģAs this article describes, the first decade or so of the Who may be seen as emblematic of certain historical trends in post-1945 Atlantic culture (Harison, 2011), including as Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloonan have written, the persistent “facile romanticization” of loud, violent music in much of the literature on pop culture (2009: 194). But the refrain also points to the ringing in the ears produced by the loud music that the fictional “Jimmy” and his Mod pals listened to, and to the actual chronic tinnitus that guitarist Pete Townshend, the author of Quadrophenia and of most Who songs, now suffers from as a result of many years of creating and performing loud music. “Is It in My Head,” one of the songs from Quadrophenia, was the question the album’s lead character, “Jimmy,” struggled with as an adolescent in Mod-era London – the historical setting where the Who got their start and the place in which the album is situated. This article examines the attraction of the band, covering the years from their start in 1964 to the release of their seminal double album Quadrophenia in 1973. If the Who had done nothing else, they would have secured a place in rock and roll history for playing loud and for smashing guitars and drums kits.ĢThe curious appeal of the Who’s high volume and startling performance style for an early generation of rock music fans has only recently begun to attract the attention of scholars interested in post-1945 Atlantic cultural history (Simonelli, 2002 Quirk and Toynbee, 2005 Duffet, 2009). The volume was even louder in their live performances, which also included on-stage destruction of equipment. ![]() From the start of their career in 1964, the Who turned up the volume to a painfully high level and used feedback – the loud, distorted sound made when notes are “looped” between the pickup of an electric guitar and a speaker – in some of their recorded songs (they were among the first rock bands to do so). 1 The Who, an English rock and roll band that was influential for producing a number of popular songs and albums in the 1960s and 1970s, also became famous for a loud and raw performing style.
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