The Who exploded onto the UK music scene in 1964 with their debut single, ‘I Can’t Explain’ and went on to become one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Roger Daltrey (vocals), John Entwistle (bass), Keith Moon (drums) and Pete Townshend (guitar) started out in 1964 as a hard-edged R&B covers act on the London club scene, thrilling mod crowds with their incendiary live shows.
As Townshend’s songwriting developed, their musical horizons broadened and a string of classic albums followed. Here’s our pick of The Who’s greatest studio albums.
The Who's studio albums ranked
12. It's Hard (1982)
The Who were adrift in the early ’80s, with the death of drummer/chaos magnet Keith Moon, drink and drug dependency and solo success leaving them awash with existential doubt.
Pete Townshend told Jamming! magazine in 1985 that Face Dances (1981) and It’s Hard (1982) were "made by a band who were very unsure about whether or not they wanted to be making a record, and I think that’s a terrible doubt." That uncertainty was compounded when Face Dances was a hit, leading to record company pressure to follow it up quickly.
With inspiration low – Townshend arrived at the sessions with only two new songs following a spell in rehab – songs were written hastily, generally themed around nuclear war. While some of the material passes muster – in particular ‘Athena’, ‘Eminence Front’ and ‘One Life’s Enough’ – elsewhere it’s obvious the songs are hastily thrown together while performances are lacklustre across the board.
Key track: 'Athena'
11. Face Dances (1981)
The Who’s first album with former Faces drummer Kenney Jones filling Keith Moon’s vacant drum stool, Face Dances got off to a triumphant start with the hit single ‘You Better You Bet’, a bona fide Townshend anthem, even if it’s lacking the percussive fireworks of the past.
Elsewhere though, it’s patchy at best, with the near-yacht rock ‘Don’t Let Go The Coat’ and John Entwistle’s autobiographical rocker ‘The Quiet One’ the better tracks. Meanwhile, ‘Did You Steal My Money?’ answers a question nobody was asking – what would The Who sound like doing an impression of The Police?
And ‘Cache Cache’ is a tame attempt at punk which recounts a bizarre episode – apparently a true story – in which a sozzled Townshend decided to give up music to become a vagabond and visit bears living in the hills of Berne, Switzerland.
The guitarist was discovered passed out in a (luckily empty) bear pit after a day or so and flown to Vienna, where he played with The Who that evening, presumably after a shower and several black coffees.
Key track: 'You Better You Bet'
10. Who (2019)
Over 50 years since their debut, The Who were as antagonistic as ever, as the opening words of Who’s first track, ‘All This Music Must Fade’ confirm. "I don’t care," snarls Roger Daltrey, as Townshend windmills power chords behind him, "I know you’re gonna hate this song."
It’s a bracing opener, borne of the same art school spirit as Townshend’s early material – destructive, self-referential and designed to provoke.
Though not all of the material is as strong, there’s a focus and fury on tracks such as ‘Street Song’ (a response to the Grenfell Tower disaster) and the self-referential ‘I Don’t Wanna Get Wise’ and ‘Rockin’ In Rage’. Meanwhile, the gently proggy plea for understanding ‘Beads On One’ and the soulful ‘I’ll be Back’ show another side, though the generic Apple-advert-folk-lite of ‘Break The News’ is a puzzling misstep.
Key track: 'All This Music Must Fade'
9. Who Are You (1978)
Another opener with a telling lyric, ‘New Song’ (there’s a can’t-be-bothered title if ever we heard one) finds Townshend informing his audience, "I write the same old song with a few new lines / And everybody wants to cheer it."
Though the songwriter would later claim the track was a jab at the playlists of radio stations, it could also be levelled at much of Who Are You.
Still, even if much of the songwriting is Townshend-by-numbers, synth-heavy tracks such as ‘Sister Midnight’ offer an intriguing new dimension. And even the four-piece Who operating on autopilot can be a powerful thing, as proven by the swashbuckling final track, and hit single, ‘Who Are You’.
Key track: 'Who Are You'
- This is one of those rock albums with a weird, eerie detail on the cover. Here are some more
8. Endless Wire (2006)
The Who’s first album after the 2002 death of John Entwistle, Endless Wire showed that Townshend’s penchant for sprawling song suites linked by tenuous narrative hadn’t deserted him, with the 10-song mini-opera ‘Wire & Glass’.
The 20-minute-plus long piece is packed with ideas, neat references to past glories – the way ‘Fragments Of Fragments’ calls back to ‘Baba O’Riley’ or the ‘Who Are You’-like ‘We Got A Hit’ – and some great moments, including the swaggering ‘Mirror Door’ and the pathos-packed ‘Tea & Theatre’.
Elsewhere, there are dramatic rockers ‘Black Widow’s Eyes’ and reflective acoustic gems, such as ‘You Stand Me’ and ‘God Speaks, Of Marty Robbins’, but misfires too, such as Townshend’s muppet-does-Tom-Waits vocal on ‘In The Ether’.
Key track: 'Tea & Theatre'
7. A Quick One (1967)
The Who’s 1967 second album is a curious thing. On the one hand, quality control is compromised by a money-spinning publishing deal struck by co-manager Chris Stamp which gave each member of The Who publishing deals (meaning that they all contribute songs).
But on the other, it includes one of Townshend’s great early songs (the bittersweet mod kiss-off ‘So Sad About Us’), Entwistle’s creepy-crawly classic ‘Boris The Spider’ and the absurdist mini-opera (yup, another one) of ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’.
Key track: 'A Quick One While He's Away'
6. The Who By Numbers (1975)
By the mid-’70s, Townshend was suffering from writer’s block and fretting about The Who’s relevance (he’d just reached the grand old age of 30).
‘Slip Kid’ and ‘They Are All In Love’ were weary warnings to young musicians of the unwelcome side-effects of the business; ‘However Much I Booze’ was so self-flagellating that Daltrey refused to sing it, leaving Townshend to take lead vocals; and though ‘Dreaming From The Waist’ found the band at full-throttle, it was another howl of existential frustration from Townshend.
Among the soul-baring came an unlikely hit, the innuendo-ridden ‘Squeeze Box’, written by Townshend after he’d bought an accordion and taught himself to play it in one afternoon. "Amazingly recorded by The Who, to my disbelief," Townshend later wrote. "Further incredulity was caused when it became a hit for us in the USA."
Key track: 'Dreaming From The Waist'
5. Tommy (1969)
Having dabbled in narrative-linked song suites with 1966’s ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ and the following year’s ‘Rael’ (from The Who Sell Out), it was perhaps inevitable that Townshend would expand the idea to a whole album.
With The Who’s popularity taking a dip (non-album single ‘Dogs’ only reached No 25 in the UK) and his imagination stirred by the teachings of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, Townshend went for broke with Tommy – a double-album loosely based on a deafblind child who discovers a knack for pinball and becomes the leader of a religious cult.
Tommy might be flawed – best not go too deep into those plot holes, or linger on tracks such as ‘Cousin Kevin’ and ‘Fiddle About’ – but its ambition can’t be faulted and it includes some of the band’s most enduring music, such as the thrilling ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘We’re Not Going To Take It’, which includes the stunning ‘See Me, Feel Me’ section.
Key track: 'We're Not Gonna Take It'
4. Quadrophenia (1973)
In May 1972, sessions began for Rock Is Dead – Long Live Rock!, a concept album based on the history of The Who.
When the sessions fizzled out, Townshend used a couple of its songs (the epic ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ and ‘Is It In My Head’) as the starting point for a new project, Quadrophenia, with the focus shifted to tell the story of Jimmy, a young, working-class mod and Who devotee with a four-way (hence the title) split-personality disorder.
Stunning rockers ‘The Real Me’ and ‘5:15’ emphasise the chemistry that made The Who so special, with Entwistle and Moon given free reign to effectively play lead parts while Townshend’s driving rhythm guitar holds it all together.
Key track: 'Love Reign O'er Me'
3. My Generation (1965)
While the band later dismissed their debut album as a rush job, that’s missing the point. My Generation was recorded across a handful of short sessions from April to November 1965 and cobbled together quickly with no regard for posterity.
As such, it sounds exactly as a debut album should – breathless and impatient; snotty and frustrated; ragged and electrifying. And Townshend’s songwriting was already setting him apart while defining his time, from ‘The Kids Are Alright’ to the glorious howl of ‘My Generation’.
Key track: 'My Generation'
2. Who's Next (1971)
After Tommy became a huge hit, Townshend’s planned follow-up was even more ambitious.
Lifehouse was conceived as a multi-media project set in a dystopian future in which pollution has forced ordinary people into lockdown, where they are interconnected by a ‘universal grid’ and fed state-sponsored entertainment to dampen any revolutionary zeal – until a plucky individual frees them with the help of a rock’n’roll band.
Despite Lifehouse containing some of Townsend’s greatest songs, the project became ever-more complicated and unwieldy, until it was eventually scrapped in the spring of 1971. The band took eight of its strongest songs and re-recorded them with Glyn Johns (adding Entwistle’s ‘My Wife’) to form Who’s Next.
The rethink led to one of the greatest rock albums of the ’70s, from the monumental ‘Baba O’Riley’ to the piledriving anthem of defiance ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
Key track: 'Baba O'Riley'
1. The Who Sell Out (1967)
Townshend’s pop art masterpiece, The Who Sell Out finds Townshend at his most engaged and excited by the fast-changing world around him.
Nuanced and witty character studies (‘Odorono’, ‘Tattoo’) sit among surreal jingles and breezy beat group gems (‘Our Love Was’, ‘Can’t Reach You’).
But towering above them all is ‘I Can See For Miles’, an epic feat of musical alchemy that veers between the mystical and swashbuckling and the tender beauty of Sunrise. And where else can you find a photo of Roger Daltrey sitting in a bath of baked beans?
Key track: 'I Can See For Miles'
All photos Getty Images/All album covers Amazon
Top image The Who pose for a group portrait, London, 1965
