Who Are You?

In this podcast episode, we’ll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping from vinyl to concert halls, movie screens, and the Broadway stage.

Imagine that it is Post war England and you are in West London
Bomb sites are turning into parking lots and playgrounds. Teenagers caught between their parents’ memories of wartime suffering and a new world of consumer goods, television sets, and American rock records.

Roger Daltrey grows up in a working-class family, handy with his fists and tools, assembling his own future piece by piece.

Pete Townshend, the intense, sharp-nosed kid, is surrounded by music early—his parents are professional musicians—so the idea of a musical life is precarious, but not absurd.

John Entwistle is the quiet one, a brass-band kid who picks up the bass and makes it sing.

Daltrey starts a band called The Detours. He pulls in Entwistle. Entwistle brings Townshend. They grind through pubs, youth clubs, and dance halls. Then, after a name change detour as the High Numbers, shaped by managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they emerge with the name that finally fits the impact:

Transcript

I’m George Bartley—and today we turn the spotlight on a band that treated rock and roll like a laboratory for volume, vulnerability, and very dangerous ideas.
    
The Who.

In this podcast episode, we’ll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping from vinyl to concert halls, movie screens, and the Broadway stage.

Imagine that it is Post war England and you are in West London
Bomb sites are turning into parking lots and playgrounds. Teenagers caught between their parents’ memories of wartime suffering and a new world of consumer goods, television sets, and American rock records.

Roger Daltrey grows up in a working-class family, handy with his fists and tools, assembling his own future piece by piece.

Pete Townshend, the intense, sharp-nosed kid, is surrounded by music early—his parents are professional musicians—so the idea of a musical life is precarious, but not absurd.

John Entwistle is the quiet one, a brass-band kid who picks up the bass and makes it sing.

Daltrey starts a band called The Detours. He pulls in Entwistle. Entwistle brings Townshend. They grind through pubs, youth clubs, and dance halls. Then, after a name change detour as the High Numbers, shaped by managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they emerge with the name that finally fits the impact:

The Who.

Entrance, one Keith Moon.

Moon doesn’t play the drums so much as attack them. He fills every empty space with movement. Subtlety is… not the point. Suddenly, the four of them don’t just play songs. They look and sound like something might explode at any moment.

And underneath the chaos, there’s already a pattern:
working-class tension, art-school ambition, and a sense that three-minute pop singles might not be big enough to hold what’s going on inside their heads.

You might ask, What made The Who sound like The Who?

You start with the obvious ingredients:

American rhythm and blues.
Chuck Berry riffs.
Motown grooves.
James Brown intensity.
Surf and early hard rock sneaking in via radio and imported 45s.

But then you add Pete Townshend’s art-school brain.

At Ealing Art College, he’s exposed to the idea of “auto-destructive art”: destruction as performance, breaking something as a statement. When he smashes a guitar, it isn’t just a tantrum or a publicity stunt—it’s a way of saying, “This music should be dangerous. This object shouldn’t be sacred.”

John Entwistle refuses to stay in the background. His bass lines move like a second lead guitar, agile and aggressive.

Keith Moon approaches the drum kit like it’s a single wild instrument—a rolling, crashing orchestra of cymbals and toms, pushing songs to the edge.

And Roger Daltrey slowly grows from a tough, sometimes uncertain singer into one of the great voices of rock—a roar that can cut through all that volume and carry Townshend’s words straight into the cheap seats.

Together they create songs that aren’t just about romance or partying. Early on, there’s frustration, stuttering, doubt, identity crisis.

“My Generation” isn’t polished youth pride. It’s insecurity with a fuse attached.

Even here, you can feel Townshend wanting more: more story, more connection, more spiritual weight. The sound is getting larger. The questions are getting harder.

But To become legends, The Who have to test themselves in America.

In the mid-1960s, British bands are flooding the US charts, and The Who arrive as part of that so-called “British Invasion”—but they don’t sound like The Beatles, and they certainly don’t behave like The Rolling Stones.

Records like “I Can’t Explain” and “Substitute” start to appear on American radio. But as with so many artists, the real conversion happens when people see them.

At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, The Who deliver a set that is short, sharp, and explosive. Townshend attacks his guitar. Moon goes off like fireworks. Amps topple. For many in that crowd, this is their first real encounter with The Who—and it is not easily forgotten.

From there, they tour the States relentlessly:
They’re louder than almost anyone.
They’re more physical than almost anyone.

And onstage, they seem to be telling some kind of emotional story even before the concept albums: tension, release, collapse.

For American youth caught in a moment of Vietnam protests, civil unrest, and suburban sprawl, The Who feel like a band that understands confusion and anger—and doesn’t smooth it over.

But Townshend is still thinking:
“How do I get beyond a collection of songs? How do I say something bigger?”
And the answer, for him, is to try something no rock band had fully pulled off yet.

By 1968, things are complicated.

The Who are respected, but the money’s a mess. Their reputation as the “guitar-smashing band” threatens to overshadow the songwriting. Townshend is reading, questioning, exploring spiritual teachings, wondering what fame does to a person’s soul.

Out of that stew comes an audacious idea.

Tell one story.
Across a full double album.
No filler singles, no random themes—one narrative.

Meet Tommy Walker.

A child who witnesses violence and is traumatized.
A child told he “didn’t see it, didn’t hear it”—and in that command, he shuts down. He becomes, outwardly, deaf, blind, and unable to speak.

Inside that silence lies the journey:
A helpless child passed from adult to adult.
Abuse and exploitation.
A baffling, inexplicable gift for pinball.

Sudden celebrity, as people gather around this “Pinball Wizard” as a kind of messiah.
And a fall from grace when his followers realize he isn’t going to magically fix their lives.

On paper, this sounds like the opposite of commercial rock.
And yet that’s exactly what The Who risk.

Tommy becomes a vessel for Townshend’s own spiritual searching—particularly influenced by Meher Baba—and his unease about fans treating rock stars as saviors. Tommy’s trauma, miracle, and crisis of leadership all echo questions about belief, responsibility, and the price of worship.

Can a broken person heal?
Can fame ever be holy?
Is following anyone blindly—rock star, prophet, politician—a trap?

This is the material they decide to send into living rooms and car stereos.

Tommy is recorded mainly at IBC Studios in London between late 1968 and early 1969.

You have Pete Townshend walking in with:
A story outline.
Musical motifs for different characters and moments.
A conviction that this can work.
But this is still a band, not a solo project.

Roger Daltrey takes on the role of Tommy’s voice and spiritual center. Tommy is where he truly steps forward. You can hear it: the grit, the control, the way he starts to sound like the person who can carry grand, searching material without it collapsing into parody.

John Entwistle doesn’t just hold down the rhythm; he colors the record with brass parts and muscular bass playing that keeps the whole thing from floating away.

Keith Moon reins in just enough to serve the story—but still sounds like a storm powered by caffeine and nitroglycerin. He turns crescendos, accusations, and revelations into physical blows.

Townshend stitches it all together with acoustic guitars, electric surges, recurring themes, and choral sections that hint at church while never really letting you relax.

The result is both raw and strangely elegant:
a rock band tackling opera without abandoning distortion pedals and drum fills.

When Tommy is released in 1969, it does what almost nobody logically expected.

It hits.

Fans engage with it as an album, as a story, as a puzzle. Critics argue over whether the plot makes sense. But very quickly, one thing becomes clear: The Who are no longer just “the band that breaks stuff.”

They’re the band that tried to turn rock into narrative art—and largely succeeded.

And in the United States, that lands at the perfect cultural moment. The album format is becoming sacred. Listeners are ready to sit with headphones and follow a story start to finish.

Once you have a rock opera on record, you face the next challenge:

Can you do this live?

The Who decide yes—and then go all in.

Their late-60s and early-70s performances of Tommy in the US become events. Instead of a random set list of hits, audiences witness a structured, high-impact journey:

From the “Overture” through trauma, abuse, revelation, pinball, and the rise and fall of Tommy’s quasi-religious movement.

This is not Broadway staging yet—no formal choreography, no rotating sets—but it is theatre. You can feel the through-line. You can feel the band taking their own work seriously as story, not just spectacle.

And American audiences respond.

Woodstock.
The Fillmores.
Campus arenas and civic centers.

The Who are helping redefine what a rock show can be: not merely songs in a row, but a narrative arc, a ritual.

Of course, they don’t stop at Tommy.
Who’s Next and Quadrophenia continue the push toward ambitious, layered albums, often landing with even more sonic authority.

But Tommy is where this all becomes undeniable.

Once something like Tommy exists, it refuses to stay in one lane.

First, a symphonic version. Then concert adaptations. And in 1975, director Ken Russell brings Tommy to the movie screen in a wild, surreal, visually overloaded film starring Roger Daltrey, with an all-star cast dropping in as characters.

Is it subtle? No.
Does it keep the story alive for a new audience? Absolutely.
But the most remarkable transformation happens later.

In the early 1990s, Pete Townshend collaborates with director Des McAnuff on a full-scale stage adaptation: The Who’s Tommy.
This isn’t just a rock concert with props. It’s a Broadway musical.
The story is clarified: timelines sharpened, details adjusted.
Certain lyrics are reassigned or re-contextualized to make the emotional journey clearer.
The staging leans into light, projection, and choreography to visualize Tommy’s interior world and the collective frenzy around him.

The show opens on Broadway in 1993, wins multiple Tony Awards, and later moves to London’s West End. Decades on, it’s revived again, including a much-talked-about new production that proves Tommy still has power for audiences who weren’t born when the original album dropped.

Think about what that means.

This strange, risky 1969 double album about trauma, celebrity, and spiritual confusion becomes:
An enduring concert piece
A cult film
A decorated stage musical

Very few rock projects make that jump and still feel coherent. Tommy is one of them.

By the time the band leave the 1970s, The Who’s relationship with the United States is complicated, profound, and permanent.

They are:
A stadium act.
A concept-album band.
A live force associated with both transcendence and tragedy.

However,We can’t ignore the darkness.

Keith Moon’s death in 1978, from a drug overdose linked to his attempts to control addiction, ends an era.

The 1979 Cincinnati tragedy—where a crush of fans outside the arena leads to multiple deaths—casts a permanent shadow over the culture of big rock shows.

Those moments alter how we think about concerts, ticketing, safety, responsibility.

And yet, through lineup changes, hiatuses, reunions, and solo projects, The Who’s influence on American and global music is undeniable:

Anytime a rock or pop artist:
Tries to tell a single story across an album.
Builds a live show as a narrative instead of a jukebox.

Or Asks psychological questions at full volume.

You can feel The Who in the foundations.

Tommy, especially, opened a door.

It proved that listeners would follow a difficult story. That rock characters could wrestle with trauma, faith, manipulation, idolatry. That a band associated with destruction could construct something elaborate and lasting instead.

So why spend this much time on one band and one project?

Because The Who—and Tommy in particular—sit at the crossroads of a few big ideas this podcast keeps circling back to:

Art as risk.
Art as self-interrogation.
Art as something that can move from one form to another without losing its heartbeat.

In Tommy, you have:
A child silenced by adult violence and lies.
A family and a society that would rather mythologize him than actually help him.
An individual elevated into a symbol—and then punished for failing to be perfect.
That’s not just a rock opera plot. That’s a warning label for any culture that wants easy saviors.
The music is thrilling. The performances are electric. But inside the riffs and choruses is a difficult reminder:
If you hand over your voice to anyone else—politicians, celebrities, preachers, or rock stars—don’t be surprised when they can’t carry it for you.

And as Tommy makes its journey from record to tour to movie to Broadway and beyond, it shows how flexible creativity can be when the core story is strong enough.

If this is your first deep dive into The Who, I’d encourage you to:

Start with the early singles.
Live for a while with Tommy—front to back, no skipping.
Then move into Who’s Next and Quadrophenia to hear just how far they carried this idea of rock as storytelling.

Now in conclusion, that while I never saw the whole live I do feel a connection of sorts to their stage experience. You see, I interpreted an incredible local production of Tommy for the deaf. Standing among the actors and backed by an incredible bevy of electric guitars playing transcendent music, I felt as though the music was almost coming through me and I was becoming the words in a way that was beyond language.

In future episodes, we’ll continue traveling through the artists and works that didn’t just chase hits, but rewired how we think about what music can do.

I’m George Bartley.
Thank you for listening—and for caring enough about creativity to dig this deep.