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By Numbers

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I don't suppose I can realistically argue that WHO BY NUMBERS is the best Who LP. It's really not on the same level as QUADROPHENIA, WHO'S NEXT or LIVE AT LEEDS.

But WHO BY NUMBERS may be my favorite Who LP. It's Townshends most personal, most initmate group effort. While it has never made me want to hold a lighter over my head or play air guitar, it does touch me in a way no other Who record can do.

Critics love to say the album was Townshend's first 'mid-life crisis' LP. That's more than a tad absurd, considering Townshend was still a good 15 years shy of mid-life. WHO BY NUMBERS has more to do with Townshend's increasing concern that he was losing himself in drink and celebrity. The album is a cry for intimacy in a world Townshend increasingly saw as hollow and transparent; he finds himself, as he wrote years earlier, Alone In A Crowd. The audience and the generation that Townshend always tried so hard to connect with seemed to be further removed from him all the time. On "However Much I Booze" he sings:

"You at home can easily decide what's right by glancing very breifly at the songs I write, but it don't help me that you know, there still ain't no way out."

For all the talk of Townshend's bow to Punk on WHO ARE YOU and his great solo LP EMPTY GLASS, he seems to have had a premonition of the movement on this 1975 album, writing in "They Are All In Love":

"Goodbye all you punks, stay young and stay high. Hand me checkbook and I'll crawl off to die. Like a woman in childbirth, grown ugly in a flash, I've seen magic and pain, now I'm recycling trash."

The songs on WHO BY NUMBERS are witty, caustic, confessional, and, in several cases--"They Are All In Love," "Blue Red And Grey"--downright pretty. There are two quirky little hits here, "Slip Kid" and "Squeeze Box," but the non-hits, including Entwistle's great "Success Story," are far better.

The Who's first mid-life crisis album contains more good cuts than their later ones. "Slip Kid" is one their best (I always loved the count-off at the beginning); we hear a slightly older and more cynical Pete/Roger trying to tap into the spirit of youthful rebellion in the face of creeping middle age. John Entwistle's "Success Story" is a bouyant autobiographical song of the band. "Squeeze Box" has some nice banjo work on it and sounds like the obvious choice for a single (which it was). Pete breaks out the ukulele on the very pretty "Blue, Red, and Grey" and "Dreaming From The Waist" is a tough rocker with some okay lyrics about sexual frustration. In truth, the rest of the album is pretty depressing. "However Much I Booze" sounds more upbeat than it should, while "They Are All In Love" and "Imagine A Man" are as bleak as they come. Although it's clear that the excesses of rock stardom were starting to wear them down, the playing is still inspired. By the time "Who Are You" came out, Keith Moon seemed to have lost a step and The Who would soon lose the chaotic drumming frenzy that was the band's driving engine. WHO BY NUMBERS, while over all too darkly self-confessional in tone to make for a consistently enjoyable listen, has some some fine moments and is way better than anything The Stones were putting out at the time (if you want to put it in some sort of context).

Again, some of the greatest works of art are misunderstood. I think Pete Townshend even told us that when he said: "You at home can easily decide what's right/ by glancing at the songs I write/ but it don't help me that you know ...."

I don't think this album was made to be gobbled up by the masses. It is a lot like Alice Cooper's 1978 masterpiece "From the Inside." You are ALLOWED to enter into a world that one wouldn't normally understand.

As far as the record goes, it contains some of Tonshend's finest melodies. I don't think it is easy to argue with jams like "However Much I Booze" or melodies such as "Imagine a Man" or "Blue Red and Grey". It even affords Entwistle an erstwhile place to soap-box in "Success Story." Such a record!

Sometimes it is good that people don't "understand" a record. Those who need it or want it seek it out, and it strikes a chord as resonant as the last chord of "A Day in the Life". Only for those that know .... And isn't art made for those that take it in?

Unlike The Who's three previous albums, Tommy, Who's Next and Quadrophenia, Who By Numbers is stripped down, back-to-the-basics rock and roll. There are no themes, no operettas, no stories running through multiple songs. Instrumentally, it's comparatively bare-bones; most of the songs are just guitar, bass and drums, played to perfection. Lyrically, the album as a whole is as good as anything Pete Townshend has written, though much more understated, thematically. Even the album cover, John Entwhistle's connect-the-dots drawing, is almost child-like in its simplicity. It's as if the band intended a 180 degree turn from high-art aspirations of their previous three albums (of original material), not unlike the Beatles' original approach to Let it Be.

Whether the simplicity of Who By Numbers was accidental or intentional, it produced The Who's best album. Tommy is great as a concept album, but if you're just interested in hearing good rock and roll tunes, the story line, and the extra songs needed to round out the "opera," get in the way. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Quadrophenia. Who By Numbers, short and to the point, has no such faults.

"Dreaming From the Waist" is brilliant, a clever but mature description of the effects of raging male hormones and uncontrollable lust. "Blue Red and Grey," a celebration of life, just Pete and a banjo, is maybe Townshend's most beautiful song ever. "They're All in Love" is an open letter to the band's recently departed managers, a rather caustic parting shot. "However Much I Booze" is an admission of Pete's - and maybe Keith Moon's as well - struggles with alcohol (and whatever other substances.) Oddly enough, the album's weakest tracks are its biggest hits, "Squeezebox" and "Slip Kid". Both are fine songs, but they're eclipsed by their sisters on this album.

The 1996 re-issued CD has three bonus tracks, "Dreaming From the Waist," "Behind Blue Eyes," and "Squeeze Box," all live. They're nice freebies but the album stands up well on its own without any bonus material.

Most Who fans would recommend one of the big three, Tommy, Who's Next or Quadrophenia, as essential Who albums. In my view, Who By Numbers beats them all. Not only is it a great rock album, it's more honest, more autobiographical and real than those three. While Townshend, no doubt, showed bits and pieces of himself in those previous albums, he hid behind characters or concepts. Who By Numbers is his soul laid bare, but without the bellyaching or self-pity of people like Cobain. Not until Empty Glass, his first major solo release, would Pete be so transparent with his audience.

If you love straight-forward rock with intelligent lyrics, this album - whether you're a Who fan or not - is an essential work.

This underrated album has been consigned to something of a footnote status in The Who's history: it broke no new ground for the band, neither was it another of Townshend's ambitious "rock operas". Instead the songs started life as possible demos for his 2nd solo LP, only for Pete to find that the group, in desperate need of new material, were snapping up these painfully personal confessionals for their first album of new stuff for some 2 years.

What is it about albums like this one, Dylan's "Blood On The Tracks" or Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" that is so compelling? Dylan himself expressed surprise that anyone could listen to "Blood..." for pleasure, and yet whenever I reach a crisis point in my life it's records like these that bring me the most comfort because they speak to me, THEY UNDERSTAND! It's clear from the likes of However Much I Booze, How Many Friends, They Are All In Love, In A Hand Or A Face and Imagine A Man that Pete was having an emotional/spiritual crisis during this period. He lays his tortured soul out naked for all to see (so much so that Daltrey refused to sing However Much...) - and the results are both harrowing and first class songwriting at the same time. But if it all gets you down, there's always Squeeze Box and Blue Red & Grey (or is this one ironic?) to show the lighter side of life. It may not be The Who's greatest CD (choose between "Who's Next", "Sell Out" and "Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy" for that honour), but often it's the only one I want to play because it makes such a connection.

This is a more down-to-earth collection of songs for The Who, in view of their recent ambitious projects, and a fine album. Pete Townshend is more focused on mid-life than teenage glory, and uses sparsity instead of embellishment in doing so in a collection of consistently good songs. The acoustic (OK, Banjo), jaunty "Squeeze Box" is a highlight, along with the opener, "Slip Kid." In this latter song and others, such as the pretty "Imagine a Man," "How Many Friends Have I Really Got," and "However Much I Booze," Townshend looks inward (well, perhaps at other band members too). "They Are All in Love" seems to be an underrated gem.

Not just synthesizers, but electric guitar, are less prominent as the acoustic sound and straight keyboards flow in their place. "Who by Numbers" is more low-key for this dynamic group, but still a fine album. Note also that the good lyrics play their part in maintaining quality. For another side of The Who, get this one.

There's always one album by a great rock band that you buy last, and "The Who By Numbers" was it for me. The songs felt distant, as if the whole steamrolling, take-no-prisoners stance the group had built up was finally winding down. It hadn't - not yet. Pete Townshend jumps right into his vision of middle-aged despair with "Slip Kid", and keeps up the gloom in "However Much I Booze". Things let up in "Squeeze Box", with its jaunty banjo; then the poignant "Dreaming From the Waist". The lyrics reach the ultimate in self-pity on "Imagine A Man", but Roger Daltrey interprets them beautifully, and the gentle build-up to the chorus "and you will see the end..." is a change from The Who's usual crescendos. "Success Story" is John Entwistle's answer to Townshend's angst: a tale of a successful yet morose rock star. What happened to the fun of being famous? Townshend then lets in a tiny beam of light with "Blue, Red and Grey"... but after "In a Hand or Face" spirals to an end, you get the idea that outside it's raining, and getting darker. It's a chilly note to end on, and since The Who would only record one more album with Moon (three years later, in '78), "By Numbers" stands out as the group's bleakest and most spare effort, mirroring the dissolution Townshend felt at the time. Even Entwistle's connect-the-dots cover art was a downer - black ink on plain gray. No synthesizers, no double-fold-out sleeves, none of the humor that The Who always managed to tap into. Just a stark, frank testament to the emptiness of superstardom.

Although The Who bravely, and perhaps unwisely, soldiered on after the untimely and senseless death of drum genius Keith Moon in 1978, it was painfully obvious by the release of "The Who By Numbers" in 1975 that the band's glory years were sadly drawing to a conclusion. Although one of the biggest influences, along with Iggy and The Ramones, on England's burgeoning punk movement, Peter Townshend's lyrics on this album sound like part of a suicide note, as he implores the punks to "stay young and stay high," while at the same time confessing that "however much I booze, there ain't no way out." "Squeeze Box," the closest the band has ever come to a novelty song, lightens the mood a bit, as does John Entwistle's hilarious "Success Story," but the morosity of Townshend's words is what the listener will ultimately take away with him. On the plus side, Moon, never the most conventional of timekeepers, shows why he was the greatest drummer in rock and roll history, filling every empty moment with thunderous rolls and fills, almost as if attempting to prop up the sinking Townshend. Fascinating and riveting...

As The Who were entering their tenth year together, it shouldn't be a suprise that Peter Townshend, battling alchohol addiction as well as what he considered rock and roll to be a young man's occupation, produced his most personal work here (in my mind, equal to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band for sheer laying-it-on-the-line terms). Roger Daltrey (who was butting heads with Pete in the press-check out some of the interviews they were giving at the time to grasp the severity of their conflicts) sings these songs with an intuitive understanding that's never condescending towards the composer (he's a year older than Pete and must have shared some of the same feelings). Even John Entwistle's "Success Story" shows some resignation in the whole record-and-image making process. Keith Moon was always his happiest when he was with the band; his own personal life in shatters, he would unfornately prove Pete's lyrics to be true.

Not a feel-good album by any stretch of the imagination, it is an artisticly rewarding experience. And now, remixed and remastered, this CD has never sounded better.

HIghly recommended.

The Who is not my favorite band but this is my favorite album(by any band). Pete is old enough and experienced enough to write with sophistication, yet young enough to tap into his angst. And tap he does...deeply!