Ha ha. Squeeze Box is about a woman obsessed with playing an accordion. It's meant to make perverts think of breasts, when really it's just innocent. Well, mostly. I definitely think the "squeeze me" verse is more sexually-charged.
I very much like this band. "Tommy" is good, even if its story is weak and the music runs out of steam. "Quadrophenia" was a big improvement on it. However, my favourite of their albums is easily "The Who Sell Out" because it has the most variety by far, a very creative album theme, and many of their best songs. Fantastic stuff.
"Won't Get Fooled Again" is definitely their best track, but I honestly think the "metal scream" part is overrated, especially because of those people who listen to the song just for that part. I love the whole song. When it starts, it cannot be stopped.
Are they the best instrumental band ever? oh, no. This is: [1]
One last thing. I absolutely despise how they sing it live as "English pounds". It's BRITISH POUNDS. I really disliked the deliberate English-centric way they did that. It's even more annoying that they use the UK flag a lot during publicity material. If they want to consider themselves English and not British, they shouldn't use the UK flag. It's NOT the flag of England. It never has been. I'm a UK unionist so this sort of thing gets on my nerves.
Well, to each his own. I can't come up with anything constructive to say about the Genesis thing so I'll just leave it at that.
I've heard too many Flip Flops Of God regarding SB (and, basically everything else Pete Townshend has ever written) so I don't think anyone can really say they know the "truth", as it were. Sell Out is great, I just wish it had stuck with the radio show concept past the first side. And I find a lot of the outtakes from the album sessions surpass some of the lesser songs on the album. Generally, it's just a bit too Townshend-y for my tastes.
Well yes, obviously WGFA is a song that is all the way great. As a whole though, I find Who's Next massively overrated and overplayed. Stuff like "Keeping", "Mobile", and "Behind Blue Eyes", which is just about the dullest thing they ever did, and it's basically what put me off their music for years and years.
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Pound for 500 ENGLISH POUNDS, the greatest instrumental rock band of all time.
Now see kids, The Who is what I'd like to call the total package. Not only do you have some of the greatest and most heartfelt rock songs ever written, but also the most superlative combination of guitar, bass, and drums you'll ever find. Having one of the most versatile rock singers out there is nothing to scoff at either. Exactly how those things all come together to play music that can both lift you up above your paltry mortal coil with The Power of Rock, or knock you to the ground like a a crying bitch with existentalist ruminations on life, is one of those things science or wise men just can't explain. Suffice to stay, the stars aligned (at least, for a time), and rock was never to be the same.
People who view The Who as simple, if effective, power chord rock with a hyperactive, superhuman drummer and what is invariably (and justifiedly) considered one of the greatest bass players of all time, are most likely either people who don't care to look deeper, or just plain don't listen to the lyrics (which is an all-too-common problem these days)... because, even their hits tend to burn with undertures of Pete Townshend's tortured soul. Tommy tackles subjects like child abuse, psychosomatic trauma, and cult worship at a time when other mainstream artists were still singing about listening to the flower people. Quadrophenia is an album that understands your adolescent pain and being torn twixt good and evil; it'll help make it through the bad times, in some form or another, just as surely as it did me.
The next time you hear "Won't Get Fooled Again" on the radio (and preferably, before you inevitably get gobsmacked by the ultimate Metal Scream and stand there paralyzed until the song ends) just listen and you'll find the altruistic Values Resonance is just as relevant today as it was decades ago, if not moreso. "My Generation" isn't a rebellious youth anthem; it's about how age is a state of mind. "Squeeze Box"? FUCKING BOOBIES. Though often disregarded as "tough guy" rock, The Who are capable of eliciting just as much human emotion as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, or Pink Floyd, without ever leaving their lovable rock-solid foundations.