(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Sat 14 February 2026 15:47, UK
That moment when you can see a band’s roadmap unfurling towards their path of destiny is always special, electrically so. But Pete Townshend might have needed a bit more convincing.
After all, in the heady year of 1966, when it was most easy to fall down every rabbit hole imaginable towards psychedelia, the band had an unenviable task of creating an album that would lean into the zeitgeist, but with their own unquestionable signature. It sounds simple enough in theory, but the reality was far harder.
The result was a complete sonic departure from the original R&B mod sound of the debut My Generation, and a dive, head-first, into the eclectic rock and roll world where weirdness was embraced in all its forms. The mark of A Quick One was its sheer range – between pounding hard rock rhythms, jibes at The Beatles, and pastiches of Buddy Holly.
But tracks like ‘Run Run Run’ and ‘I Need You’ were only really momentum in building to the true magnum opus, the pièce de résistance, of the nine-minute rock opera that served as the closing track of the album, ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’. To most other people, it was an early mark of the genius The Who would come to live and die by.
For Townshend, it was simply a pile of crap. That might seem like a harsh way of putting it, but it was only a paraphrase of how the man himself described the track, on top of its effect on the album as a whole. As he recalled once in an interview, “My friend Barney [Richard Barnes, the biographer for The Who] would say ‘A Quick One’ was ‘the first mini rock opera and a silly story’. It was a load of rubbish and a silly story.”
It was clear that the founder of the band didn’t feel that the efforts of ‘A Quick One’ lived up to in any way to the stratospheric and operatic heights they would later go on to accomplish in the likes of Tommy and Quadrophenia, being pretty dismissive of the tune even though it symbolised a new rock awakening for so many.
If it is to be hailed as one of the first ever examples of rock opera, it is the gateway to a land of mastery and musical endeavour that The Who were no doubt at the very cutting edge and forefront of. It’s not the usual mark of a star to completely play that down, but it was evident that Townshend’s aspirations had long since moved on from those days.
Despite this, on second thoughts, he did recognise that ‘A Quick One’ contained “a story that many of us post-war kids share of being sent away, of losing a precious loved one and being greatly changed when they returned.” That emotional current, along with many of its other dark and brewing thematic hues, was enough to make it a winner to most eyes.
But Townshend is not one of those so easily pleased people. He is a man, and not least a musician, who has never faltered in his pursuit of something better, something greater, something more. Although ‘A Quick One’ could have symbolised the first bricks of his genius being laid, all he really wanted was to skip to the full-blown majesty of a mansion.