{"id":91373,"date":"2025-08-25T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/91373\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T10:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T10:00:15","slug":"the-song-that-made-pete-townshend-want-to-disband-the-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/91373\/","title":{"rendered":"The song that made Pete Townshend want to disband The Who"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pete<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library)<\/p>\n

Sun 24 August 2025 14:00, UK <\/p>\n

It has been over 40 years since The Who<\/a>\u2019s first \u2018farewell\u2019 tour and yet they are still knocking about to this day. However, the extensive timeline of the legendary outfit might have been cut short back in the 1970s, if Pete Townshend had had his way. <\/p>\n

Few bands captured the spirit of Britain\u2019s anarchic post-war youth quite like The Who back in their swinging sixties heyday. <\/p>\n

Anthems like \u2018My Generation\u2019 and \u2018I Can\u2019t Explain\u2019 were era-defining in their mod rock power<\/a>, but The Who were always desperately keen to prove they weren\u2019t a flash-in-the-pan outfit with quick and easy success. A massive part of their enduring appeal sat at the feet of the ever-maturing songwriting of Pete Townshend, a bloke capable of transforming the group from youthful rock rebels to mature masters of rock operas and concept albums.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That key development in their sound, owing largely to Townshend\u2019s endless appetite for artistic evolution, is what kept The Who on the upper echelon of British rock and roll, even after the bulk of their 1960s comrades had fallen by the wayside. In fact, some of the band\u2019s all-time greatest efforts hit the airwaves in the 1970s \u2013 their magnum opus album Quadrophenia<\/a> being one of them. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the endless onslaught of touring, recording, and living the archetypal life of rock and roll success soon began to take its toll on the group. Each member had their own struggles with drugs and alcohol, it appears to be part and parcel of being a world famous rockstar, but Keith Moon bore the brunt of the band\u2019s addiction struggles as the decade marched on, to the detriment of his drumming ability. <\/p>\n

Moon defined the stereotype of drummers being the wildest, more unpredictable members of any band. His endlessly energetic, amphetamine-fueled playing style, and infamous offstage behaviour forged a core part of The Who\u2019s appeal from the offset, but that very same penchant for speed would be Moon\u2019s downfall, too. The extent of his debilitating addiction became clear to Pete Townshend during the recording of 1978\u2019s Who Are You, with every session seeing Moon\u2019s drumming decay further and further. <\/p>\n

By the time the band came to record the A-side closer, \u2018Music Must Change\u2019, Moon\u2019s drug habit rendered him utterly incapable of performing the track\u2019s relatively simple drum beat. \u201cHe played the most fantastic drums [for \u2018Who Are You\u2019], which was only recorded about six months before,\u201d Townshend recalled on Audible\u2019s Words + Music in 2022. For the songwriter, the end of The Who was nigh. <\/p>\n

\u201cI went back and realised that Keith was just not going to cut it really, at all, ever again,\u201d he revealed. \u201cWe sort of lost him. I decided to quit.\u201d Who Are You might have been the last Who album, if Townshend\u2019s decision to dissolve the band had played out, but plans changed after Keith Moon tragically passed away mere weeks after the album was released. <\/p>\n

Although the sensible thing to do, in the wake of Moon\u2019s death, would have been to call it a day for The Who anyway, Townshend and the gang decided instead to continue without their fallen comrade, quickly recruiting Kenney Jones to take his place. Given the laughably poor quality of their subsequent album release during the 1980s, however, Townshend probably should have listened to his desires to dissolve the band in the wake of Who Are You. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library) Sun 24 August 2025 14:00, UK It has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,45584,128,33162,9738,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-91373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-keith-moon","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-pete-townshend","12":"tag-the-who","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}