The Who Information

Pete Townshend and John Entwistle met while attending high school in the Shepherd's Bush area of London. In their early teens, they played in a Dixieland band together, with Entwistle playing trumpet and Townshend playing banjo. By the early '60s, the pair had formed a rock & roll band, but Entwistle departed in 1962 to play in the Detours, a hard-edged rock band featuring a sheet-metal worker named Roger Daltrey. By the end of the year, Townshend had joined as a rhythm guitarist, and in 1963, Daltrey became the group's lead vocalist once Colin Dawson left the band. Within a few months, drummer Doug Sandom had parted ways with the Detours, and the group added Keith Moon, who had previously drummed with a surf-rock band called the Beachcombers. The Detours changed their name to the Who in early 1964. All four members had wildly different personalities, as their notoriously intense live performances demonstrated. The group was a whirlwind of activity, as the wild Keith Moon fell over his drum kit and Pete Townshend leaped into the air with his guitar, spinning his right hand in exaggerated windmills. Vocalist Roger Daltrey strutted across the stage with a thuggish menace, as bassist John Entwistle stood silent, functioning as the eye of the hurricane. These divergent personalities frequently clashed, but these frictions also resulted in a decade's worth of remarkable music.

As one of the key figures of the British Invasion and the mod movement of the mid-'60s, the Who were a dynamic and undeniably powerful sonic force. Unlike most rock bands, the Who based their rhythm on Townshend's guitar, letting Moon and Entwistle improvise wildly over his foundation, while Daltrey belted out his vocals. But there was a vast difference between the Who in concert and on record. Townshend pushed the group toward new territory. Regarded as one of the finest British songwriters of his era, as songs like "The Kids Are Alright" and "My Generation" became teenage anthems, and his rock opera, Tommy, earned him respect from mainstream music critics.

Townshend continually pushed the band toward more ambitious territory, incorporating white noise, pop art and conceptual extended musical pieces into the group's style. The remainder of the Who, especially Entwistle and Daltrey, weren't always eager to follow him in his musical explorations, especially after the success of his first rock opera, Tommy. Instead, they wanted to stick to their hard-rock roots, playing brutally loud, macho music instead of Townshend's textured song suites and vulnerable pop songs. The hard rockers drove the direction in the mid to later '70s. They survived the death of Keith Moon in 1978, and disbanded in the early '80s. But they reunited numerous times in the late '80s and '90s to tour America. At their peak, the Who were one of the most innovative and powerful bands in rock history.

As the group struggled to get a break, the band became regulars at the Marquee club in London, which is where Townshend first smashed one of his guitars out of frustration with the sound system; the destruction would become one of his performing signatures. Soon, the group cultivated a small following, changed their name to the High Numbers and began dressing in sharp suits in order to appeal to the style and R&B-obsessed mod audience. It bombed. Working with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two fledgling music business entrepreneurs, the group reclaimed The Who name and began playing a set that consisted entirely of soul and R&B. By late 1964, they had developed an enthusiastic mod following. The Who signed with Decca on the strength of Townshend's "You Really Got Me" knockoff, "I Can't Explain." The Who appeared on the television program Ready, Steady, Go and the single shot up the charts reaching the British Top 10. The group's incendiary performance, featuring Townshend and Moon destroying their instruments, became a sensation. That fall, "My Generation" climbed to No. 2 on the charts, confirming the band's status as British pop phenomenons. An album of the same name followed at the end of the year, and early in 1966, "Substitute" became their fourth British Top Ten hit.

Lambert and Stamp decided that every member of the Who should contribute songs to the group's second album in order to generate more revenue. That allowed Townshend to write the title track as a ten-minute mini-opera, an idea he would expand over the next few years. Upon its 1966 release, A Quick One became another British hit. In America, the group was ignored until the album was retitled Happy Jack and its title track reached the Top 40 in 1967. The Who Sell Out followed, a concept album constructed as a mock-pirate radio broadcast. The album featured "I Can See for Miles," which became the group's first Top Ten hit in America.

Townshend went into seclusion and wrote a rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy with a gift for pinball. The Who returned in 1969 with the double concept album Tommy, which was acclaimed as the first successful rock opera. The album became a huge hit, earning positive reviews. The album hit the American Top 10 with an extensive tour, where they played the opera in its entirety. Tommy became extremely successful, overshadowing the Who themselves; it was performed as a play across the world and would eventually be filmed by in 1975 starring Roger Daltrey -- plus, in 1993, Townshend turned it into a Broadway musical with director Des McAnuff.

A live album followed, then a singles collection. A sci-fi rock opera called Lifehouse was planned next. Townshend intended to incorporate electronics and synthesizers on the album, pushing the group into new sonic territory. The remainder of the Who weren't particularly enthralled with the idea. Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown. Once he recovered, The Who recorded Who's Next. Boasting a harder, heavier sound, it became a major hit, and many of its tracks -- including "Behind Blue Eyes," "Won't Get Fooled Again" and Entwistle's "My Wife" -- became cornerstones of album-oriented FM radio in the '70s. Townshend wrote another opera abandoning fantasy in order to sketch a portrait of a '60s mod with Quadrophenia. As he wrote the album in 1972, Townhend released Who Came First. Around that time, Entwistle, frustrated at his lack of songwriting input in the Who, began his own solo career.

Quadrophenia was released as a double album in 1973. The Who began to fragment after its release. Townshend began sinking into alcohol abuse. Entwistle concentrated heavily on his solo career. Daltrey alternately pursued an acting career and solo recordings. Moon, meanwhile, continued to party, celebrating his substance abuse and eventually releasing the solo album Two Sides of the Moon, which was studded with star cameos. During this hiatus, the group released the rarities collection Odds and Sods. Meanwhile, Townshend continued to work on songs for the Who, resulting in the disarmingly personal The Who by Numbers in 1975. The record and its accompanying tour became a hit, but following the tour's completion, they officially took an extended hiatus. The Who reconvened in 1978 to release Who Are You. The album became a huge hit, peaking at No. 2 in the American charts and reaching platinum. But it became a symbol of tragedy, since Keith Moon died of a drug overdose on September 7, 1978, months after the record's release. The band eventually decided to continue performing, but all three surviving members would later claim that they felt the Who ended with Moon's death.

Hiring Kenny Jones, a former member of the Small Faces, as Moon's replacement, as well as keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick to round out the lineup, the Who began working on new material in 1979. The Who began touring later in 1979, but the tour's momentum was crushed when 11 attendees at the group's December 3, 1979 concert at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum were trampled to death in a rush for choice festival seating. The band wasn't informed of the incident until after the concert was finished, and the tragedy deflated whatever goodwill they had.

Following the Cincinnati concert, the Who slowly fell apart. Townshend became addicted to cocaine, heroin, tranquilizers and alcohol, suffering a near-fatal overdose in 1981. Meanwhile, Entwistle and Daltrey soldiered on in their solo careers. They released two mildly successful studio albums and a live album. While Entwistle and Daltrey slowly faded away, Townshend achieved more success. The Who reunited several times during the next 20 years to capitalize on their past accomplishments. In 2002, The Who had once again regrouped and were about to kick off a North American tour when John Entwistle died at the age of 57 in Las Vegas' Hard Rock Hotel. In 2006 Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey mounted a tour of Europe and the U.S. Familiar names backed the legendary band including drummer Zak Starkey (son of Beatles drummer Ringo Star), guitarist/vocalist Simon Townshend (Pete's younger brother), bassist Pino Palladino and keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick.

We accept all major credit cards.

Our tickets are shipped via FedEx.