Yes, I Do Have Blue Eyes
I am also big fan of The Who. I first heard that song when I was a senior in high school. Just about any high school boy could identify with the lament of anger and angst—no matter how good their life might be in reality. The song was on the Who’s Next (1971) album.
But I had been listening to The Who since their first transatlantic hit My Generation.
I think The Who is glossed over as a band that smashed their instruments at the end of their concerts. They were actually more ground-breaking than most people realize. Their first departure from straight rock and roll was their second album—Happy Jack as it was titled in the US or A Quick One as it was titled in the UK.
That was the first Who album I actually owned. Happy Jack (1966) was a real eye opener for a young teenager—a glimpse at what was the insane genius of Peter Townshend. I mean Happy Jack was a pretty strange dude. But nothing compared to Boris the Spider or Whiskey Man (“he only comes out when I drink my whiskey”) The Happy Jack album had to be a personal favorite— like much of The Who’s output, it was not much of a commercial success. Sure, they had hits that people heard on the radio, but actually had the albums? I did.
If you are my age, you probably remember the big hit I Can See For Miles
but you probably have no idea it was on the album The Who Sellout (1967). Along with the serious music (if we can say that about 60s rock) it had a hilarious overlaying concept. Between the songs are radio station jingles and musical ads. (Chorus singing pleasantly: “Radio London reminds you go to the church of your choice.”) There is also one song that I still think of when ever I see the tattooed populace today - Tattoo.
"Welcome to my life, tattoo
I'm a man now, thanks to you
I expect I'll regret you
But the skin graft man won't get you
You'll be there when I die
Tattoo"
It has a pleasant melody about as far away from I Can See From Miles as you can get.
More about The Who some other time.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Tom. The Who was one of my high school favorites - and still is. Though I'm a number of years behind you on that score. I'm more of the Face Dances generation, but grew up on what had already become the standards. I'm curious if our tastes run deeper...are you into the likes of Pink Floyd, [old] Genesis, Supertramp, Yes, etc?
Anyway, I'll be sure to stop by here. Let's just hope that doesn't become a curse for you like it has for Julie. ;)
Thanks to everyone who visited - I am still working on a lot details. Since I am doing the blog in Drupal on my own server, it is all up to me. (Yikes!) Fiddling with modues, css, and permissions will cause things to get better and worse. Better in the long run.
Jeff - Quadrophenia is a great album - one of the first I got on CD when converting over the CDs. It is really overlooked by most people. I figure I will cover this at some later date.
Laura - Thanks. Part of my motivation is to give a somewhat personal version of rock and roll history so that younger readers might see a non-clichéd version of things. A view from the peanut gallery (so to speak)
Rick - Pink Floyd: of courserous, although not a heavy duty fan. I sort of "missed" Genesis and Supertramp because they were in my "dark ages" after college. Yes - yes, I know exactly one person who has their double album Tales from Topographic Oceans - me. Although I have never repaced the vinyl, I mainly like their earlier stuff.

I am also a big Who fan and Behind Blue Eyes is a great name for a music blog and of course all of Who's Next is one of their best albums from beginning to end, though possibly my favorite of theirs as a total album is Quadrophenia.