It’s virtually arduous to fathom the leap The Who took from their 1965 debut LP to their 1966 follow-up, A Fast One. The debut, My Technology, launched quite a lot of Who hallmarks – Roger Daltrey’s beast-unleashed roar, Pete Townshend’s no-flash/all-mash supercharged guitar slash, John Entwistle’s tumbling-boulders basslines, and Keith Moon’s backbeat-be-damned polyrhythmic explosions. However though that report ushered in a brand new rock period with milestones just like the title monitor and “The Kids are Alright,” A Fast One makes it clear they had been simply getting warmed up.
The Who started as Mods, bending a knee to US R&B, which knowledgeable their first batch of songs in a giant means. A Fast One noticed these origins quickly receding within the rear-view mirror. A model of Martha & The Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” that sends all of the breakables within the room crashing to the ground is the one concession to The Who’s soul-shaker previous. The remainder of the album is outlined by outrageous experiments and a brand new stage of songwriting sophistication.
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Working example: Did heavy steel, prog rock, and rock opera originate with A Fast One? Assigning such distinctions generally is a slippery slope, however a rattling convincing case will be made. As an illustration, the Entwistle-written/sung “Boris the Spider” bears an imposing, doomy riff, spooky topic, and on the refrain, even a proto-death steel vocal growl – it prefigures Black Sabbath by few years and provides a humorousness to the discount.
The outsized suite “A Quick One, While He’s Away” prognosticates each the arrival of progressive rock and The Who’s personal subsequent run of full-blown rock operas like Tommy and Quadrophenia. Clocking in at an unprecedented-in-rock 9 minutes, it shifts fearlessly between tempos, time signatures, and discrete segments, together with a barbershop quartet-style a cappella opening, a two-step with a nursery-rhyme really feel that includes “Ivor the engine driver,” a “Happy Trails”-esque Western theme, and extra.
There’s a madcap, self-parodic vibe to the giddy careening, removed from the seriousness of the progressive and rock-operatic sojourns the piece prefigures. That humorousness finds its apotheosis in Moon’s different composition right here, “Cobwebs and Strange,” an off-the-wall instrumental that Melody Maker referred to as “Roland Kirk Meets The Munich Beer Hall Stompers.”
A Fast One was, amongst different issues, a one-off experiment in spreading songwriting chores across the complete band. “I Need You” and “See My Way,” written by Moon and Daltrey, respectively, are among the many only a few Who compositions they’d contribute. However they made these moments rely, by some means stepping up with tunes that stand tall alongside these of resident songwriting genius Townshend.
The report, particularly, “A Quick One, While He’s Away” was not solely a hit however an inspiration. In response to Mark Blake’s Fake You’re in a Battle, Paul McCartney was impressed and informed Pete Townshend that the music was “exactly the sort of thing The Beatles were working towards.” (Six months later, the Fab 4 would launch Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band.) Evolving into a brand new stage of artistry with out sacrificing the wild abandon of youthful glory is not any snap. However The Who pulled it off with A Fast One, opening up new avenues for themselves and rock ‘n’ roll as a complete within the course of.
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