Different generations of rockers have a hard time seeing eye to eye. Once the sounds and sentiments of a genre change, those that came before often feel left behind or look down on their progeny. Those in the current generation either feel looked down on or feel incrementally better than their predecessors. This generational divide has never been stronger than when punk music took off in the late 1970s.
Classic rockers and punks typically didn’t get along. There are countless stories about failed meetings, egos flying, and debates over what makes rock music what it is. Find one more below. Pete Townshend penned The Who’s final hit with Keith Moon after spending a night out with The Sex Pistols. While battling a bit of “sellout” remorse, Townshend was creatively reinvigorated by the time spent with the younger rockers.
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By the time The Who penned this song, Moon was inching closer to death. His addiction was severely inhibiting his ability to play. “Musically his drumming was getting so uneven that recording was almost impossible, so much so that work on the ‘Who Are You’ album had ground to a halt,” Townshend once wrote in his autobiography.
That made the Who Are You album his final pursuit with the band. He passed shortly after the release of this record. But he left the iconic title track in his wake. Townshend penned this track, taking inspiration from an unlikely source: The Sex Pistols.
How The Sex Pistols Helped Inspire One of The Who’s Final Hits With Drummer Keith Moon
While The Who were certainly an inspiration to the younger band, one would think their differences would preclude them from getting on. Townshend was feeling the “guilt” of “selling out” when he met two members of the band at a club. Up against the pure vitriol of The Sex Pistols, Townshend felt his rockstar sheen was dimming.
Before this fateful meeting, Townshend had spent much of the morning debating royalties with the powers that be. Needing to blow off steam, he took to The Speakeasy Club at 48 Margaret in London.
“’Who Are You’ was written about meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols after an awful 13-hour encounter with Allen Klein,” Townshend once said. “In one sense the song is more about the demands of new friendship than blood-letting challenge.”
After getting acquainted and partying a bit, Townshend stumbled down the streets and fell asleep in a random doorway. The police woke him up, and the line, “I woke up in a Soho doorway / A policeman knew my name / He said, ‘You can go sleep at home tonight / If you can get up and walk away,’” came to mind.
Given that Townshend was inspired by his meeting with The Sex Pistols, this song takes on a whole new outlook, especially the chorus. Revisit this track above.
(Photo by Chris Morphet/Redferns/Getty Images)
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