The Who by Numbers

by

The Who

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I don't suppose I can realistically argue that WHO BY NUMBERS is the best Who LP. It's really not on the same level as QUADROPHENIA, WHO'S NEXT or LIVE AT LEEDS.

But WHO BY NUMBERS may be my favorite Who LP. It's Townshends most personal, most initmate group effort. While it has never made me want to hold a lighter over my head or play air guitar, it does touch me in a way no other Who record can do.

Critics love to say the album was Townshend's first 'mid-life crisis' LP. That's more than a tad absurd, considering Townshend was still a good 15 years shy of mid-life. WHO BY NUMBERS has more to do with Townshend's increasing concern that he was losing himself in drink and celebrity. The album is a cry for intimacy in a world Townshend increasingly saw as hollow and transparent; he finds himself, as he wrote years earlier, Alone In A Crowd. The audience and the generation that Townshend always tried so hard to connect with seemed to be further removed from him all the time. On "However Much I Booze" he sings:

"You at home can easily decide what's right by glancing very breifly at the songs I write, but it don't help me that you know, there still ain't no way out."

For all the talk of Townshend's bow to Punk on WHO ARE YOU and his great solo LP EMPTY GLASS, he seems to have had a premonition of the movement on this 1975 album, writing in "They Are All In Love":

"Goodbye all you punks, stay young and stay high. Hand me checkbook and I'll crawl off to die. Like a woman in childbirth, grown ugly in a flash, I've seen magic and pain, now I'm recycling trash."

The songs on WHO BY NUMBERS are witty, caustic, confessional, and, in several cases--"They Are All In Love," "Blue Red And Grey"--downright pretty. There are two quirky little hits here, "Slip Kid" and "Squeeze Box," but the non-hits, including Entwistle's great "Success Story," are far better.

The casual fan who scans the tracklist for The Who By Numbers will recognize only "Squeeze Box". To most such listeners, this is a singable, harmless ditty. To this Who fan, it is the lamest single that they ever released. Even if we forgive the inclusion of this song, The Who By Numbers is still the band's weakest album since A Quick One. This isn't a harsh criticism, since the nine intervening years between those two albums were stuffed with five of the best albums of the era, including one of the greatest live recordings in rock. At worst, By Numbers is a mediocre album by Who standards. At best, it is a refreshing return to a more modest, song-based approach, and a fine capstone for a magnificent decade-long streak for The Who.

By Numbers is invariably described as a confessional, singer/songwriter album, and several of the titles are indicative of the plaintive nature of many of the songs. These songs account for the album's finer moments, especially "They Are All In Love" and "How Many Friends?". "However Much I Booze" and "Blue, Red, and Grey" find Pete Townshend in fine voice, but neither are among the better songs on the album. By Numbers does have some harder-rocking tracks, including "Slip Kid" and the John Entwistle-penned "Success Story", both of which are okay but unremarkable. The album's closer, "In A Hand or A Face", is the best rocker on the album, and "Dreaming From the Waist" is another highlight, showcasing Roger Daltrey's voice in powerful but less testosterone-fueled form.

It is easy to write off The Who By Numbers as for completists only. After all, it lacks the reputation and number of well-known songs that its predecessors have. To do so would sell the record short. While I don't expect casual fans to eagerly seek it out, interested fans would be remiss to assume that The Who's creative well ran dry with Quadrophenia. There are some excellent songs on By Numbers, a few of which could easily become personal favorites of anyone willing to give them a listen. (That said, I should mention that I am not particularly interested in anything after this album that isn't included on compilations or live albums.)