Pictures of Lily

No one – and I mean no one – sounded like this. A song about masturbation? A french horn solo? Are you kidding me? And yet it remains one of the band’s most enduring anthems. All that The Who were – and are – famous for is here: rolling drums, crunchy guitars, bass front and center, and, ahem, questionable lyrical content.

I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of having sleepless nights
I went and told my dad

He said, “Son now here’s some little something”
And stuck them on my wall
And now my nights ain’t quite so lonely
In fact I, I don’t feel bad at all

Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
Pitcures of Lily solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright

The song also spotlights one of the band’s most criminally underrated elements: its ability to harmonize. While never as proficient in this area as, say, The Beatles, when they wanted to, The Who could compete with almost anyone in this particular department.

I think the only criticism I can come up with is the fact that the song drifts into Kinks cover band territory during the bridge. Otherwise, Pictures of Lily is a landmark look at a band with its gargantuan success still but a twinkle in Pete Townshend’s eye.

One Life’s Enough

While I wouldn’t call myself an outright defender of either It’s Hard or Face Dances, I do think both albums are a lot better than people give them credit for. That being said, One Life’s Enough is without a doubt one of the group’s lowest points and one of the only Who songs that I skip with any regularity.

In fact, I actually suspect that the song is intentionally bad.

What else could explain:

Throw back your head
Let your body curve
into the long grass of the bed.
Pull me down into your hair
And I’ll push and swerve
As we both gasp in the evening air

Set to a Thanksgiving-sized portion of synth-piano flourishes? And the song’s end – an abrupt, atonal vaudevillian piano chord? I take it be the musical equivalent of telling your wife she’s gotten fat followed by a declaration of “just kidding!” In other words – the sincerity (no matter how banal) expressed throughout the song is, in actuality, a not-so-subtle poke at romanticism itself.

Look, I understand the play for a cheap joke, and it was good for a little giggle the first time I listened to it, but its staying power is certainly questionable.

The song seems even weaker in the context of It’s Hard, an album so unfocused that I don’t blame Pete Townshend for throwing up his hands and walking away from the group altogether after the album’s release. I actually think something like One Life’s Enough would work much better with the current Who lineup, which unashamedly has ventured into adult-contempo territory. At least this version of The Who doesn’t seem to take itself as seriously as its early 80s counterpart.

Tattoo

For my very first blog post, I’m choosing one of my all-time favorite Who songs: Tattoo. (And I’ll follow it with one of my all-time least favorites tomorrow)

What was recorded as a slightly tripped out, stripped down lament on aging, the singer’s broken family and, yes, the unfortunate permanence of tattoos themselves was transformed into a turbulent, adrenaline-pumping rocker when the band played it live during the late 60s and 70s.

But despite the number’s live bombast, I think this has to be one of the most emotionally-packed songs in the Who canon. Just take the chorus:

Welcome to my life, tattoo.
I’m a man I’ll pledge to you.
I expect I’ll regret you,
but the skin graph man won’t get you.
You’ll be there when I die, tattoo.

Sure, Pete Townshend is talking about tattoos here. But he’s also talking about something else. I’d even go so far as to say that the themes raised in Tattoo are seen again in songs like Blue Red and Grey and They are All in Love, both of which comment on the redemptive nature of introspection and isolation, among other things.

Yes – that tattoo is with you until the day you die. Its meaning will become convoluted and probably a little embarrassing over time. But it’ll be there, with you, for the rest of your life. And that’s got to be worth a little something, right?