The Who

Members: Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey

Active: 1964 - present

HISTORY

The Who are an English rock band that first came to prominence in the 1960s. They grew in stature to become one of the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Bands of All-Time. Except for periods of retirement from 1983 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1995, the band have continued to perform as a live act and have reentered the studio.

Noted for the dynamism of their performances and for their thoughtful and art-influenced music, they are also acknowledged as having been rock pioneers, popularising, along with contemporaries The Kinks, the power chord and the rock opera (most notably Tommy) under the leadership of Pete Townshend. Their earlier "mod" albums, which boasted short, aggressive pop songs, Townshend's distinctive power chords, Keith Moon's explosive drumming, and constant themes of youthful rebellion and romantic confusion, were formative influences on punk rock and power pop, helping them earn the accolade "The Godfathers of Punk". In their early days they were notorious for auto-destructive art displays, destroying their instruments at the end of shows (especially Townshend, whose guitar-smashing would become a rock clich?, and infamous wildman Keith Moon).

The Who are on a world tour, as of June 2006, that will last into 2007.

The Who are #8 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock and #9 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Rock 'n' Roll.

EARLY DAYS

In their earliest days the band was known as The Detours and played mostly rhythm and blues. They changed their name to The Who in 1964 and, with the arrival of Keith Moon that year, the classic line-up was complete. For the next 14 years The Who would be Roger Daltrey on lead vocals, Pete Townshend on guitar, John Entwistle on bass guitar, and Keith Moon on drums. For a short period during 1964, under the management of Peter Meaden, they changed their name to The High Numbers during which time they released an unsuccessful single designed to appeal to their mostly mod fans. When "Zoot Suit/I'm The Face" failed to chart, they fired Meaden and quickly reverted to The Who. The rest, as they say, is history. They became one of the most popular bands among the British Mods, a social movement of the early 1960s that rejected the "greaser" music favoured by the Rockers.

The band soon crystallised around Townshend as the primary songwriter (though Entwistle would also make the occasional notable contribution). Townshend was at the centre of the band's tensions, as he strove to write challenging and thoughtful music, while Daltrey preferred energetic and macho material (Daltrey would occasionally refuse to sing a Townshend composition and Townshend would thus sing it himself), while Moon was a fan of American surf music.

The Who's first hit was the 1965 Kinks-like single "I Can't Explain", followed by "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", which was the only song composed in a joint effort by Townshend and Daltrey. They vaulted to fame with their My Generation album that same year; the album included such mod anthems as "The Kids are Alright" and the title track "My Generation", which contained the famous line "Hope I die before I get old". Another early favourite, showing Townshend's way with words, was the 1966 single "Substitute", which included the line, "I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth". Subsequent hits - the 1966 hit single "I'm a Boy", about a boy made up like a little girl, "Happy Jack" about a mentally disturbed young man and the 1967 "Pictures Of Lily", a tribute to masturbation - all show Townshend's growing use of clever and novel stories of sexual and mental confusion that eventually led to his masterpiece Tommy. More hits followed, including "I Can See For Miles" and "Magic Bus" with a little wink to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour.

Although they had great success as a singles band, The Who, or more properly their leader Townshend, had more ambitious goals and over the years their music became more complex and their lyrics more provocative and involved. Townshend also wanted to treat The Who's albums as unified works, rather than collections of unconnected songs. The first sign of this ambition came in their album A Quick One (1966), which included the storytelling medley "A Quick One, While He's Away", which they later referred to as a "mini opera". A Quick One was followed by The Who Sell Out (1967), a concept album that played like an offshore radio station, complete with jingles and commercials. The Who Sell Out also included another mini rock opera, this one called "Rael", as well as The Who's biggest USA hit single, "I Can See For Miles". The Who famously destroyed their equipment onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival that year and subsequently repeated the routine on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with literally explosive results. These early attention seeking efforts resulted in Pete Townshend being the subject of the first Rolling Stone interview. Townshend revealed in that interview that he was working on a full-length rock opera. This was Tommy (1969), the first commercially successful rock opera by any artist.

Around this time the spiritual teachings of Meher Baba began to influence Townshend's songwriting, and he is credited as "Avatar" on the Tommy album. In addition to its commercial success, Tommy also became a critical smash, with Life Magazine saying, "...for sheer power, invention and brilliance of performance, Tommy outstrips anything that has ever come out of a rock recording studio,"

declaring, "Surely The Who are now the band against which all others are to be judged."

The Who performed much of Tommy at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival later that year. That performance, and the ensuing film, catapulted The Who to superstar status in the USA.

In 1970 The Who released Live at Leeds, which has often been described as the best live rock album of all time. Also in 1970, The Who began work on a studio album that was never released. At the Isle of Wight Festival in August, Daltrey introduced "I Don't Even Know Myself" as "off the new album, which we're sort of half-way through". But within a few weeks of that concert Townshend wrote "Pure and Easy", a song that he later described as the "central pivot" of what became an ambitious concept album / performance art project called Lifehouse, distracting him and the band from work on the album in progress.

Lifehouse was never completed in its intended form (although it was reconstructed as a radio play for the BBC in 2000, and most of the material was released on a 6-CD album from Pete Townshend's website shortly after). Meanwhile, in March of 1971, the band began recording the available Lifehouse material with Kit Lambert in New York, and then restarted the sessions with Glyn Johns in April. Selections of the material, along with one unrelated song by John Entwistle, were released as a traditional studio album called Who's Next, which would become their most successful album among both critics and fans, but which effectively terminated the Lifehouse project. Other Lifehouse songs were released as non-album track singles and on various albums over the years, such as Odds and Sods and Townshend's solo album Who Came First. Who's Next became the first successful rock album to heavily feature the synthesizer, reaching #4 in the USA pop charts and hitting #1 in the UK. A single from the album, "Won't Get Fooled Again", became the first hit single to be driven by synthesizer.

Who's Next was followed by a work which is more a monologue piece than rock opera (there are only a small number of lines sung by other characters), called Quadrophenia (1973), with a story line about an adolescent named Jimmy, his struggle for identity and with mental illness, against a backdrop of the clashes between Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s in the UK, particularly the riots between the two factions at Brighton.

The band's later albums contained songs of more personal content for Townshend, and he eventually transferred this personal style to his solo albums, as seen on the album Empty Glass. 1975's The Who By Numbers had several introspective songs in this vein, lightened by the crowd-pleasing "Squeeze Box," another hit single. Nevertheless, one rock critic considered By Numbers to have been Townshend's "suicide note." A movie version of Tommy was released in theatres that year. It was directed by Ken Russell, starred Roger Daltrey in the title role and earned Pete Townshend an academy award nomination for Best Original Score. In 1976 The Who played a concert at Charlton Athletic Football Ground that was listed for over a decade in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest concert ever.

In 1978, the band released Who Are You, a move away from epic rock opera and towards a more radio-friendly sound, though it did contain one song from a never-completed rock opera by John Entwistle. The release of the album was overshadowed by the death of Keith Moon in his sleep after a prescription overdose, only a few hours after a party held by Paul McCartney. Kenney Jones, of The Small Faces and The Faces, joined the band as his successor. In 1979, The Who returned to the stage with triumphant, well-received concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in London, at the Cannes Film Festival in France, and Madison Square Garden in New York City. By the late fall, the band had agreed to undertake a small tour of the United States. Sadly, this tour was not without major incident: on December 3, 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a crush for seats at Riverfront Coliseum prior to the start of The Who's concert resulted in the deaths of eleven fans. The band was not told of the deaths until after the show because civic authorities feared more crowd control problems if the concert were cancelled. The band members were reportedly devastated by these events. Also in 1979, The Who released a documentary film called The Kids Are Alright and a film version of Quadrophenia, the latter becoming a huge box office hit in the UK and the former becoming something of a holy grail for Who fans and a summation of the band's Keith Moon era. In December, The Who became only the third band, after the Beatles and the Band, to ever be featured on the cover of Time Magazine. While addressing the deaths in Cincinnati, the article, written by Jay Cocks, was overwhelmingly positive with respect to The Who, their members, and their place in rock music.

The band released two more studio albums with Jones as their drummer, Face Dances (1981) and It's Hard (1982). With the loss of Moon a blow to the group's notoriously active rhythm section, the two Kenney Jones releases carved out a more pop-oriented sound. While both albums sold fairly well, and even with It's Hard receiving a five-star review in Rolling Stone, many fans were not receptive to the band's new sound. Shortly after the release of It's Hard, The Who embarked on their farewell tour after Pete Townshend admitted that he did not think he could write for The Who any longer. (Even to this day, there is a public perception that The Who have billed a number of their post-1982 tours as farewell events, whereas their 1982 trek was the only one referred to as such.) Demand for tickets was voracious. It was the highest grossing tour of the year, with sellout crowds in numerous stadiums throughout North America.

Thereafter they stopped recording new material and settled into intermittent appearances, as Townshend focused on solo projects such as The Iron Man and Psychoderelict, a forerunner to the eventual release of the radio work Lifehouse. On July 13th, 1985, the surviving members of The Who, including Kenny Jones, reformed for the one-off performance at Bob Geldof's Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. The band performed "My Generation", "Pinball Wizard", "Love Reign O'er Me", and "Won't Get Fooled Again". Although the BBC blew a fuse at the beginning of "My Generation", the band kept playing, so most of the first two songs were missed by the rest of the world. In 1988 the band was honored with the British Phonographic Industry's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Who played a short set at the award ceremony. It is the last time Kenney Jones has drummed for The Who to date. Their best-known reunion tour occurred in 1989 and emphasised Tommy. Demand for tickets was phenomenal, inspiring Newsweek to say, "The Who tour is special because, after the Beatles and the Stones, they're IT." There were massive sellouts in stadiums throughout North America, including a four-night stand at Giants Stadium. In all, over two million tickets were sold. In 1990, their first year of eligibility, The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their display at the Rock Hall describes The Who as prime contenders for the title of "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band." Only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones receive a similar accolade at the Rock Hall. In 1996 and 1997 they staged successful multi-media performances of Quadrophenia featuring a narrator and guest singers. By this time Zak Starkey was their regular drummer. The Who launched an extensive USA and UK tour in 2000 with a stripped down line-up that received numerous rave reviews. Their appearance at the post-September 11, 2001 attacks The Concert for New York City was the most fervently cheered of any act by the audience of New York police officers and firefighters. The Who were also honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award that year.

The Who on the cover of the June 1994 issue of the Guitar World magazine.Just before the outset of a tour in the summer of 2002, John Entwistle was found dead in his room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. A coroner's investigation revealed that while not technically an overdose, a modest amount of cocaine in his system was a contributing factor in a fatal heart attack, the result of years of heart trouble caused or aggravated by regular cocaine use. After a brief delay, the tour commenced with bassist Pino Palladino. Most shows from the tour were released officially on CD. In September, Q magazine named The Who as one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die".

In 2004 The Who released two new songs, "Old Red Wine" and "Real Good Looking Boy" (with Pino Palladino and Greg Lake, respectively, on bass guitar), as part of a singles anthology (The Who: Then and Now), and went on an 18-date world tour, playing Japan, Australia, the UK and the US. Again, all shows were released on CD. The band also headlined the Isle of Wight Festival that year and received the usual ecstatic reviews. They then announced that the spring of 2005 would see the release of their first new studio album in 22 years (tentatively titled WHO2). In March 2005, Pete Townshend's website issued a statement that the release was delayed indefinitely, and explained that expected UK/US tours in the summer of 2005 were also shelved. Part of this was due to slow recording of the new material, and part was due to Zak Starkey's commitment to tour with Oasis.

The Who performed "Who Are You" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" on the London stage of the Live 8 concert in July 2005. Steve White (Paul Weller drummer and older brother of ex-Oasis drummer Alan White) took the place of Starkey, who was on tour with Oasis, and Damon Minchella (Ocean Colour Scene's bassist) filled in for Palladino (who was touring South America as the bassist for Jeff Beck).

In December 2005, Rolling Stone magazine announced that The Who would be touring in the summer of 2006, visiting countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Spain, Japan and Australia.

Roger Daltrey also performed at a ceremony following the final football match at Arsenal Stadium, Highbury between Arsenal and Wigan 7 May 2006 in which Arsenal celebrated the previous 93 years at Highbury, preparing for their move to Emirates Stadium, Ashburton Grove the following season.

To support their forthcoming new album's release, The Who are currently on a 24-date European tour. These are their first shows since their 2004 world tour and brief performance at Live 8 in 2005. They are playing a number of music festivals around the UK, including headlining Oxegen in Ireland on July 8 and T in the Park in Scotland on July 9. They also closed the second day of Hyde Park Calling, a concert to celebrate the twenty year anniversary of the Hard Rock Cafe, on July 2. Members of the latest lineup remain, including keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick, bassist Pino Palladino, drummer Zak Starkey and guitarist Simon Townshend, who is also acting as the supporting act for The Who with his band The Casbah Club.

It was announced at short notice that the opening gig of the tour would be at Leeds University Refectory on June 17th, the same venue at which they recorded the Live at Leeds album. Tickets to this particular show were sold in person only from the Leeds University Union, with sales limited to two tickets per person. Before the concert Roger and Pete unveiled a blue plaque to commemorate the recording of Live at Leeds at the same venue 36 years before. This show was so greatly anticipated that the BBC covered the story, both on the day of the concert and the day after, including interviews with audience members as they were leaving the gig.

Shows from the entire tour will be available to view online at thewholive.tv. Video streaming company Streaming Tank have been placed in charge of broadcasting the concerts, headed up by the technical team for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. This is the first attempt by any band to broadcast entire shows via the internet since the Pixelon.com "Vegas Job" in October 1999.

FUTURE PLANS

Townshend and Daltrey recently finished recording a new album, Endless Wire, which was released on 30 October 2006 (31 October in the USA) . It is their first full studio album of new material since 1982's It's Hard. The new album features songs inspired by many subjects, such as the incidence of Stockholm syndrome during the Beslan school hostage crisis ("Black Widow's Eyes"), Mel Gibson's 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ ("Man in a Purple Dress" and "2000 Years") and it contains the band's first mini-opera since "Rael" on 1967's The Who Sell Out. Excerpts from the mini-opera, called "Wire & Glass", were released as a Maxi-single on July 17th exclusively on iTunes, and was released on CD and limited edition 12" vinyl in the UK on 24th July. "Mirror Door" was released in a radio edit and was first played on BBC Radio 2, on The Ken Bruce Show at 10:00 on the 8th June 2006.

To support the new album's release, The Who did a 24-date European tour followed by their first world tour. These are their first shows since their 2004 world tour and brief performance at Live 8 in 2005. They played a number of music festivals around the UK, including headlining Oxegen in Ireland on July 8 and T in the Park in Scotland on July 9. They also closed the second day of Hyde Park Calling, a concert to celebrate the twenty year anniversary of the Hard Rock Cafe, on July 2. Members of the latest lineup remain, including keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick, bassist Pino Palladino, drummer Zak Starkey and guitarist Simon Townshend, who is also acting as the supporting act for The Who with his band The Casbah Club. Other opening acts to be featured on the worldwide tour include The Pretenders.

It was announced at short notice that the opening gig of the tour would be at Leeds University Refectory on June 17th, the same venue at which they recorded the Live at Leeds album. Tickets to this particular show were sold in person only from the Leeds University Union, with sales limited to two tickets per person. Before the concert Roger and Pete unveiled a blue plaque to commemorate the recording of Live at Leeds at the same venue 36 years before. This show was so greatly anticipated that the BBC covered the story, both on the day of the concert and the day after, including interviews with audience members as they were leaving the gig.

When The Who performed at Hyde Park Calling, the presenters of the BBC TV programme Top Gear joined the band as roadies to test vans. The episode was broadcast on July 30, 2006.

The Who are currently taking a break from touring the US and will appear at the BBC's Electric Proms and on the Parkinson show on the BBC before returning to the USA Pete Townshend has said that he hopes to finish The Who tour with a gig at Glastonbury Festival 2007.

Shows from the entire UK tour were broadcast online at thewholive.tv. Video streaming company Streaming Tank have been placed in charge of broadcasting the concerts, headed up by the technical team for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. This is the first attempt by any band to broadcast entire shows via the Internet since the Pixelon.com "Vegas Job" in October 1999, their first attempt at live broadcasting over the internet. Most of the European shows were preceded in the broadcast by an episode of the web TV programme, In The Attic, presented by Rachel Fuller and Michael Cuthbert. At festivals such as the O2 Festival in Leeds, the opening artists for The Who appeared as guests on the show once they came off stage.

Sirius Satellite Radio is currently featuring a 24-hour channel dedicated to The Who. This limited-run channel is being produced by Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey and features rare recordings, interviews, and broadcasts of concerts. The channel began broadcasting on September 21, 2006.

On October 3rd, 2006, iTunes released two singles from Endless Wire entitled "Tea & Theatre" (which is played at the end of the concerts during the North American leg of The Who's 2006 Encore Tour) and "It's Not Enough."

SOUNDS

The Who were more efficient as a live band, and throughout their history members always claimed that they could never capture their live sound in the studio. Because of this, studio recordings were always made for the purpose of establishing material for The Who's live shows during which songs would take on entirely new dimensions. Perhaps the best starter for anyone interested in listening to the band is the Live at Leeds album, on which, recently, the entire 1970 concert is now available. However, great care and effort went into the recording process so that the studio recordings are among the best of their genre even though they, in many ways, are not representative of the band. Rumour had it that one of the two guitar solos on "I Can't Explain" was dubbed in by Jimmy Page, the guitarist later made famous by his work in rock group Led Zeppelin, a claim discounted later by the producer Shel Talmy and Townshend, who stated Page doubled on rhythm and appeared on the b-side, "Bald Headed Woman", playing a simple fuzz box pattern. As the sixties progressed their studio sound was progressively modified by the use of overdubs to add complete additional parts without the need for additional musicians, rather than simply as an ordinary studio technique for capturing clean takes of vocal and solo parts. The added parts were usually additional guitar and keyboard parts for Townshend, though horn parts by John Entwistle were added to one or more songs on each album. When Tommy came out in 1969, the mix included not only electric guitar, bass, drums, and three-part vocals, but additional tracks for acoustic guitar, piano, organ, and horn, as if performed by six or eight instrumentalists rather than the actual three. As a result of this expansion many of their recorded songs have a dense sound with rich textures and fine details that can only be appreciated through careful headphone listenings.

Tommy also featured some of Townshend's early use of synthetic sounds, a recording of the click and fade of a piano note or some sort of percussion instrument dubbed in from a reversed tape to give a sound that grows louder up to a sharp cut-off, used in the song "Amazing Journey". His interest in synthetic sounds blossomed when he acquired an early ARP synthesizer and used it very aggressively on the 1971 Who's Next album. Though other keyboard instruments continued to be used in the band's recordings, and they briefly returned to a leaner sound for the 1975 The Who By Numbers album, Townshend's adoption of the synthesizer and the near-simultaneous maturation of studio recording equipment and techniques led to a big, solid, "modern" sound that became the signature of the post-classic era Who.

GENRES

The studio albums of the sixties chronicle the phases of the band's ventures into several sub-genres of Rock music and their experiments with Modernism. Their 1965 My Generation UK album (released in US 1966 in slightly altered form, "The Who Sings My Generation") features covers of popular rhythm and blues songs performed with a heavy sound that The Who promoted as "Maximum R&B". On their 1966 A Quick One UK album (released in the U.S. by 1967 in slightly altered form, "Happy Jack") they abandoned R&B in favor of an experiment in Pop music as an aural counterpart to the Pop art movement. By the time of their 1967 The Who Sell Out album they had mostly abandoned the Pop experiment, instead offering a mixture of psychedelic music and other songs of no specific sub-genre characteristics. With their release of Tommy in 1969 they gave up their experiments with sub-genres, and settled on a mainstream rock sound, albeit well toward the "hard" end of the spectrum and featuring many of the characteristics of progressive rock, which with the mini opera on Quick One they had already helped pioneer, alongside Sgt. Pepper, Procol Harum and the Moody Blues; the aim was to do something serious with rock music - a rare occurrence at the time. In the 1980s, the band made an attempt at achieving a New Wave music sound and even released a single, "Eminence Front", that had a sound heavily influenced by Funk.

In the background of those major trends in The Who's music there were several other minor tendencies. Keith Moon always wanted to play Surfer Music (he joined the Beach Boys for an hour), and two or three tunes in that genre eventually appeared on the band's B-sides or collection albums, such as the tune "The Ox" from My Generation. As time passed Townshend increasingly incorporated jazz and swing music motifs into his composition, singing, and playing, but even when present they tend to be masked by the hard rock sound of the band in ensemble. Finally, as with most of the early British rock musicians, the band's members were greatly influenced by country music, though the genre rarely appears in their recordings unless transformed almost beyond recognition.

INFLUENCE

The Who were easily one of the most influential groups in rock music as a whole. The aggressive music made by the power trio formation of Townshend, Entwistle, Moon, was followed by groups such as Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Jam and nearly all punk and grunge bands.

Their early sound and attitude epitomised what would come to be known as punk in the mid-late 70's. On top of this, The Who are the only band covered by and/or heavily influential to all four of the major punk rock bands: the Clash, MC5, Ramones and Sex Pistols. The synth-covered tracks of Who's Next were a starter for the origins of the new wave genre, which is based on synth in addition to traditional instruments. Bands affected this way include The Police, The Cars, Blondie, Boston, and others.

During their earliest Mod genesis, The Who provided inspiration for most, if not all, of the major bands during the Britpop wave in Britain during the mid-90s. Bands such as Blur, Oasis, Stereophonics and Ash draw a heavy influence from the band's work, which, especially with the Mod counter-culture, provided a quintessentially "Cool Britannia" ideal.

The group has been credited with devising the "rock opera" and it made one of the first notable concept albums. Following in Tommy's footsteps were David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, and the Pink Floyd albums Dark Side of the Moon, Animals, and especially The Wall. Recently, the idea was adopted by The Flaming Lips in Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Green Day in American Idiot.

"My Generation" is perhaps the band's most covered song. Iron Maiden, Green Day, Oasis, and Patti Smith have released covers of the song. Oasis used it as their set closer during their 2005 world tour. David Bowie covered "I Can't Explain" "Pictures of Lily' and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere". The Clash based several songs off of the "I Can't Explain" riff, most blatantly with "Guns on the Roof". Pearl Jam also would perform The Who's "Baba O'Riley" and "The Kids Are Alright" during their tours in the 90's and 00's. Van Halen covered "Won't Get Fooled Again" on their 1993 live album Live: Right Here, Right Now, explicitly describing it as "a tribute to The Who" and in 1995, Phish covered Quadrophenia for their second annual Halloween concert tradition of performing another band's album in its entirety.

The Who have one of the most dedicated fan bases of any band (even rivaling the famed crazed fans of the Grateful Dead). Fans are known to argue in favor of The Who in any musical debate, especially when compared to Led Zeppelin. The music of The Who is still performed in public by many tribute bands, such as The OHM, The Who Show, and The Wholigans in the USA and Who's Next and Who's Who in the UK.

STUDIO ALBUMS

1965 - My Generation (The Who's Debut Album)

1966 - A Quick One (Includes 10-minute "mini-opera".)

1967 - The Who (Sell Out Concept album.) Also includes elements of an unfinished Rock opera called Rael.

1969 - Tommy (Rock opera.)

1971 - Who's Next (Salvaged from the failed Lifehouse project.)

1973 - Quadrophenia (Rock opera.)

1975 - The Who By Numbers (Loose Concept as Pete Townshend's confessional album)

1978 - Who Are You (Includes a few elements of John Entwistle's unfinished Rock opera. The final album with Keith Moon on drums.)

1981 - Face Dances (The first album with Kenney Jones on drums.)

1982 - It's Hard (As of 2005, the band's final album.)

2006 - Endless Wire

LIVE ALBUMS

1970 - Live At Leeds Several variant editions exist 1970 - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival

1970 - Not released until the film came out in 1996

1984 - Who's Last A double live album of The Who's first farewell tour in 1982 (It would not be their last).

1990 - Join Together 25th anniversary reunion tour

2003 - Live At The Royal Albert Hall

OTHER ALBUMS

1979 - The Kids Are Alright (The Soundtrack to the Who Biography. This album is mostly comprised of Rare Live Performances)

1996 - My Generation: The Very Best of The Who

(Another "greatest hits" collection which includes hits such as "Join Together," "Won't Get Fooled Again," and, of course, "My Generation.")

1999 - BBC Sessions

(The BBC Sessions is a collection 23 songs and 2 Jingles recorded solely for BBC Radio Transmission.)

2004 - The Who: Then and Now

(Another Who Greatest Hits Album + 2 Brand New Songs never released before, "Old Red Wine" and "Real Good Looking Boy". It is rumored that the two new songs will be featured on the next studio Who album.)