Kenney & The Who

[Benn Kempster]

For me, Kenney was completely the wrong choice as replacement for Keith Moon. That's not to say that he was a useless drummer, far from it, but he was just not right in that setting.

At the very least, Kenney ended up trying far too hard to either BE Keith or trying to play LIKE Keith. In recent years, Pete and Roger have recruited Zak Starkey who just gets up there and plays like Zak Starkey - which lends a completely fresh air to the band's material - you certainly don't get the sense from the guy himself that he's trying to fill Keith's shoes at all. Maybe Kenney's insistance on playing on a riser had something to do with it as that would have changed the feel and sound on stage *completely*.......

Roger's big problem with kenney, *I* believe, surrounds the state that Pete was getting himself into at the time. Pete was losing the battle against alcoholism by 1979 after a number of years of introspection (and the resulting material on Who By Numbers, Who Are You and Rough Mix). Keith's death added to his personal misery and the fight to keep The Who alive plunged him further into the uncertainty of whether he had made the right decision or not. bringing in a party-animal like Kenney was just the worst thing they could have done; it almost smelt of "Well, if Keith's dead, who am I going to drink with now on tour?".

Roger saw that coming from the very start and, although he was very positive about the whole thing at the start (press interviews and his comments on stage during the first shows in the UK & Europe in '79 attest to it), as time wore on, Pete descended further and as Pete lost control, he turned to heroin in 1981 (I'm not saying that Kenney was responsible for that, but that the continuation of the band working at the time was). I think that Roger decided he needed an avenue to vent his frustration and, sadly, Kenney bore the brunt of it all. I understand that there are other "personal" reasons behind Roger's feud with Kenney, but that's another matter.

Kenney's first show with The Who at The Rainbow was an absolute killer - full of drama and the uncertainty of whether The Who were just going to explode right infront of you. Kenney was superb too, as he was for the rest of that year (Paris and New York being particularly strong). Once they started trying to make new music, the impetus had gone and Pete had completely lost his edge as a writer - therefore, that uncertainty and lack of true belief in what they were doing lead to poor results on stage (barring the obvious nightly highlights their back-catalogue could generate.

All in all, I just think that Kenney was given a task that absolutely no one could have taken up and been successful with. None of it was within his control other than truning to Pete, Roger & John and saying "No thanks!"

[mcnarie]

On the "Kenney Could Really Play" thread, I wrote:
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I saw them live in Salt Lake City, must have been April of 1980. Kenney and John played very well together. I was listening to a boot of their show in Essen from that same year, and Kenney plays in top form on the Who material. Once they start playing a couple cuts that ended up on Face Dances (they'd already obviously laid the tracks down by then), it's an entirely different act. What misdirection! Face Dances is full of fine material, but horrible for the Who to be performing. Not for them at all, Pete.

I've said it before, and it bears repeating: For proof that Kenney played perfectly well with the Who, listen to his work on the Tommy soundtrack and, most importantly, his work on all the new tracks cut for the Quad soundtrack. That was material written FOR THE WHO, where Kenney was allowed to play like he wanted. Face Dances, and to a lesser degree It's Hard, were albums made by the wrong band. They were Pete solo albums where the Who were pretty much relegated to sidemen status, and it shows. Kenney, in particular, is made to play like a lame, synthetic studio drummer of the era, and is further dragged through the mud by Szymczyk's shoddy California production.

If Roger hadn't pitched such a bitch and allowed the tracks Rabbit was writing at the time (a few of which the Who started to lay down), it would have been far more clear how far Pete had retreated from the mindset necessary to write Who material: Rabbit's tracks were far closer to the spirit of the Who, both in lyrical vision and musical direction. "Another Tricky Day" reigns as the closest thing to a Who song on Face Dances, and it's no surprise: Townshend told me it was very similar to a song Rabbit had already written. Yet again, I digress...

For proof that Kenney was a great drummer with the Who, don't listen to Roger or the studio albums cut while he was with them. Listen to the aforementioned, and listen to live performances from that period where the material played was suitable for the band performing it. Nuff said, in my book.
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I believe Kenney was very well suited for a gig with the Who, if they were to make the mistake of carrying on without Keith. It had been Kenney propping up Keith for some time in the band-- he replaced him for the first time on an Australian gig in the 60s (Small Faces-era) when Keith was too drunk to drive; he'd done demos with the band when Keith wasn't around; he filled in for Keith on the Tommy soundtrack sessions in 74, when Keith was drunk on the beach in Malibu, making enemies of Steve McQueen. He was being groomed as Keith's replacement after WHO ARE YOU, when plans were put forth to remove Keith from the kit and make him "band spokesman" (class clown). The extra side of tracks for the QUAD soundtrack featured Kenney, not Keith, and they prove Jones was playing perfectly well in the studio when the band was given suitable material.

The trouble was the material, not the player. Pete told me that Keith's death, though tragic, freed him up as a writer to explore different directions musically. He said this in April 83, just before they started work on "IT'S HARD" (which he said was "very critical for the band", as if it's failure spelled the end of the Who... and he was right, as usual).

Unfortunately, Pete was in bad shape, too, still reeling from Keith's death and trying to kill himself. Most of us know he nearly succeeded a few times, not just from a speedball in a London club. It showed in the material he wrote, which was far better suited for his solo albums.

Kenney wasn't bad for the Who. Pete, at the time, was. For the music on Face Dances, Kenney should have been replaced by Mark Brzezicki or Simon Phillips. John Entwistle, likewise, should have been replaced by Tony Butler. Daltrey could have been dropped altogether, as Townshend should have sung them all. And Pete Hope-Evans could have been used on harmonica. Keep Rabbit on keys, he's always the best where Pete's concerned.

[Benn Kempster]

On the thread of that era's material.......

It's interesting to note that John was adamant (small aside being that I was the last fan to spend time with John backstage at a Who show - Watford in January 2002 and this came up in the conversation) that the genisis of Eminence Front was a riff he had taken to the band from an aborted solo Sci-Fi concept album he'd been toying with. Pete took hold of it and basically stole it from under his nose. The ONLY Who material from that era that came anywhere close to being "classic" was written by John - "The Quiet One", "Had Enough", "Dangerous" all being tough, upfront rockers. But, you could also argue that there is plenty of material on Face Dances that would have fit equally well amongst that on By Numbers and Who Are You. There's a full band version of Blue, Red And Grey that remains unreleased and is an absolute stunner!

Kenney came in with a poison chalice - they weren't seriously trying to get rid of Keith at any stage. The fat that Kenny played on the Tommy soundtrack was because Pete wanted to work with new people and keep the soundtrack "removed" from The Who, otherwise he would have had the original album as the film's soundtrack and then used out-takes from the sessions as additional metarial (some of this found it's way onto the recent Deluxe version of the album). Kenney came into that and subsequently the band full-time, because he was a known quantity and I'm sure that Ronnie Lane had a hand in getting the recommendation into Pete's head properly. And, as with all things, what Pete says with The Who goes.

Kenney and John DID work well together, but John was also very marginalised within The Who - being the only *MUSICAL* genius in the band, he wa out on a limb, because of the volumes that he wanted to play at. Neither Pete or Roger would give him free enough reign to play as he wanted and that seriously held him back (hence the solo band in 1975/6). he was also told that the only John-written songs that would be played from the back catalogue were "Boris" or "My Wife" - imagine being told that!?

Kenney's style is certainly more that of a time-keeper than a free-form player and that is why The Who's standards always got a decent rendering with him (he's even on very decent form at Live Aid), but it's just not The Who.

[mcnarie]

Yeah, John was unfortunately marginalized in the band. Despite these constraints, he still managed to blatantly be the most stunning bassist in rock. Eminence Front was, indeed, an Entwistle riff. Also, as I mentioned, the most Who-like Pete cut from Face Dances, "Another Tricky Day", was perhaps copped from Rabbit (the other unsung virtuoso in the band). Unfortunately, even John's songs on FACE DANCES were subpar for him, in my opinion, and I love John's solo disks (I've still got three sealed copies of "Smash Your Head", two of "Whistle Rhymes", three of "Mad Dog", and one of "Rigor Mortis").

As for "what Pete says goes", while this is largely true, Roger has quite often been the wet blanket.

During Face Dances recordings, Pete said he was open to record Rabbit's songs, and it was Roger that refused to listen or perform them. Pete's quote was, "Roger flipped out, saying, "The Who is either you write or John writes, and Rabbit's not in the Who, he's just a sideman, BLAH BLAH BLAH!" As well, the limitations on which John songs would get airing largely stems from Roger's logic, not Pete's.

Your comparisons of era-material to the quirks of WHO ARE YOU and BY NUMBERS are acknowledged, but I find Pete's writing to be far more quirky and experimental on Dances... not to mention comparitively inarticulate (particularly by Pete's standards) than the aforementioned albums. Things like Cache Cache and Don't Let Go the Coat sound like Pete was channeling through the likes of David Byrne, and they fit more comfortably on one of the SCOOP sets than on a Who album or, by inference, even a Pete solo disk. How Can You Do it Alone and Daily Records fit the BY NUMBERS comparison though, certainly. Still, it sounds like a studio band performing them, not the Who.

No matter the troubles with the material, the direction the band chose when performing these songs was a bad one: Wimpy, filled with LA production trickery (particularly on Kenney's drumming, goddammit!), and a real letdown to concerned Who fans. For Kenney to solely foot the blame for this relative disaster, which Roger tries to expound to this very day (as do many diehards who refuse to see the big picture), is a total fabrication, showing a lack of critical reasoning and an ignorance of the facts. To quote Viv Stanshall, "limp-hand squids, prepare for whacks!"

[Benn Kempster]

Whilst I agree with you about Rab being the other unsung virtuoso, there is absolutely no way that he should have been allowed to write songs for The Who - certainly not while john and Pete were both still alive. As the major contributors to the band's catalogue, the responsibility was on them to write. The fact that Pete couldn't, should have meant that more of John's material got a hearing than it did. Pete's ego (and, possibly Roger's too) saw to it that they churned out what was considered to be Townshend's best material for The Who at that time.

If they were going to start to incorporate another writer's material into their new creative stream, then they would, absolutely, have had to change the name of the band in my mind. The Who is not The Who unless it is Entwistle, Townshend, Daltrey and Moon's songs. When they get back into the studio later this month, they will only be doing material that Pete and Roger have created; I'd love for them to a tribute version of John's "My Size" too, but that won't happen. There is a lot of material that John laid down that certainly could be used on the album in terms of bass lines, but again, Pete will not let that happen.

Anything new can only be looked at as NOT being a Who album. Otherwise, the disappointment will be two-fold.

[mcnarie]

Love your sig: "This is a fucking ROCK & ROLL concert, not a fucking TEA PARTY". That was prefaced by Townshend yelling "shut up. SHUT UP! SHADUPPPP!!!!" "This a rock-n-roll concert, not a fucking tea party!" "I've been asked, by those up front, if we could all sit down and be quiet, which is just about usual."

I've had that boot for ages. Didn't they put it on the "Maximum R&B" box, too?

[Benn Kempster]

Yeah - it was the very first track on disc 1 and caused a great deal of concern witht he record company; they were worried that it would put people's backs up, but then again, it was ABSOLUTELY the correct way to start a Who retrospective off.

The quote is actually in response to comments Roger made at Long Beach in December 71. The crowd were killing each other and Roger made some comment about "The problem is with people today that there are too many people being crushed and not knowing they are being crushed" by outside forces. Keith then took the piss out of him saying that perhaps they "should go and play in the parking lot". Roger then came up with "If the people at the back move back 4 feet, the people in the middle can move back three feet then the people at the front can move back two feet"; ever the voice of practicality. Pete then started to take the piss out of him with "See what power rock stars have? Fuck all power!". He then tried to introduce "My Wife" and couldn't because of the crowd noise:

"I tell ya fuckers something! Now listen, just fucking listen and shut up, right. Either sit down, or stand up, or lay down or do something, but SHUT UP, right. This is a fucking rock and roll concert, not a fucking tea party, right!"

They played My Wife - and an absolute KILLER version too, after which Pete then apologised, saying "I was moaning at the crowd last night for not getting up and boogying". The show that night could possibly remain as The Who's greatest.

As much as Pete loves his audience, he's never been shy of telling them what he thinks - I guess it was a reaction to them just not payihng attention to the band and Roger having directed ALL the attention to the situation. There were plenty of occasions on the Who By Numbers tour when this kind of thing happened - I think Pete felt threatened by it sometimes because of the sheer power of numbers in front of him. Cincinnatti was the greatest illustration of this, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the arena's door policy - the kids just couldn't wait to get down front at a Who show and what happened was becaueof that.