Talk:The Who

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Pete Townshend

• Abbie Hoffman: I think this is a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison!
  Pete Townshend: Fuck off! Get off my fucking stage! The next person who walks across this fucking stage is going to get fucking killed...You can laugh, but I mean it!
  • To Abbie Hoffman when Hoffman climbed onto the stage at Woodstock during Tommy to make an impromptu speech

• The fact of the matter is, I'm fucking brilliant. Not "was" brilliant. "Am" brilliant.

• I smash guitars because I like them.

• Rock won't eliminate your problems, but it will sort of let you dance all over them.

• I can see the future and it is bleak.

• It is important to call your mom; it is important to tidy your room. It is important to make sure you don't have too many drinks and kill someone on the way home, or even scrape somebody's car. It's the little details that we have control of.

• A song is a message, a song is a letter, nothing more, nothing less.

• When Roger [Daltrey] speaks out about "we'll all be rockin' in our wheelchairs" he might be, but you won't catch me rockin' in no wheelchair. I don't think it's possible. I might be making music in a wheelchair, maybe even with The Who, but I feel that The Who have got to realize that the things we're gonna be writing and singing about are rapidly changing.

• In those days, Roger [Daltrey] was the undisputed leader, and if you disagreed you got a bunch of fives. It needed someone with a strong right hook to keep things together.
  • On The Who's early days

• The people at Woodstock really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid and then tried to run out without paying the band.

• I had been shamed by Roger [Daltrey] into doing quite a few tours to help John [Entwistle], who then promptly fucking dies on us.

• What Lifehouse was about, really, was to show music at its purest, truest and tastiest form.

• Can anybody play the drums? I mean someone good!
  • During the Quadrophenia concert tour where he asks for a volunteer to fill in for Moon, who had passed out.

• This is like a... kind of a Music-Art Academy up here... Except we're all fuckin' stupid.

Roger Daltrey

• Rock used to be a right laugh. The trouble is that the rock press have made it all so serious. Fifty percent of rock is having a good time.

• Our main ambition right now is to get back on the road with the horrible Who, the worst rock n' roll group in the world... You couldn't pick four more horrible geezers to make the worst sound you've ever heard in your life.

• There certainly is more in the future now than back in 1964.

• I think Townshend's always wanted to be me.

• Most rock films are pretentious. They're made for the sole purpose of making Robert Plant's dick look big. This is totally the opposite. Within the first half hour we're made to look complete idiots.
  • Regarding the rock documentary of The Who, The Kids Are Alright

• Johnnie Walker: Well, we got an e-mail here from someone who says, "Thank you for the music, Rodge".
  Roger Daltrey: Ah, that's no problem, the music making has been free. It's the putting up with Townshend that's been the price I've had to pay all this time.
  • BBC Radio interview

• Woodstock was probably the single best show in history. Townshend doesn't like it because he is an idiot.

• Anyone who disagrees with me gets a bunch of fives and a swift knee in the happysack.

Keith Moon

• They're always saying I'm a capitalist pig. I suppose I am, but, ah... it ah... it's good for my drumming, I think.

• People say because I'm rich and famous that I'm eccentric. That's a polite way of saying I'm fucking mad. If I was a nobody I'd be classed as fucking mad and locked up.

• Perhaps he thought you were hungry.
  • To a journalist who had been sent a sandwich in the face by Townshend, and asked Moon why

• I told people I was a drummer before I even had a set, I was a mental drummer.

• You'll sink, like a lead balloon... no, no, even faster; like a lead zeppelin.
  • To future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page about his upcoming supergroup called "The New Yardbirds." The group was later re-named "Led Zeppelin" after Moon's remark.

• Because I'm Keith fuckin' Moon!
  • Asked why he was about to go on stage after injecting himself with several grams of horse tranquilizer.

• Thank God!
  • After Townshend announced at the Rainbow Theatre in 1971 that "This is the very last time we're going to perform Tommy on stage"

• I'm still the best fuckin' (Keith Moon-style) drummer in the world.
  • On his deteriorating ability due to drug and alcohol abuse on the album Who Are You

• Learn guitar.
  • Moon's advice to those asking him for help on learning how to drum

• Fuck off.
  • Mumbled to a doctor telling Townshend that Moon was "clinically dead" when he was just coming round to consciousness

• If you don't like it, you can just fuck off.
  • His last words, after asking his girlfriend to make him steak and eggs for breakfast

• I heard you're looking for a drummer, well I'm a lot better than the one you've got.
  • Moon asking to be in The Detours

John Entwistle

• I can't stand rap... people who can't sing do rap... you can sing rebellion as well as talk it... Hitler would've been in a rap band...

• God was our lighting man.
  • On the sun coming up and illuminating the stage during the finale of Tommy at Woodstock, 1969

• I ain't heard anyone play like I do in my band and I am very happy about that.

• The Netherlands are wet, flat and full of stoned people.

• There's a better chance of Marilyn Monroe making another movie.
  • When asked if The Who ever had a chance of getting back together

• I've had the dubious pleasure of knowing that I've performed "Yellow Submarine" more times than Paul McCartney.
  • On touring with the Ringo Starr All-Starr Band

• The Who are the rock industry equivalent of what French movies are to the movie industry: deep and full of messages - but what the fuck are they all about?

• I just wanted to see what it was like to be a failure.
  • On why he began his solo career

• They should have stuck to jukeboxes.
  • On Wurlitzer guitars

• If we stopped a song every time I made a mistake we'd be playing in fucking Morse code.
  • After his solo band stopped when he played the wrong bass part during a live show

• I'd play at the opening of an envelope if my fans were there.

• I prefer to drink; not drive.
  • On why he never acquired a driver's license

• You can hit bass strings with anything; nail files... collarbones... even your fingers!
  • On his technique

• I set myself up to be a bass guitarist and bass players get a lot more work than people like me.