2. Power Trio With no rhythm guitar the band featured a more dynamic rhythm section: John Entwhistle avoids the standard 1+3 accents of 60’s bass by alternating between pounding bass ‘pedal’ effects and dynamic blues riffs. Keith Moon seldom played a simple backbeat rhythm Regular snare rolls and dynamic tom crescendo were a trademark of his style. Moon favoured ride cymbals and double kick drum rather than hi-hat.

3. Marshall Amps Guitarist Pete Townsend was the first British guitarist to not use Vox AC30 amps Exploiting the power of new Marshall amps he developed a style featuring sustained power chords. Combined with semi-acoustic Rickenbacker guitars he was able to creatively explore feedback.

4. Blues The Who started as The High Numbers an RnB band. I’m the Face their only single was a typical blues. Townsend recorded a demo of My Generation as a Chicago blues. The vocal melody is a simple descending blues scale: A G E D C

5. Structure 2 bar stop/start rhythm structure Bass riff G>F Transposes to the key of A then B Climaxes on a coda in D Backing vocals harmonise parallel 3rds: D D E E F F E D B B C C D D C B “talkin bout my gen-er-a-tion”

6. Bass Entwhistle introduces the idea of a bass solo to rock music: A sophisticated rising & falling blues solo played on Danelectro bass In the coda he plays a freestyle walking part in D over the drone D of the guitar

7. Drums Tightly tuned jazz toned kit. Brief intense triplet rolls add to dynamics 0.04 0.24 0.30 1.12 1.31 1.40 Snare cracks on 8th beat of stop sections Coda: Moon plays almost a minute of non-stop triplet roles around the kit www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB2QjFNnVpU

8. Guitar Townsend plays chiming suspended chords over the descending bass riff He plays call & response blues phrases in the bass solo He distorts the tone of the guitar in the coda with staccato pick up selector changes High pitched feedback in coda broke rules of record engineering.

9. Instrumental version www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqHWyLg6kPM

10. Vocals Roger Daltrey sings with ‘attitude’. An angry sneer. ‘punk’ vocal. The rising keys keep pushing vocal to almost breaking point (a high D in last verse!) Deliberate stuttering to suggest angry inarticulation. “Why don’t you all just ffff…fade away”

11. Wider listening The Ox The Who ‘65 I Can See for Miles The Who ’66 Won’t Get Fooled Again The Who ‘72 You Really Got Me The Kinks ‘64 Own Up Time Small Faces ’65 Fire Jimi Hendrix ‘66