BY NUMBERS

Admittedly, I've never been a great fan of Quadrophenia. The Dirty Jobs and The Real Me are excellent, but parts of the second LP (Sea And Sand or Drowned) somehow sound as if Townshend had been unable to cope with these lots of lyrics, ending up accompanying some of them with cliché rock power chords. Listening to the complete double LP at a stretch is a damn tough task for me, and this assessment comes from a big fan of Yes' Tales From Topographic Oceans!

The Who By Numbers abandons the quasi-operatic recurrence of vocal motives and the dominating synthesizer arpeggios, but rather focusses on the radically honest expression of a rebel's grief, anger, fears and - most importantly - change in attitude towards life. The rebel is, needless to say, Pete Townshend. At that time he perceives himself as a drunkard ('and however much I booze, there ain't no way out'), unsure to which degree to believe in his social surroundings ('how many friends have I really got?', 'goodbye all you punks (...) hand me my checkbook and I'll crawl off to die'), still on spiral ways searching for freedom and self-fulfillment (in the cynical Slip Kid) and stuck in an early midlife crisis ('I'm too old to give up, but too young to rest') - and this rebel wears his heart on his sleeve.

I know that the term 'emotional authenticity' is often used in reviews to embellish a lack of substance, but this album drives all the way through chords and melodies which are so inspired that I actually forget to analyse it to pieces while listening to it. Slip Kid is motored by a rattling and shuffling rock groove (including cowbell, clapping and shakers) and stomps along to Roger Daltrey's ferocious shouting, concise four-part backing vocals by Townshend in the chorus and Nicky Hopkins' rolling piano playing. The whole atmosphere seems to me like a slowed-down answer to Deep Purple's Chasing Shadows until the brief and unexpectedly artsy middle part creeps in with classicistic piano patterns and quietly fading guitar chords, always staying on that hypnotic drum groove.

Imagine A Man defines another angle of Townshend's interests, namely balladesque folk music, which previously had been hinted at in songs like the droning The Good's Gone and the intricately picked Sunrise. Indeed, Daltrey's heavenly rising vocal lines and the shimmering acoustic guitar arpeggios seem to echo III-era Led Zeppelin or even early Pentangle, but Townshend manages to make the number completely his own without turning it over to genuine British folk territories. Keith Moon, who pauses during the first three quarters of the song, enhances the ending of the song a lot with some powerful but unobstrusive drum fills. Furthermore Nicky Hopkins' piano and John Entwhistle's playful bass lines entangle Townshend's acoustic guitar, which results in a beautiful carpet of sound. And the choice of words in the verses imagine a girl (...) [with a] body of chalky perfection and truth has fascinated me since I first took notice of that.

How Many Friends is another immaculate rock song. It feels as if the massive sustain of the continuously soaring lead guitar is just a few degrees away from total amp feedback while John Entwhistle drives through incredibly busy bass lines much like a lead (bass) guitarist. And not only guitars are quite fuller and rounder than on Quadrophenia, but also the drum sound. The snare is sweetly balanced in the mid-range frequencies, the metal snares are audible as a relatively low rattling and the decay time is increased compared with the previous album. The thunderous punch of the toms and the crash cymbal ably compensates the delicacy of the snare mix and, well, simply get this album if you want to listen to the playing of a tamed and refined Keith Moon who was in top form at that time, arguably even more concise than ever before.

Squeeze Box, a playful rock'n'roller which doesn't get a bit of its famous sexual innuendo until the middle 8, could have become a less essential tune on By Numbers. But this time it's Pete Townshend who saves the song with some sublime twangy country licks and proficient multi-instrumentalist work on banjo and accordeon. The slightly droning 'in and out', including fine vocal interplay between Daltrey and Townshend, is also kind of an unorthodox choice for a song like this. An absolutely good little ditty it has become, similar in its humour to earlier pieces like I'm A Boy or Tattoo, and I like it a lot. (At this point I may mention that Townshend demoed most of the The Who songs at home before the sessions, playing drums/keyboards/guitars/vocals/FX himself. How good these demos already sound is further proof that this man is one of the great creative minds of rock music!)

Blue Red And Grey is kind of an oddity as the only completely unplugged piece in the The Who discography. As an untypically positive piece of singer/songwriter-style chanson, however, it is a most welcome addition to the album. First of all it's a Townshend-Entwhistle duo piece; Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey didn't participate in the session whilst Townshend plays the ukulele and sings and John Entwhistle - having received classical training on trumpet and horns - provides a calm multi-tracked brass band backing which arguably is the most quintessentially British thing this band ever tracked. Pete Townshend, equipped with a nasal but tender and reliable voice, wonders why people tend to find a fly in the ointment instead of simply enjoying themselves. Townshend already raised the question of contentment and inner peace during the Lifehouse Project, searching for music which sums up the essence of certain persons, but never before you could listen to a Pete Townshend of such an even temper.

However Much I Booze, the second Townshend-sung song on By Numbers, begins similarly positive, but leads into a slower and reflective stanza part after its upbeat intro riff. Actually, the riff doesn't make you feel good anymore after the 5 minutes because it's so fast-paced and restless. But that's what the song is actually about: a pretty chastening analysis of Townshend's constitution at that time, and that's what also made Roger Daltrey make Townshend sing this one on the record. He describes himself as a faker, a liar, an alcoholic, a person who is locked in destructive habits and distracting behaviors. Unlike many other rock songs this piece gets by aptly over the five minutes with just a handful of chords, thanks to the effortlessly fitting melody, a set of well-coordinated guitar tracks and a spine-tingling middle 8 at around 2:44 which in its slow tempo appears like a period of exhaustion after the manic verses.

They're All In Love is on the first sight a pretty casual ballad in 6/8 time, and it's the stable and empathic band interplay which lifts this song to a higher level. For example, listen to how Roger Daltrey sings the first verse: his voice is deliberately frail and he stretches the syllables, at least until the second stanza in which the voice becomes angrier and more biting. Keith Moon is in top form again, too, he sports an inventive fill at any suitable place and provides extra brilliance with the high-frequent chiming of the ride cymbal. Nicky Hopkins' piano is perfectly embedded in the mix and comes up with a lovely instrumental part around 1:31-2:10 which, after some soft vocal sheets by a multi-tracked Townshend voices, initiates the anthemic last part of the song which I have already quoted from in the second paragraph of the review. The denunciation of the punk rebellion as a possible source of commercial input is still a 'problem' in the current scene, as recent debates about the punk pop of Green Day prove.

John Entwhistle's Success Story is a bassy and droning rock'n'roll thing, basically describing the show business in a cynical way and with lots of quirky musical twists and turns such as an inevitable Boris The Spider-like growled verse, a glam rock middle-8 and Pete Townshend's interesting vocal cascades before the stanzas. And these few sung words seem to be the only thing Pete Townshend contributes to this piece because the piece is Entwhistle's showcase of the rarely used 8-string bass guitar, which is actually the bass pendant to the 12-string guitar with its doubled, octave-tuned strings. I wouldn't mind the whole thing being called psychedelic judging by the mantraic riff which Entwhistle performs on that instrument. A pretty cool affair which totally suits the Townshend-penned rest of the album like My Wife also did on Who's Next.

Dreaming from The Waist is the most hard-rocking song on the album, driven by more high-speed bass lines, masterful guitar riffs, maniac drum bashing and Roger Daltrey roaring his soul out into the microphone. But of course the band won't rock off for four minutes without bringing in a dynamically restrained part, and this 'dreaming' part enters first at 1:25 and is revisited once or twice during the course of the song. Not a lot more to say about this song, except for that it is as damn good as any other one on the album.

The rousing In A Hand or A Face is a further revisitation of the band's sound of the late 1960s and an incredibly intelligent way to finish this record. It took me lots of listens to take note of how the song transforms the slightly atonal Tommyesque 'round and round' chorus to a more hymnal affair simply by changing the chords a little bit. In the end, the chords modulate back to the grittier version of the chorus - I don't know why - but it's that catchy hymnal part which sticks to your mind. The result of that little twist? The album temporarily ends on a positive note. But it doesn't open out in some kind of cognition or resolution, but in an ecstatic feel of vertigo - but a vertigo which, propelled by an energetic and recognisable guitar riff, seemingly doesn't only feel endurable, but even enjoyable.

All in all there's not much I can criticise about this album, but rather so many things which functioned absolutely well. And this also includes the rewarding booklet of the reissue with new liner notes to each song, lots of photos and a running text about the complete album - plus a set of three live bonus tracks in perfect sound quality. Among them you find a mighty version of the classic track Behind Blue Eyes with thunderous bass lines both in the ballad and in the rock part and Townshend, Daltrey and Entwhistle singing some gruff, but beautiful harmonies together. The two By Numbers tracks stay true to the original, but have some of the slender sophistication of arrangement replaced by some more vigour and strength much like we know it from Live At Leeds. The big advantage of the original album is that everything on this pretty hard-rocking mélange is thoroughly stripped of all pretentiousness and pop appeal, and not many of the mid-1970s hard rock bands managed to replaced the shallow toughness and masculinity of the hard rock genre that consequently with honesty, introspection and admissions of faultiness. The lyrics are a treat, each piece has at least one delicately arranged part which is totally different to the rest of the piece, and every music listener who enjoys rock music which rewards concentrated listens with new insights should enjoy this album at least half as much as I do. I'm sure that this album isn't the reason why this band was added to this website, but I wholeheartedly give it a good 4-star rating - and I dump the few rating percents not because it's not enough prog or because I don't like a song or two, but (irrationally) because it feels more equitable. Buy it anyway!

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