The Who Greatest Hits / Greatest Hits Live (Polydor)
3/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
At this stage there doesn’t seem much point in another Greatest Hits collection from The Who. By now their fanbase is pretty much solid. If anything, you could argue they might have already reached their peak. Ahem.
The press release bangs on about them playing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl as being the inspiration behind this new compilation, though the main disc here is really just the same old ’best of’ we’ve collectively consumed for the past several decades. ‘Baba O’Riley’, ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘My Generation’, ‘Who Are You’, etc, etc… there’s nothing too surprising.
The second disc though, now that’s worth shouting about. The Who are a renowned live band, their original Live At Leeds set is regarded by many as the greatest live recording of all time. It is bloody good. Unfortunately, this new collection doesn’t include anything from Leeds, but featuring other original recordings from 1965 to 2007, the second CD here is where the justification lies in what might otherwise be a very ‘service station’ kind of release.
’Naked Eye’, ’Let’s See Action’ and ’My Generation’ taken from their 1974 performance at Charlton Athletic’s ground showcases, in brutal glory, the band that defined an era, a movement even. The tracks, along with ‘Don’t Get Fooled Again’ from a 1973 performance, shows a band at their sonic peak, a band experimenting with noise, pushing the boundaries of their instruments and amplifiers to, then, unthinkable measures. They represented the epitome of destructive 60’s hedonism, and that’s what this second disc aims to suggest. Be it Led Zep or The Doors, you can trace the overindulgence back to ‘Magic Bus’, and done live, The Who’s theatrically minimal blues sits comfortably between early rock ’n’ roll and everything thereafter. The Who really opened the f***ing door.
That said, everything about this seems thrown together. From the lousy sleeve notes to the spelling and grammar mistakes on the back cover, there’s been little love put into it. It surely does the band an injustice – we’d much rather The Who’s Greatest Hits come in a filthily seductive box set with emboss lettering and a companion booklet handwritten by Prince… or at the very least The Pope. It’s all a little underwhelming, and does something which really is quite sad; makes you think, “so what?”
Artists in this article: The Who
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