The Who - Who’s Next?

I heard that record when I was about twelve, I guess it would’ve been about 1976 and it was ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ that first hit me – that and ‘Baba O’Riley’. A lot of people don’t like that era of The Who and I can't figure that out because for me it’s one of their best. Townshend is one of my all-time heroes as far as songwriting is concerned. I think that’s the best record they ever did.

I really like Sell Out and Odds & Sods too, that weird B-side record. But this is the album to me, where I think that they really hit it right and they hit everything with thunder. The only thing I don’t particularly like on that record is the John Entwistle song on there, ‘My Wife’. It’s okay but I never listen to it, I always skip that one!

I read that you struggled to get a hold of music when you were younger. How did you seek it out?

I ordered this particular album through mail-order which is how I had to get stuff back then. My parents never bought me records and never cared about that sort of thing at all. They had no interest in my love of music at all and I think they thought it was a waste of time. Years and years later, when I was about 18 and I started playing music, which at the time was influenced [by this record] they had zero – and I mean absolutely zero – interest in it. They weren’t in any way encouraging as far as, like, ‘Oh yeah, you should do it’, not in the least. They viewed it as a waste of time. I tried to make a career out of making a living by wasting time, you know, but it worked out.

What about the kids you grew up with? Did you find any fellow music lovers amongst them?

No, I didn’t know anyone that liked that stuff: I didn’t have one person. When I was getting into music when I was about twelve, I had no friends whatsoever. Nobody that I knew, young or old, liked music. I didn’t have people that I hung out with at all. I was pretty much on my own until about tenth grade until I met Dillard and the guys that ended up being in the Melvins. Dillard especially got it, but I introduced the guys to all that stuff, whether it was Bowie or whatever.