The story of the Who goes back to the late fifties when Pete Townshend and John Entwistle were just getting teenagers and played in an amateur band with some boys from school. They started up playing banjo and trumpet respectively, but in the coming years they would eventually shift to the instruments they are known for mastering, electric guitar and bass guitar. Roger Daltrey was about a year older and attended the same school. He hadn't yet found his final calling either (as a vocalist) but acted as guitarist in a band called "The Detours". The Detours were already earning a little money from playing at private parties, so when asked first Entwistle and later Townshend joined them.
Besides the three coming stars the Detours consisted of a singer and a drummer, and in the beginning of the sixties they gradually developed into a pretty experienced ensemble. In 1963 the singer was thrown out, and Daltrey took over his place leaving Townshend as the lead guitarist. The Detours were now steadily building up a reputation by playing at places of entertainment in the London area and acting as support band for bigger names. But in 1964, when they met their first record producer, it became evident that the drummer made up a weak spot in the line-up. For a while they Detours were testing a lot of different drummers (among them Mitch Mitchell, who would later become famous for playing with Jimi Hendrix!), but at last they found the perfect replacement. This was Keith Moon, who had formerly played in a band called "The Beachcombers".
It is funny how Keith Moon's drumming became crucially important for the ensemble playing of the band from the very first moment he joined. The other band members have never forgotten the night when Moon showed up at one of their gigs, all dressed in ginger, more or less intoxicated and confidently claiming that he could play better than the session drummer they'd brought with them. So they wanted to see if he could play "Road Runner" - and he did it so thunderously that he (unintentionally) damaged several features of the drum set and left absolutely no doubt about him being the new drummer in the band. In an interview from the 2004 edition of the film The Kids Are Allright Roger Daltrey looks back on this episode as the very moment when the Detours became the Who: "The instant he played with the three of us something just incredible took over, and it was like you finally fitted a jigsaw puzzle together. That's when the Who was born.".
With the line-up of Daltrey, Entwistle, Townshend and Moon the Detours had reached their final form - or to be precise, the one that would last for the next 14 years and define them through all their greatest moments. They now changed their name, first to "The Who", then for a short but important period to "The High Numbers" and finally back again to "The Who". In the beginning of 1965 they released their first hit singles and were immediately recognized as the new big name in British rock. By the end of the year they released their first album, which wore the title of their undoubtedly best song from the period, My Generation.
The Who also became recognized as the hardest playing band of the mid sixties. Daltrey's singing was rough and extraordinary powerful. Townshend played his guitar very aggressively and using all kinds of noisy sound effects. Behind them - well, just as often leading them - thundered the most dynamic rhythm section in the history of rock, with Entwistle playing his bass almost like an electric guitar, and Moon attacking his drums so brutally that he had to tie them to the stage before the show. The early music of the Who let out all this rhythmical energy rather raw. The compositions were simple, sometimes even monotonous, and they had an explosiveness and a way of moving on by fits and starts, that tended to favour rhythm over melody and shouting over actual singing.
The impression left is one of suppressed frustration and desperation on the verge of exploding, and this is also the impression left by Pete Townsend's lyrics at the time. We once heard about a punker, who didn't like any of the Who's albums - except one: My Generation. This is an example of the general truth, that there is usually a lot of sound judgement underlying, what appears to be a pure matter of taste.