The Who sells out?

Hendrik Hertzberg would like to go back to a 1969 interview he did with The Who and ask them what they would think of their colossal sell out, not to mention embarrassing performance, at the Super Bowl over forty years later.

If I could go back in time and conduct that interview again, I would ask this question:

“Pete, do you remember Super Bowl III? Took place like ten months ago? Joe Namath? The New York Jets? No? Never heard of it?

“Well, it’s the big championship of American football, like the F.A. Cup in England. There’s nothing more American than the Super Bowl—it’s huge, it’s vulgar, it’s all about kicking ass and hating hippies. Now, what if I were to tell you that forty-one years from now—forty-one years from now, in the year twenty-ten—the Super Bowl would be live on TV all over the world, and the special halftime entertainment, viewed by hundreds of millions of people, would be… The Who.

“How would you account for that?”

The conversation would go on from there.

And Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein (on her excellent blog Monitor Mix) wonders if it was even appropriate for a legendary band to continue as is when half the group, arguably the pillars of the band's sound, are long dead.

As far as I'm concerned, the soul of The Who is long gone. Yes, Townshend wrote most of the songs, but it was the rhythm section -- Keith Moon and John Entwistle -- who tore into his song's structures, making them gallop and hiccup and veer far and unexpectedly from the original destination. With only two members remaining, The Who is no more.

I suppose there can't be a formula for whether a band should continue after the death of an original member, so perhaps it's just a feeling. Countless bands ventured forth after the untimely deaths of one of their own. From The Rolling Stones to Lynyrd Skynyrd, from The Beach Boys to The B-52's to Metallica. For most bands, losing a lead singer seems to be the one deal-breaker (The Doors, Joy Division, Nirvana), though some bands work up a tribute show that features a variety of singers -- such as Queen -- which works, and is less crass than a full-time replacement.

I can understand some of these bands from the '60s and '70s not wanting to let a band member's drug overdose and obvious path to self-destruction stand in the way of future creativity and success. As they say, the show must go on. And maybe it was a relief to play with healthier, saner people. But two band members gone? More? Watching The Who play Sunday, I was pretty sure that even it no longer had the answer to its most pointed question: Who are you? And when you don't know that, then maybe it is time to finally let go.

Let's face it: We're still in the throes (albeit the last throes) of Baby Boomers' domination of, well, the world, much less corporate puppet shows like the Super Bowl. At this point, I'm not even sure if it's worth mocking thththththat generation since they do such a good job of doing it to themselves.

I feel The Who should be mentioned with the Rolling Stones and Beatles as some of the great rock influences to come from that period. But at no point have their lyrics "I hope I die before I get old" carry so much irony.