Watching
Pete and Roger sing ‘The Kids Are Alright’ at Ronnie Scott’s club yesterday
reminded me that a few years ago I was asked to pick a favourite Who song to
write about for a magazine feature on their greatest songs. ‘Substitute’ had
already been taken and so had ‘My Generation’, so I opted for ‘Kids’. Just now
I dusted it off and added a bit for today’s blog post.
The importance that
The Who attach to their song ‘The Kids Are Alright’ was not apparent to me until
1978 when they agreed that it should be the title of Jeff Stein’s superb
documentary, the movie that served as a memorial for Keith. Thereafter it took
its rightful place alongside many of their better known and more regularly
performed songs and, indeed, when the much augmented Who toured the US and UK
in 1989, ostensibly to present Tommy
on its 20th Anniversary, they called it ‘The Kids Are Alright Tour’.
Originally a track on, and a highlight
of, 1965’s My Generation album, this
enduring Mod anthem was recorded on October 13 that year at the same session as
the single after which the album was titled. Although nowhere near as frenzied,
‘The Kids Are Alright’ is equally affecting but in diverse ways, implying that
the male-bonding brotherhood of Mod transcends all other relationships, not
least those with girlfriends.
Opening with a lovely chord flourish –
by 1966 a Who trademark – and based around Pete’s preferred A and D chords,
‘Kids’ is the most melodic track on the debut album, with vocals that suggest
The Who might find an alternative career as a close-harmony group if Roger
could be persuaded to abandon the more truculent tone he adopts elsewhere.
Keith is having none of its dulcet pretentions, however, and his enormous drums
drive the song to its many crescendos, most impressively during Pete’s
chord-based guitar solo that reaches a stupendous, chiming climax and launches
Roger into the final verse in dynamic fashion. (Incidentally, some cloth-eared
A&R man at US Decca edited out this powerful solo on the US version of the
album, an error which has since been rectified.)
Against the group’s wishes, ‘Kids’ was
released as a single by producer Shel Talmy after they’d fallen out with him,
and it reached a paltry number 41 in the UK singles charts in September 1966.
This may explain why, as far as I am aware, it wasn’t performed live until much
later in their career, long after they’d decided the title was perfect for the
1978 documentary.
Live, it finally turned up among the
encores during the ‘Quadrophenia’ tour of 1997 and was then played regularly
during the 1999 and 2000 shows by the rejuvenated five-piece Who that featured
the crucial three with Zak Starkey on drums and John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick on
keyboards. At these shows, with Roger playing acoustic guitar, Pete – acknowledging
that the ‘kids’ were older now – would vary the lyrics with a little speech
about how his kids were alright and how he hoped everyone else’s were alright
too. It has been played on and off ever since, both before and after John’s
death, sometimes segued into a brief Johnny Cash medley.
The title was co-opted by Lisa
Cholodenko for her sensitive movie about a lesbian couple and their
relationship with a surrogate father, which starred Annette Benning and
Julianne Moore, and the phrase itself seems to have become accepted into modern
day jargon in much the same way as Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These
Years’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Nevertheless, whatever
its modern day connotations, I prefer the image of The Who miming to the song
by the Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park in July 1966: Keith in his Union Jack
shirt kicking away at what was probably the first ever sighting of twin bass
drums in the UK; John, with stylish sideburns, armed with a white Mosrite bass
guitar; Roger, very blond in those days, waving his arms in his white shirt
buttoned up to the neck; and Pete as pure Mod in a tasteful dark jacket, running
down the chords on his Rickenbacker. Here we see The Who on the threshold of one of the
greatest careers in rock and one that, as I discovered yesterday, shows no
signs of lapsing 50 years later.
2 comments:
To me, the instrumental break (on the album version) is more powerful than anything they ever recorded - even the assault on the eardrums that was "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere". What you have here is absolute controlled aggression as opposed to a staged free-for-all (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you!) and Moon's escape from that tom-tom pattern back in to the repeat of "I don't mind......." is stunning beyond words. I first heard the track on 1988's "Who's Better Who's Best" and it blew my chuffing head off (before I managed to get to "WGFA!". Someone transcribed the ad libbed lyrics Pete added to the song during all of the performances of it on the tours of 2000; can't remember where I put that document now........ I have always taken it as Pete's response to the questions that he and the audience would have been asking of themselves and, to a great extent, still are as they see themselves today; yeah you were alright back in '65 and yer pretty much alright in 2014. Benn Kempster
"Cloth-eared". I love it.
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