This year the Superbowl featured yet another classic rock band in a long line of big names over the last few years, The Who, whose medley performance of their greatest hits was darn good considering the "godfathers of punk" are old enough to be called their grandfathers, not to mention they were more interesting than probably the quickest football game I´ve seen in awhile. Join Red Karaoke as we take a peek at the influential history of The Who.

The English band´s origins began with a group called High Numbers, formed by Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle, which in 1964 grew into The Who with the addition of one of Rock´s greatest drummers, Keith Moon. They were considered "visionary" and full of energy, spreading the anthem of their single My Generation, "Hope I die before I get old" as far as they could.

After more than ten top singles in the UK, The Who finally broke into the US Top 40 in 1967 with Happy Jack, following the hit in the same year with their biggest US single ever, I can see for miles which peaked at #9.

After a period of creating nothing but hit singles, The Who changed direction in the late 70´s towards conceptual rock opera, starting with Tommy, a two disc look at the spiritual path of a "deaf, dumb and blind boy."

With their return to hit singles came probably their most well known album, Who´s next, which has been called "flawless" and considered a defining moment for seventies rock. The album includes hits like Baba O´Riley´s, Won´t get fooled again, and of course the youth anthem Teenage wasteland.

In 1978 The Who suffered the loss of Keith Moon who died of overdose from alcoholism medication. After a period of mourning, the band welcomed Kenney Jones in his place and recorded two more studio albums, Face dances and It´s hard with him.

Though the band had an extremely long farewell tour in 1982, splitting off to work on new solo material, the Who couldn´t seem to stay away from the stage, no surprise for one of rock´s hardest hitting live acts, usually involving the destruction of some musical instrument. The band regrouped to go on many tours, including big city performances of their rock operas Tommy, which was adopted into a Tony award winning broadway in 1993, and the mod rock show Quadrophenia.

The Who, who have sold more than 100 million records, charted 27 top forty singles and have 17 top ten albums in the US, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. They were also honored in 2001 by the Grammy Foundation with a Lifetime Achievement Award for "creative contributions of oustanding artistic significance to the field of recording."

Get in touch with your rock roots and sing one of the many recordings by the Who here on Red Karaoke.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 5:28 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.