“I thought ‘Pinball Wizard’ was Elton John?” complained PTI’s Michael Wilbon earlier this month when the topic of The Who’s participation in the Super Bowl 44 halftime show came up. “You’ve never seen ‘CSI’?” asked an astonished Tony Kornheiser, clearly the sort of student of rock history Townsend & Daltrey’s merchandising arm had in mind when they came up with the garment shown above.
Would that M&T reenact the “Woodstock Slappy” episode of ANIMANIACS, featuring this exchange between crusty old Slappy Squirrel and her cherubic nephew Skippy:
SLAPPY: [As “The Who” plays] Skippy, what’s the name of the band, playing on stage?
SKIPPY: Who.
SLAPPY: The name of the band.
SKIPPY: Who.
SLAPPY: The band, playing on stage.
SKIPPY: WHO!
SLAPPY: THE BAND!
SKIPPY: No Aunt Slappy, “The Band” performs later, “Who” is on stage!
SLAPPY: You tell me.
SKIPPY: Who.
SLAPPY: The name of the band.
SKIPPY: Who.
SLAPPY: The band playing on Stage.
SKIPPY: Who.
SLAPPY: THAT’S WHAT I WANNA KNOW!
… because PTI’s the new vaudeville anyway.
If you look back at a Who official discography, it appears (to me, at least) that there were no new albums recorded by the Who during about a twenty-year (or longer) period. That’s a HUGE gap. I mean, it takes very little to write a song, maybe a year at most to record a full LP-length number of them, and for two decades those guys couldn’t come up with even ten or twelve songs? This is what was meant by the “before I get old” remark…those guys became old by about 35 years of age. The rest of the time since has just been cabaret/oldies/jukebox music and creaky old men hobbling around pretending to be a rock band. They used to be the best one on the planet, now they’re a joke that forever attempts to sell an image that hasn’t applied to them since ‘way back in the 20th century. It’s now The Two, NOT The Who.