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Flint’s Classic Rock – 103.9 The Fox

The Who – ‘Behind Blue Eyes’

  • Writer: Pete Townshend
  • Producer: The Who with Glyn Johns
  • Recorded: 1971, Olympic Studios, London
  • Released: May 1971
  • Players:
    Pete Townshend — guitar
    Roger Daltrey — vocals
    John Entwistle — bass
    Keith Moon — drums
  • Album: Who’s Next (MCA, 1971)
  • Also on:
    Who’s Better, Who’s Best (MCA, 1988)
    Then And Now: Maximum Who (Universal, 2004)
    and many other compilations and live albums
  • “Behind Blue Eyes” was originally intended as a track for Pete Townshend‘s aborted Lifehouse project, an album and concert designed to spiritually bond performers and audience.
  • Townshend has said, “‘Behind Blue Eyes’ really is very off the wall because that was a song sung by the villain of the (Lifehouse) piece — the fact that he felt in the original story that he was forced into the position of being a villain whereas he felt he was a good guy.”
  • The song, a longtime Who concert staple, wasn’t released as a single until 1972. It stumbled into the Top 30 of the Billboard singles chart and dropped off.
  • Townshend, in the 1996 biography Behind Blue Eyes by Geoffrey Giuliano, said: “I think there’s a lot of vengeance involved in the insecurities writers have. I used the word ‘vengeance’ in ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and the vengeance in a sense is saying, ‘Listen, why don’t you understand me without me saying all this stuff? Why don’t you love me as I really am without me demonstrating who I really am?’”
  • Townshend, in the liner notes to the demos album Scoop, wrote, “I remember my wife saying she liked this one from the kitchen below after I had finished the harmony vocals. The band later added a passion and a fire that really made it blossom from the sad song it appears to be here (in Townshend’s sparse demo) into the proud self-expose it became on Who’s Next. Not a personal song at all, or at least not intended to be.”

FAST FORWARD:

  • The Who decided to continue on after drummer Keith Moon‘s death in 1978. They brought in Kenney Jones from the Faces to take Moon’s place. He eventually left and was replaced by other drummers.
  • The Who technically broke up with a farewell tour in 1982, but they’ve continued to perform over the years, including a 1989 reunion tour, and a road version of Quadrophenia in 1996 and 1997.
  • Townshend oversaw productions of The Who’s Tommy on Broadway in New York City and in London, both of which were hugely successful.
  • The Who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
  • In 2002, Bassist John Entwistle suffered a heart attack and died in his hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the day before the Who were to start a North American tour. Townshend and Daltrey decided to play the tour in Entwistle’s memory, and they brought in British session ace Pino Palladino for the dates. Palladino has remained with the band ever since.