Putting Your Arms Around A Memory: The Who And The Dolls

By Clark F. Paull, III

There used to be no better way to clear my head and recharge my batteries than a few hours spent hunched over endless racks of CD’s and vinyl, but that’s all changed. I abhor change. In a development eerily reminiscent of video killing the radio star, it appears the internet is killing the independent music distributor. Unless you’re lucky enough to live near one of these nearly extinct bastions of DIY ethic, chances are you’ll find yourself resigned to visiting your local McAppliance store, if you enjoy getting your hands dirty. If not, there’s always the web, but buying music using telephone and cable lines and satellite dishes has always seemed sort of prissy.

If it’s not already obvious, CD racks at everything-media outlets are packed to bursting with mindless pabulum for the masses and major label flavors-of-the-month, as I quickly found out during a recent visit to one – you know, the one trimmed in blue and yellow. I had some money burning a hole in my pocket but as I’m wont to do in those places, wound up wandering the aisles aimlessly before shuffling out clutching a pile of reissues. Maybe I’ve been living in Detroit too long…

It is with a heavy heart that I come not to praise The Who (feh, more like The Two), but to bury them. At their peak, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon roamed the earth like an eight-legged stun gun, hellbent on administering a thorough amplified ass stomping or, at the very least, a proper thrashing about the head and shoulders of their audience as well as each other. Quite simply put, Entwistle and Moon were the greatest rhythm section ever to tread the boards and thus it shall remain, world without end, Amen. Townshend was and probably remains a pop music genius and look no further than Daltrey for the alpha male front man prototype. Sadly, for reasons it would take a book to lay out, it all headed south for them about 30 years ago (ouch!), long about the time of their last great album, “The Who By Numbers.” Always thought “Who Are You” sort of stunk.

“Then & Now 1964-2004” (Geffen) ain't a half-bad compilation for the uninitiated, i.e., MTV kids just learning to think for themselves, trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or for completists (uh, the latter would include yours truly), but any Who fan worth his salt already owns all of these songs once or twice over. Let’s face it – this is one overanthologized band.

So let's cut to the chase - the two new songs. If you armchair quarterbacked Townshend and Daltrey's decision to soldier on after the heartbreaking death of Entwistle (Yup, this one hit home and I actually cried big tears), this is your time to gloat. "Real Good Looking Boy" and "Old Red Wine" make anything on "Face Dances" or "It's Hard," heretofore viewed as the band's nadir, sound like uncanny masterpieces. Both wallow in the maudlin at a time when it would have behooved all involved to come up with something celebratory, unhinged, and deafening, rife with big chords and a stiff middle finger to the naysayers.

Without a doubt, Zak Starkey is a phenomenal drummer, coming as close to replacing Moon as humanly possible, but a thousand fill-in bassists like Greg Lake (!) and Pino Palladino could never do the same for The Ox.

After Moon's death some 26 years ago, many of the faithful were willing to cut Townshend and Daltrey some slack, but it may now be too late for either to age with a modicum of grace or dignity. If those two new tunes aren't some sort of sign, how about this: Daltrey on TV shilling for Time-Life's latest 70's rock and roll compendium? Amen...

Growing up, my old man ruled our house like a dictator, using a hair-trigger temper and a military approach to discipline as intimidation factors, dancing a fine line between tough love and raising two trained seals. After The Beatles popped up on "The Ed Sullivan Show" one Sunday night in 1964, his attention was temporarily diverted from my sister and I (well, uh, mainly me) to long-haired guys from England, as he sputtered, fumed, and worked himself up into a fine lather, gracing us with a surreal stream-of-consciousness rant punctuated with many bad words and the occasional mad chuckle thrown in for texture.

About 10 years later, after riding my bike up to Dearborn Music in my suburban Detroit hometown and returning with the New York Dolls' first album, having read about the band in "Creem" and "Rock Scene" and stayed up late to catch them on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," I figured the big guy's attitude toward rock and roll had if not reached the point of acceptance, then at least relaxed somewhat. Feh... After he saw the cover photo of Arthur Kane, Syl Sylvain, David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, and Jerry Nolan in all of their platformed, spandexed, and roller-skated splendor, he not only questioned their sanity and sexuality, but mine as well. Thirty years and three kids later, the state of my mental being is open for debate but one thing's for sure - the Dolls have been alternately iconized, lionized, and blamed for everything from punk rock to Hanoi Rocks, having displayed a hip sense of heroin chic and total indifference to the mechanics of the music business in the process.

Up to this point, other entries in Universal’s voluminous "20th Century Masters:The Millennium Collection" series have anthologized everyone from Rare Earth to Hank Williams to Rainbow, with a few odd ducks like The Tubes and Oingo Boingo thrown in for good measure, all solid, workmanlike anthologies targeted at the casual fan who's only going to get one disc by a particular artist. Taken at face value, this one does a fair job of accomplishing what it sets out to do - show what the big fuss was all about in the span of 11 songs and 30-some-odd minutes. Although the band's first album understandably led some to believe they were not of this world, "Too Much Too Soon" may be more representative of their trainwreck approach to record making, Johansen braying over the din of Thunders' Chuck Berry-in-a-padded-cell leads and the unheralded but perfect drumming of Nolan, unafraid to to tip their hats to their R&B roots in covers of "Stranded In The Jungle," "Don't Start Me Talkin'," and "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown."

Track selection is evenly divided between each of the two albums and while part of me wants to grouse about what songs should have been included (I'd swap Thunders' sneering "Chatterbox" for strutting, no-big-deal "Lone Star Queen"), it's somehow oddly encouraging to see the boys getting shelf space somewhere between Madonna and Outkast. Besides, in addition to getting the tawdry piano that drives "Personality Crisis" and Thunders' tortured backing vocals in "Trash" (perhaps their finest moment), the inclusion of their cover of Bo Diddley's "Pills," showcasing Johansen's honking harp work, the rest of the band chugging along behind him and sounding as if it could all fall apart at any moment, is worth celebrating.

A few years back, I had an epiphany, coming to the grudging conclusion that most of what the old man told me was basically true, but he couldn't have been further off the mark when it came to the New York Dolls. At this juncture, showering them with praise has almost become a cottage industry, but whether looking for a kiss or lookin' fine on television, their twisted, tattered genius appears to be a given.

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