I Used to Love The Who

How The Who Taught Me Rebellion—and Then Sold It Back to Me

I used to love The Who. Not like, oh-their-songs-are-cool love. I mean religion love. I mean scribble-the-logo-on-your-notebook, turn-the-volume-up-till-the-windows-rattle, scream-along-in-your-bedroom kind of love. They were violent, majestic, arrogant, wounded—exploding at the edges with purpose. They made destruction feel holy.

And the albums—Who's Next, Quadrophenia, Live at Leeds, The Who Sell Out, Who Are You, even The Who By Numbers. And, fine, Tommy, which honestly feels like homework next to the rest—but I have to include it or someone’s gonna throw a shoe at me.

Moon’s drums sounded like controlled demolition. Townshend’s windmill swings could’ve cut glass. Every song felt like the fuse of a homemade bomb burning down to the final second.

Before I could play an open G chord on my first guitar, I made sure I had the move down—that amazing windmill. The way Townshend spun his arm like a human turbine, slashing the strings like he was trying to exorcise something. It was less a gesture than a ritual. I practiced it over and over in my bedroom mirror, no amp, no clue, just the motion and the dream.

Pete may say he doesn't like performing, but back then, the way he jackrabbited across the stage—leaping, thrashing, throwing himself into the moment—you’d never know. Or maybe he just knew how to fake it better than anyone alive.

But now? Now they’re a nostalgia act wrapped in gauze. A brand. A corpse in a well-tailored suit that gets wheeled out every few years to remind us what youth used to feel like—before it started charging $600 for floor seats.

I saw them. One of the dozen “last” times—The Final Goodbye Until The Next One. And the crowd, my God, the crowd. It was like a scene from Logan’s Run—a stadium full of aging fans who had once sworn they’d never get old, now waiting with bated breath to see if Roger Daltrey could still scream.

You know the scream. Won’t Get Fooled Again. The primal yowl that once sounded like revolution tearing through a wall of synthesizers. Only this time, it wasn’t rebellion we were waiting for. It was a medical exam. You could feel the tension in the room—like we were all holding our breath at a birthday party for a beloved uncle with a bad heart.

Will he make it?

And then he did. Somehow. He hit it. It cracked a little, sure, but it was there. And the crowd exploded—not in wild ecstasy, but in relief. As if to say, “He’s still got it!” Which is another way of saying: We’re not dead yet either.

That was the moment I left. Not angrily. Just… disappointed. Like finding your childhood home repainted in beige and turned into a Starbucks. Not in them, exactly. In all of us. In the theater of it. In what had become of these giants, who once carved anthems into the sky and now shuffle through decades-old setlists with a battalion of sidemen in tow—like a Broadway musical that’s lost its original cast but kept the wigs.

It’s not age that’s the crime. Aging with grace is a kind of nobility. No, the crime is embalming the myth and trotting it out on tour. Charging obscene prices for diluted power and auto-tuned menace. Watching Townshend—once the human windmill of righteous noise—look visibly bored while raking in another arena’s worth of golden parachutes.

I used to love The Who because they meant something. They were the beautiful self-immolation of youth—hope I die before I get old was more than a lyric, it was a contract. A warning shot. A demand.

Now it’s a punchline.

They didn’t die. They didn’t even fade away. They went corporate. They became the house band for their own legacy. And maybe that’s the saddest fate of all: to once hold the keys to rebellion and end up trapped in a recurring farewell.

I walked out of that show not because I hated them—but because I loved them too much to watch them impersonate themselves.

The scream came. But it didn’t shake the world. It just bounced off the rafters and evaporated.

And in that moment, I knew: the real Who was already long gone.
What was left was the echo.
And echoes, no matter how loud, are just ghosts pretending they’re still alive.