50 Years Later: The Who Tone Down Heavy Concepts On Stripped Down ‘The Who By Numbers’

A half-century of perspective on The Who By Numbers (released 10/3/75) reveals not only how durable the album is, but also how it remains so enduring in spite of itself. The stripped-down production by Glyn Johns is bereft of the innovative synthesizer work of 1971’s Who’s Next and the density of arrangements on Quadrophenia from two years later. 

To that same straightforward end, the four members of the Who are accompanied by only one outside musician, the highly esteemed session man Nicky Hopkins. And the pianist’s reputation is based to a great degree on the kind of stark, scintillating playing so appropriate to the desolation of “Imagine A Man.”

The existential angst songwriter Pete Townshend describes in that number is the prevailing mindset of The Who By Numbers. And that’s no small observation as the Who’s chief composer, in his 2012 autobiography Who I Am, relates how he submitted a clutch of originals to lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, who subsequently picked the ones he thought he could sing best. 

In fact, not unlike the author’s own fevered singing on the overtly personal “However Much I Booze,” Daltrey’s forceful delivery on “Dreaming From The Waist” parallels the instrumental drive and drama of the guitarist aligned with Moon and bassist John Entwistle.

The latter’s sole contribution of material here is the sardonic “Success Story.” And while his wry take on the illusions of fame almost but not quite serves as an antidote to the personal angst of Pete’s that permeates “How Many Friends.” The man nicknamed ‘The Ox’ also adds a colorful touch to the otherwise stripped-down sound here with his doleful French horn on “Blue Red and Grey.” 

Performed otherwise alone by Townshend on ukulele, the Zen-like acceptance permeating that song–like the utter longing suffusing “They Are All In Love”– is certainly at odds with the bulk of its surroundings. But then so is the comical “Squeeze Box,” its wheezing accordion of a title no doubt much of its novel appeal, as a surprisingly successful single release from The Who’s By Numbers. 

The ten cuts comprising this seventh studio album of the Who are bookended by recordings that sound more rather than less like the grand drama of the band at its most recognizable. Nevertheless, the treatise on the inexorable process of aging, “Slip Kid,” sounds stunted, if ever so slightly so, as does the finale “In A Hand Or A Face.” 

And while it remains clear the Who’s instrumental bond as a band is intact, the latter tune’s ending–in a circular vocal repetition of the phrase ‘I am going ’round and ’round’–is more emblematic of this effort than the massive (and more than slightly portentous) guitar chords at its foundation. 

Not surprisingly, then, The Who replayed the enervating experience of The Who By Numbers when they embarked on its successor, struggling mightily not to repeat itself on Who Are You. As a result (and intentionally or not), Entwistle’s purposely rudimentary cover artwork on the 1975 record is really no more or less caricatured than the photo on the front of the last long player with Keith Moon three years later.

But especially with the hindsight of fifty years, that’s not only fitting, but hardly a surprise. On the road in support of The Who’s “Who By Numbers,” the band’s concert production featured a laser light show, a device that mirrored the much more conventional set list, which was largely absent of new material or a magnum opus like “Tommy.”  

And while passages in the aforementioned autobiography of Pete’s depict the contrary, on at least one tour stop- the Who’s performance was a living reenactment of the bitterness and frustration that percolates through the now five-decade-old LP.