As opening lines go ‘I don’t care, I know you’re going to hate this song, and that’s fair we never really got along’ from The Who’s new single “All This Music Must Fade” is perhaps the most confrontational and catchy of 2019 so far. “All This Music Must Fade” can be heard below.
The song, which debuted on the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast show yesterday, opens the WHO album and Pete Townshend describes it as ‘A song is dedicated to every artist who has ever been accused of ripping off someone else’s song. Seriously? Our musical palette is limited enough in the 21st Century without some dork claiming to have invented a common chord scheme’.
The Who has one of the greatest rock legacies in music history, they’re one of the all-time great live bands, have sold over 100 million records worldwide including 9 US & 10 UK top ten albums and 14 UK top ten singles in a career spanning six decades.
Now Fifty-five years after they made their first recordings, The Who is back with their first new album in thirteen years entitled WHO due for release on December 6, 2019.
The eleven-track album was mostly recorded in London and Los Angeles during Spring and Summer 2019 and was co-produced by Pete Townshend & D. Sardy (who has worked with Noel Gallagher, Oasis, LCD Soundsystem, Gorillaz) with vocal production by Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers, Roger Daltrey, Wilko Johnson).
Singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend are joined on the album by long-time Who drummer Zak Starkey, bassist Pino Palladino along with contributions from Simon Townshend, Benmont Tench, drummers Carla Azar and Joey Waronker, bass player Gus Seyffert and Gordon Giltrap.
The album cover has been created by famed pop artist, Sir Peter Blake who first met the band in 1964 at a taping of the legendary TV show Ready Steady Go. Sir Peter designed and contributed a painting to the sleeve of The Who’s album Face Dances in 1981.
The songs on WHO cover a myriad of subjects including the Grenfell Tower fire, musical theft, spirituality, reincarnation, the power of memory and ‘an old rock star that has lost his marbles’. Singer Roger Daltrey rates it amongst their strongest “I think we’ve made our best album since Quadrophenia in 1973, Pete hasn’t lost it, he’s still a fabulous songwriter, and he’s still got that cutting edge”.
