The Who in 2019

One of my Facebook friends (a former high school classmate) recently posted a photo of herself and her husband at a Who concert.

When you think about it, there is a certain irony there. The Who formed in London in 1964. That was when Lyndon Baines Johnson was President of the United States, and the U.S. had not yet fully committed to the Vietnam War. 

The irony of all this was not lost on my friend, who noted:

“Attending a concert where the band has been around longer than I’ve been alive.”

My classmate, I should note (just like yours truly) is now fifty-one years old. We were born in 1968. So The Who had already been a going concern for about four years when we were born.

And the band is still doing live concerts. Wow.

The Who was never one of my favorite bands, but they were always on my radar. Another irony here: By the time I started high school—way back in the early 1980s—the band’s real heyday was already behind it. The Who’s tenth studio album, It’s Hard, appeared in September 1982, in the fall of my freshman year. Whenever I hear the song “Athena”, I’m instantly transported back to that time. 

I like a lot of individual Who songs. But my hands-down favorite is from the album Face Dances: “You Better You Bet”.

Enjoy the video below, and consider picking up the whole album, if you’re so inclined.

Stairway to Heaven: the ‘Heart’ version

I was poking around on YouTube and I found this cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven’ by Heart–a band I remember fondly from the 1980s.

I’ll admit when I clicked on this, I had my doubts: I mean, Heart…’Stairway to Heaven’?…Really?

To my surprise, however, Heart might actually have improved on the original. (Yes, I know this will seem like pure blasphemy to some of you. But give it a listen before you judge.)

The meaning…if there is one…of the lyrics of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ have been debated for years. I won’t delve into the occult controversy for now. Suffice it to say that the lyrics of this song sounded a lot more profound to me thirty-five years ago, when I heard them at the age of fifteen.  But a lot of things aren’t as good or as deep as we remember them, thirty or forty years later.

‘Stairway to Heaven’ is still a great song, part of the soundtrack of my (and many other people’s) youth. I’ll always like it.