3.5/5
Who Came First is the first solo album by English R&B act the Who’s guitarist/ principle song-writer / creative master-mind, Pete Townshend. For those that absolutely love Pete Townshend’s solipsistic self-indulgence but think that Roger Daltrey’s bluesy bluster, John Entwhistle’s muscular musicality and Keith Moon’s completely bonkers sense of fun manages to blunt the bite of such confessional tosh as “Behind Blue Eyes”, have I got a record for you!
Who Came First was Pete’s first solo album and it was released concurrently with Who’s Next. The cover is a thing of wonder – there a cocky looking Townshend boldly stands on eggs (he is literally walking on egg shells – get it?!), arms akimbo, clad in white jumpsuit and thousand yard stare. The record is very much something of a companion piece to that great Who classic it was released with: offering up a more confessional, acoustic guitar-driven counter-point to the much more electric The Who album.
The record was obviously an extremely personal one for Pete Townshend. It was intended partially a tribute to Pete’s recently deceased spiritual guru, the notorious quasi-charlatan Meher Baba (hey, it was the late 60s/ early 70s – everyone had an Indian spiritual leader at one point), and features collaborations with Townshend’s best friend, Faces bassist Ronnie Lane.
There are some genuinely great songs on this record. The opening cut “Pure and Easy” was so good that it would later be colonized to great fanfare (along with the equally solid “Let’s See Action”) by Pete’s day job. That said, I actually prefer these solo renditions to what the Who alter did to them. As much as I like the Who – I rate them ahead of the Rolling Stones et al in terms of British rock acts rooted in American R&B – the band was always something of a blunt instrument. For all of their many strengths, subtlety was never one of them. Townshend, on his own, manages to find a certain level of nuance in these performances. Sure, Pete’s not as powerful a singer as Roger Daltrey, but in a lot of ways, he may be a better singer, at least for this material.
The second song “Evolution” (which is curiously played and sung by Ronnie Lane – effectively making it a Ronnie Lane solo number at the beginning of a Pete Townshend solo record!) is a catchy song featuring a circular riff and lyrics about the impacts of experience on belief and personal outlook. Like all things Ronnie Lane, the cut is good-natured, though unfortunately is hampered by some dated quasi spiritual, new-age mumbo jumbo. This is followed by “Forever Is No Time At All” which features a catchy electric riff and some charming falsetto from Pete.
The best song on the record is probably “Sheraton Gibson”, a finger-picked, yearning, acoustic number about the loneliness and isolation wrought by time spent on the road. The song is probably one of Townshend’s most affecting, honest and charming. It is accented with the occasional electric guitar overdub or inserted moog bit (Pete was spending a lot of time with synthesizers while recording this).
Also great is Pete’s cover of Jim Reeve’s country classic, “There’s A Heartache Following Me”. Pete allegedly selected the song on the grounds that it was a favorite of the Baba – which should make it a somewhat suspect choice (especially as the greatest misstep on this record is Pete’s attempt to fit the Baba’s universal prayer to music on “Parvardigar”) but Pete does a great job of bringing the melancholy of that song to the front. I actually prefer Pete’s incredibly personal, slightly amateurishly sung (and recorded – it sounds like he cut this thing in his living room on a 4-track) delivery of the song to the original’s slick Nashville professionalism. Take that musical competence!
The record does not feel overly long and is over before you know it. Overall, it’s well sequenced and fun, even if Pete pushes his new-age religious conceits a little more than anyone can really be comfortable with. While this record is slightly self-indulgent, the record is at least up-front about this. It is also disarming and clever enough to put the listener in a charitable frame of mind. It’s not quite up to the standards that Pete would later set for his solo material with the two Scoop rarities collections, but as far as vanity solo projects by members of successful rock groups, this one certainly ranks highly.
Still… Meher Baba… seriously?
