History
The Who, as with most groups, started out very different from how we know them today. Pete Townshend and John Entwistle formed their first group, The Confederates, when they were 14 and still at Acton Grammar School. They never played in front of a live audience and were really schoolboys practising. John played the trumpet and Pete took on the banjo. John eventually dropped out of The Confederates to concentrate on a slightly more successful band he was with at the time. John would keep in contact with Pete and later would form The Scorpions, John on bass and Pete on guitar. After rehearsal one day, John walked home carrying his bass and amp underneath his arms, when he was stopped in the street by Roger Daltrey. Roger asked John if he wanted to be in his group The Detours. After seeing what The Detours could do, and seeing that The Detours were getting paid, John joined the group. The Detours were a trad jazz and skiffle band, with a bit of country and western thrown in for good measure.
John convinced Pete to join the group on guitar and so The Detours were: Colin Dawson on vocals, Roger Daltrey on lead guitar, Pete Townshend on rhythm guitar, John Entwistle on Bass guitar and Doug Sandom on drums. With a couple of failed attempts at managing the group and the sacking of Colin Dawson, pushing Roger to lead vocals, The Detours discovered another, more successful group had also the name The Detours. After much deliberation and name throwing, The Who was finally agreed upon as being the new name.
During the time spent as The Who, they continued the club circuit and became the house group for the current manager. At one of these gigs, they auditioned a new drummer. Keith Moon, dressed all in ginger with dyed ginger hair, approached the group and declared he could play better than their existing drummer. He broke most of the drum kit, to The Who's amazement. Keith was in....Doug was out.
Pete Meaden, heard the group. He longed to form a group into the
mod image that he so desperately followed.Meaden
changed the name of the group to The High Numbers. The name had more meaning to
the mods. They would play, often till the early hours of the morning, in
dingy, dark and sweaty clubs. It wasn't too long before professional management
spotted The High Numbers. Out went Meaden and The High Numbers, in came Kit
Lambert,Chris Stamp and The Who.
Under Kits reign, The Who gained more publicity and were playing at far better
venues. The popularity for the group was growing day by day. Pete
Townshend was given new equipment for mixing and recording tracks, this came in
particularly useful to record his own song 'I Can't Explain'. Up until this
time, The Who had been covering a lot of R&B classic songs, later filling
out the songs with their own solo riffs etc. I Can't explain impressed the
producer of The Kinks, Shel Talmy, who recorded and produced the record. This
was the beginning. A string of chart records soon followed I Can't Explain, and
The Who were now in demand. Appearances on Ready Steady Go! as well as European
and US television saw The Who rise in fame.
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