Apparently Bradley Wiggins is a Who fan. His tweet after doing his bit for the Olympic opening ceremony yesterday:"BELL BOY,BELL BOY!!!"
Yep. Seeing them in Brookyn in November. Wicked psyched.
ETA: fourth time to see them.
About a month ago I got a Who documentary for my birthday on the making of Who’s Next. I just watched it and found myself impressed as always, particularly by the segments where they isolated individual members of the group during recording sessions. Great stuff.
They’re before my time, really. I didn’t really know who they were until after their drummers were dead and satirized by Spinal Tap. In fact, there’s my answer: Spinal Tap, because they seemed actually to believe that there were Flower People, and that we should listen to them.
No, seriously, I have an odd view because I came at these guys backwards. I know Daltrey as a comic actor, Townshend as a writer (who else has read Horse’s Neck?), and Plant from his '80’s stuff (Now and Zen, especially). The others I have no especial sense of as personalities. (Well, except for some very superficial and unsavory impressions of about one aspect apiece, and not even that for JPJ.)
Zep occupies a deeply weird space for me in that I grew up with their music on the radio, but with a couple of exceptions, didn’t have any idea that the songs I was hearing were theirs. (I know, I should recognize Plant’s voice at least, but lots of hard rock guys sing falsetto, right?) The target audience was older than me and expected to know Zep without it being pointed out. So I didn’t have any sense of them beyond “Black Dog” and “Stairway” for a really long time. It strikes me that one of the songs linked in this thread I would have guessed Billy Joel or some other '70’s pop act, but I would have never thought of Zeppelin.
So, I get the impression that Zeppelin seems to have tried to be the blues’ answer to the Beatles. Lots of different stuff, including some dirty percussive blues and some cool folky atmospheric stuff.
But the Who (who I know better) seem to have been in a space akin to the Kinks and Queen, doing stuff that became what I know as more highly produced “rock,” not the rough old bluesy stuff that Zep did.
But then there’s all that meandering introspective stuff creeping in from Tommy on, which is kind of thin compared to the likes of “Fooled Again.” And “Kashmir” isn’t something you’d hear The Band do.
Anyway, I was born too late, and not familiar enough nor enough a music nerd to say, but I pick the Who because I like “Fooled Again” and “Magic Bus” a whole lot. Also their approach to how the songs worked, who was rhythm & who was lead, was unconventional, and that’s fun.
Well, except the Who didn’t play the same roles for their instruments, by their own admission. No lyrical lead guitar as such, for example. So I’m not sure comparing Page to Townsend is quite right, but I don’t know enough to say what is.
{{{Docta G}}} I like this post. Wait. Docta “G”? Docta Godwin?
No, no, no. Ya hafta do it like this:
“Yeah. Geez, Docta G, weren’t ya ever young? :)” Possibly in a mezzo-soprano.
I don’t want to get into a whole discussion of LZ as ripoff artists, I just wanted to say earlier that the Taurus/Stairway example didn’t prove anything. But as for your examples, yeah, LZ should have credited earlier artists.
No, I’m saying I like the Who better than LZ, and I gave one good reason: LZ ripped off great music to produce lame, puerile covers. I’m not alone in this opinion.
The Who were quite original.
Feh, yourself.
I can still play Page’s licks note-for-note, something I learned to do when I was, you know, young. The only difference is that now I play them with my tongue firmly in cheek.
I’d pick the Kinks too.
Relevant (to this discussion) opinion piece.
Pete himself might have preferred Bonzo. In the recent Quad documentary, he said “I didn’t think very much of him as a drummer,” and added that Moonie was “certifiably insane”.
I was at that same concert, or maybe the day before/after, and I have to say DITTO! These guys were about 60 and rocked it better than anyone I’ve ever seen/heard. I never saw Zep live (wish I had the chance), but just about every live cut I ever hear of theirs sounds subpar. I know it’s not the same as being there, but I really just think The Who was the best live hard rock band ever.
Since when is insanity problematic for a drummer?
I can’t think of a poorer way to compare bands than to compare qualifications at each “position”, as if they were baseball players.
Musical ability has never guaranteed the production of memorable songs, which is why (for instance) the Monkees match up favorably with Cream. 
Very well then, we contain multitudes.
Pretty funny to read your post and then follow it with SY’s blog link. That guy loves Moon but would take a bullet for Bonham - so he’s got his POV eh?
The Who were wonderfully original. And Zep rocked it, hard and soft. It’s all good.
I found the whole Quad Doc on dailymotion. Here’s the part where Rog and Pete talk about Moonie the drummer:
I believe the guy who really pursued this more recently is called Denny Somack (sp?) and he brought out countless examples of blatant rip-offs, including (but not limited to:)
“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” by Anne Breeden–popularized by Joan Baez (IMO the most blatant theft)
“Nervous Breakdown” by Eddy Cochran–you do the math.
“Traveling Riverside Blues” by Robert Johnson
“Taurus” by Spirit (the intro to 'Stairway…" is copied almost note for note–just another reason for me not to ever listen to it again)
“Dazed And Confused” by Jake Holmes (just as blatant)
Pretty much makes Zep the greatest cover band of all time after Van Halen.
To the original poster, here’s my breakdown:
Moon vs. Bonham–Bonham wins on technique, but he played more traditionally. Moon was more jazzy in the way of Mitch Mitchell and he generally played with the vocals.
JPJ vs. Entwistle–as players, “The Ox” wins by a mile–he predates all the Billy Sheehans and Les Claypools, and is credited by some great quote as “being a good songwriter in a band with the greatest songwriter ever”. I give points to JPJ for his arranging in the band and later on with Morrissey and R.E.M. and Diamanda Galas.
Page vs. Townsend–for sheer chutzpah, Page. On stage though you’d rather watch Pete, not to mention that Page was on the whole, a lot sloppier and got by on his image (that whole bow shit). Townsend had to work much harder and just kicked way more ass on stage.
Daltrey vs. Plant–Daltrey again by a mile–just a better frontman, better singer, and has also aged better as a vocalist. One reason why Zep called it quits is because by the Knebworth shows, Percy just couldn’t hack it anymore.
That gave me a whole new appreciation for Bonham. Geez, on Kashmir he just completely holds that song together, doesn’t he?
Sumptin’ wrong with that video (maybe the site doesn’t like Firefox or whatever), but it plays a Twix commercial, then about 2 seconds of the actual video, then plays the Twix commercial again, then 5 seconds of video before jumping back to the Twix commercial…
Huh…works for me with Firefox, but I get the jittering Twix ad when I use IE. Strange.
Here’s the link to the beginning of Part 1 without the timestamp jump: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrvyti_quadrophenia-can-you-see-the-real-me-2012-1-2_music
The Moonie part starts right around the 50 minute mark, but the whole thing is worth watching if you’re a fan. (it was really cool seeing it on the big screen)
I’m also on a Mac, though I’ve never noticed any big difference between the Mac and Windows versions (I also have a Windows laptop with the same version of Firefox) with this kind of thing. Weird.
And it worked this time. That was good stuff - I liked the bit where Pete’s talking about Moonie’s new Rolls-Royce
I don’t disagree. The original concept of the thread wasn’t band vs. band. It’s hard to find two such iconic groups of the relatively same era, with the same basic structure, and with a virtuoso at each musical position.