“A Quick One” represents an era when the Who operated as a democracy, trying to provide equal input for all four bandmembers. I must admit that this arrangement left me confused, particularly in regard to how it affected Pete Townshend.

The band arrived at this level of fame almost exclusively because of Pete’s songwriting and his conceptual ideas for the band, so why would he blithely accept an arrangement that limited his own percentage of input? It didn’t make sense to me, until I considered the obvious.

From the very beginning, Pete was a conceptualist, pushing the band to embrace the Mod lifestyle, then Pop Art and Auto-destruction. To him, the democratic approach was a new form of conceptualism, allowing the band to grow within the framework of a concept. In the end, it didn’t work, simply because the others could never have kept up with the quality and the sheer quantity of Townshend’s output. Besides, other concepts were starting to loom large.

Featured tracks include;

Whiskey Man

Boris the Spider

I Need You

(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave

Don’t Look Away

See My Way

So Sad About Us

A Quick One, While He’s Away

Man with the Money

Pictures of Lily (demo)