It’s funny how we can collectively fool ourselves into false memories of our own culture. Most people my age feel very familiar with the Who, and when we talk about the band, we talk as though we remember them from the beginning, hearing “My Generation” when it was released, but that is simply untrue. As a single, “My Generation” peaked at #74 on the singles charts, which means most markets never touched it. More incredibly, the band’s debut album never charted at all! In the middle of the British Invasion, the Who’s presence in America was negligible until “I Can See for Miles” hit #9 on the pop charts in 1967. It remains their only top 10 hit.

Essentially, that means that most of America missed all of the band’s earlier hits, which are now rock and roll classics; “I Can’t Explain,” “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”, Substitute,” “The Kids Are Alright,” “I’m a Boy,” Happy Jack” and “Pictures of Lily” all flew beneath the radar in America – we may think we remember hearing these songs in their prime (1965-1966) but that’s simply a delusion. Other than “My Generation” and “The Kids Are Alright”, the balance of these tracks never saw release on an American album until 1971’s hit collection, “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy”. The Who were a distinctly English phenomenon and remained a virtually unknown entity in the U.S. until the Monterey Pop Festival.

Searching my own memory, I don’t think I ever held a Who album in my hands until 1970, when I saw “Tommy” in a friend’s collection. Like everybody else, I had a lot of catching up to do and over the years, I eventually found my way back to the earlier stuff. What a revelation to recognize that something as good as this debut album had been around for years.

Like most British bands of this era, their interpretations of American blues/R&B is a bit spotty – singer Roger Daltry sounds lamentable as he strains to imitate James Brown not once, but twice on this album (“I Don’t Mind”, “Please, Please, Please”), so you can ignore the ‘cover’ tunes. It’s hard to imagine why the band even bothered with them, especially since they could focus so much power and energy into their own material.

Pete Townshend supplied stunningly articulate youth anthems and the rhythm section of John Entwhistle (“The Ox”) and Keith Moon tore through them with frighteningly exciting intensity. “A Legal Matter” and “It’s Not True” convey attitude and humor simultaneously, which is no easy feat, judging by the competition. Who else was writing songs that so accurately represented the varying moods of ‘My (his) Generation”? Townshend’s songs are so evocative that even Americans remember them as a part of our collective youth, even though it’s only self-deception.

December 1965 - Billboard Charted: Did Not Chart