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On which the Who guitarist finds the glass
of life half-empty and listeners find it full to overflowing…
Track Listing: Rough
Boys/ I Am An Animal/ And I Moved/ Let My Love Open The Door/ Jools And Jim//
Keep On Working/ Cats In the Cupboard/ A Little Is Enough/ Empty Glass/ Gonna
Get Ya (UK and US
ALAN’S
ALBUM ARCHIVES
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78
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For The Record:
Ones to watch out for: I
Am An Animal plus the fantastic closing trilogy A Little Is Enough,
Empty Glass and I’m Gonna Get Ya.
Ones to skip: The
dirge Keep On Working and - to a lesser extent - the silly opener Rough
Boys.
The cover:
Rather like the cover of Breakaway (see elsewhere on this list), picturing a wasted, partying Pete
who seems at face value to be enjoying himself but with more than a hint of a
get-me-out-of-here cry for help in his eyes.
Key lyrics: “I
was always here in the silence, I was never under your eye, gather up your love
and surprises, every memory shall always survive, and you will see me, I am an
animal” “Cats in the cupboard, you gotta set them free” “They say that love
always passes in a second and you can never catch it up, so I’m hanging on to
you as if eternity beckons even though the match is rough, you may be an island
on a distant horizon, but the little I see looks like heaven to me and I don’t
care if the ocean gets rough – when just a little is enough!” “Why was I born
today? Life is useless like Ecclesiastes say” “My life’s a mess I wait for you
to pass, I’m at the bar I hold an empty glass”
Original UK chart position: #11
– by far the highest position that Pete’s half-a-dozen or so solo albums have
ever reached and impressively equalling the position reached by the last Who
effort It’s Hard just two years later.
Singles: Rough
Boys made #39 and Let My Love Open The Door #46,
although the best known track, A Little Is Enough, surprisingly didn’t
chart over here.
Official
out-takes: The CD annoyingly disappeared before I could get a quick
glance at the bonus tracks (see ‘availability’ below), but there are quite a
few goodies to tell you about even so. The first is a 1978-vintage Who demo of
the title track, a fascinating alternate glimpse at how this great song might
have been with crashing Moon drums and rumbling Entwhistle bass (it was
included as a bonus track on the Who Are You? CD release, see review no
72). Readers of the other Who-listed albums on this list will be familiar with
Townshend’s treasure-trove of demos in his Scoop series which seems to
get mentioned quite often on this list. Perhaps surprisingly, there is only one
alternate version of a song from this productive Townshend era – a
rather rough and wild version of Rough Boys (then still known as
Tough Boys) on Scoop 3 and only one true unreleased song: the bluesy
retro rocker Dirty Water (heard in two separate versions on Scoops 1
and 3). There are also two fine B-sides released in this period (both included
on the Let My Love Open The Door single) which are actually
Townshend demos from the Lifehouse-era but fit his later writing style
better; the plain daft Classifieds and the haunting piece of lethargic
love Greyhound Girl.
Availability: Re-issued
on CD in 2005, like all Pete’s solo albums it seemed to pretty much disappear
overnight. Where did all those CDs go?! Surely they can’t have been deleted
that quick! (Though the Spice Girls’ Greatest Hits CD is on for world record
given the speed at which it seems to have vanished—and that’s even before this
website started being rude about them. Ha ha evil chuckle). A fairly
comprehensive six of this album’s 10 tracks made it to Pete’s 2CD best-of Anthology,
which remains at the time of asking the easiest place to hear these tracks if
you don’t own a record player or all the second-hand vinyl ships round your way
are busy turning into Starbucks-es and Tescos-es like they are round
mine.
This album came between: Pete’s
previous ‘solo’ album (sort-of) was the almost equally-classic Rough Mix,
a 1977 collaboration with The Small Faces’ Ronnie Lane
Line-up: Pete Townshend with James Asher, Mark Brzerzicki,
John ‘Rabbit’ Brundrick, Tony Butler, Jon Carin , Peter Hope-Evans, Kenny Jones
and Simon Phillips (produced by Pete Townshend)
Putting The Album In Context:
IT MIGHT lie
forgotten now at the back of ‘The Who’ racks at second hand shops and record
fairs, it might have only just have crawled its way back onto CD via a
poor-selling CD reissue, but Empty Glass is nevertheless a neglected gem
from The Who’s main driving force, written at a time when circumstances in his
life were causing him creative overload (the years between 1978-1982 saw three
Who albums and two solo sets, which for this traditionally less treadmill-like
period in musical history is quite a lot for an established artist to make).
Ironically, Empty Glass sounds far more like a Who album than either of
the two woeful group albums that came after it (Face Dances and It’s
Hard) because whereas both of these albums tend to float and meander, Empty
Glass goes straight for the throat. Yet Glass is not a particularly
heavy-sounding record either, albeit it contains a few more rockers than Pete
had been writing of late. It’s more that Empty Glass is made up of the
brave, confessional confrontational style which Pete had used on the last
few albums and – ironically – Pete seemed to have got most of his ‘personal’
songs out of his system after his first couple of solo records. Sadly, for all
its glory and its happier moments, Empty Glass shows that five years on
from Who By Numbers Townshend still had some mighty scary demons
following him around – the title, by the way, is plainly a joke: the glass
isn’t even ‘half empty’ anymore for Pete, its completely empty, with life
drained of nearly all hope according to most of this album’s lyrics.
But only nearly – Empty
Glass is still a thoughtful, exciting, pioneering record with enough fresh
inspiration for the guitarist to make a last great effort to haul himself out
of trouble and do what he always did best. Hard on himself as ever, Pete seems
to have missed the fact that the range of styles and ideas on this album mean
he was actually filled to overflowing with inspiration during this troubled
period and the glass, it seems, is about to get filled. By Townshend standards,
Empty Glass is quite a spiritual album, with ghostly presences hovering
just out of view throughout this record and its interesting to note just how
many of these anguished rockers seem to have angelic falsetto choirs interrupting
them for brief middle eights, as if there’s a source of ‘goodness’ trying to
break into Pete’s work but he’s not quite ready enough to accept their help
yet. Contrasts is a key Townshend songwriting device throughout his career, but
nowhere are there more devilish songs evolving into brief snatches of harmony
or angelic songs devolving into demonic howls than there are on this record,
the true glass half-empty half-full concept album.
Recorded at a time
when Pete’s life-threatening drinking was just about coming under control, when
the band’s legal hassles were just about coming to an end and when the trauma
of Keith Moon’s death was just beginning to fade, there’s something of a
cathartic goodbye going on in the album’s anguished lyrics, rather than the
how-long-will-this-last-and-have-I-the-strength-to-get-through-it feeling that
runs through much of the two previous Who albums on this list. Pete’s final
self-bashing album in a trilogy of three (all of which are noticeably good
enough to make this list), Empty Glass’ growing self-awareness, soul
searching ballads, pretty pop songs and bare knuckles rockers marks the point where the glass started re-filling
again for Pete. A deliberately low key audio diary of Townshend’s multi-layered
head at the close of the 70s, it’s a forgotten dust-covered gem that deserves
re-instating to its major place in the Who’s canon.
Perhaps, after all,
its only right that Townshend kept these songs for himself rather than giving
them to Daltrey to sing for the Who as they suit him so well (Roger did, after
all, refuse to do I Am An Animal during an unknown Who session for being
way too personal for him to sing and you sense that Pete got too worried about
showing him the other songs here in case they were rejected the same way;
ironically Pete’s attempts to re-create the template Who-sound on the band’s
last two albums sound even less suited to the group’s canon than Pete’s early
solo work, given that there was almost always a bit of autobiography going on
in their classic tracks anyway). Always fairly honest in his writing, Pete has
however admitted in interviews that he often used Daltrey as a ‘filter’ for his
more personal work, allowing the singer to come up with his own interpretations
of the songs Pete gave him, creating along the way a frustrated everyman that
Who audiences could better identify with rather than just good ol’ Pete moaning
about life again. The Who mined that territory better than most bands, creating
a genuine emotional attachment with their audience that is greater than most
artists on this list and still lasts with most of them to this day, despite a
25 year absence from making music and only a fairly awful re-union album to
break the silence after all those years. Yet, just as on the most confessional
material on Who By Numbers and Who Are You?, Pete is no longer
willing to use even this slight barrier from the pain inside his head anymore.
On this album it’s not just that the glass is empty but that its finally
transparent, with Pete channelling the guilt he feels about all sorts of
issues (most recently Moony’s death)
that has been rattling around in his head finally laid to rest on this
soul-bearing confessional album (barring the mixed-sources Chinese Cowboys ,
its notable that Pete goes back into writing ‘concept’ albums for pretty much
the whole of his solo run from this point on, as if his personal ‘honesty’
writing between 1975-80 was just a phase he no longer felt had to apply to all
of his work).
Pete’s nice sweet
high-pitched vocals always acted as the ‘conscience’ to Roger’s bark in the
classic Who days anyway and here, nakedly alone, they play the same role but
even more so – only this time around all we here is Pete’s conscience, no
longer interrupting the everyman characters of this song but becoming arguably
the whole of the song. While Pete’s leads might not have had the range and
weight of Daltrey’s tones (actually another naturally high-pitched singer on
paper, but with so much of a lived-in growl added to the note he sounds much
lower than that on record) Townshend’s vocals still offer a pleasing,
under-rated and nicely emotional sound. Notably, however, there is relatively
little guitar-work on this album, a fact that moves these recordings away from
the old Who roar and into something a little bit more openly confessional.
However, to cover that loss, Pete’s choice of backing musicians is inspired,
with old band friends like Rabbit Bundrick joined by new friends who will play
a far greater part on Pete’s later solo albums. The interplay between the
musicians – Pete included – is remarkable, taking even sometimes ordinary
material to new heights. Missing from Who write-ups and discussions for too
many years, taking this bitter pill of an album in one swallow might well choke
you – but a few sips taken at regular intervals reveals what a wonderfully
rounded, mature creation it is.
The Music:
Opener Rough Boys is
one of the most Who-like songs on the album, a fast-flying rocker about the
growing (and by the time the album came out fading) trend of punk rockers. Like
many a Who song it seems to offer macho bravado at face value, but is actually
about another of Pete’s vulnerable characters looking for some heavy metal
armour to protect himself from the pains of life. Yet the undercurrent of this
song is arguably like that of Who By Numbers and Who Are You – Pete
wants his songs to be taken seriously by the current new wave generation and is
at pains to sound like them – unlike most cultural and particularly musical
revolutions, which normally finds the kids wanting top be taken seriously by
their elders. Like many a new wave lyric, this song does its best to glamorise
the underbelly of life in the late 70s, but the narrator is quickly confused by
the mixed messages he gets while out and about on the town (‘I want to bite and
kiss you’ as the lyrics put it).
The middle eight (‘I want to get inside…your bitter
mind’) is a typical Townshend trick, qualifying the narrator’s previous
thoughts by realising that he will never quite break down the barriers between
himself and his idols (and perhaps also Pete’s desperate attempts to understand the new music business phenomenon he
doesn’t quite understand. Punk, don’t forget, had the doubly unwelcome effect
of cutting the Who’s sales by aping their own early energetic no-holds-barred
material and allowing critics to sneer that the band had gone too far down the
‘progressive’ road, attacks that must have hurt the creator of two of Britain’s
best-loved double-disc concept albums). I.e. The whole of this song is the
‘you’ll never be like us’ theme of My Generation from the opposite
viewpoint, with Pete wanting to act younger than he really is, re-identifying
and re-underlying the ‘I’ll never be like you’ punk snarl of his 60s days,
while at the same time acknowledging that the generation coming up behind him
now thinks of him as the establishment, a thought that confuses the hell of
this troubled writer after 10 years of leading the rebel cause in the 60s/70s
and it’s an idea he’s still trying to come to terms with now. Intriguing as the
song’s concept is, however, Rough Boys hides its concepts under one too
many noisy smoke-screens and its attempts to replicate the energy of new wave
bands falls flat compared to the more genuine rock and roll of the Who’s early
period, leaving this song as a fair album track but a curiously unpalatable
single and a most unwelcoming opening song.
After Who By
Numbers it seems extraordinary that Roger Daltrey would ever refuse to sing
a Pete Townshend song for being ‘too personal’ but, as discussed, I Am An
Animal must have struck a chord with the vocalist as that’s what he
reportedly said. True enough, this gorgeous ballad does have a fixation for its
author’s darker characteristics, full of scared-rabbit-in-the-headlights
imagery and tales of letting your ‘dark side’ get out of control. But as Pete’s
songs of this period go, it is not actually all that personal or revelatory bar
the very real feeling of being ‘out of control’ that Townshend has since
admitted to feeling at the time. In all, it’s a shame this fascinating track
didn’t make its way onto a Who album as it certainly deserves a much better
profile than it got on this LP, celebrating all of the most self-pitying
aspects of Townshend’s character but ones that most people can sympathise with
at one time or another. Unlike Who By Numbers or even much of Who Are
You, however, the tone is still pretty upbeat, with Townshend veering from
his I’m-no-good persona to sing a couple of lines where his ego runs away from
him and he declares himself a ‘king’ or a ‘god’ (albeit one that ‘doesn’t know
what I have anymore…’). The opening is particularly ear-catching (‘I was always
here in the silence...’) with Pete trying to blame his less-respectable urges
on some animal force inside him, but that theme is never really developed. The
glorious tune could have been a big hit for some outside singer, delicately
dancing its way through some ear-catchingly loud and then suddenly quiet
passages, but no one else would ever have dared sing a composition quite as
edgy sounding as this one. Rabbit Bundrick in particular proves himself a
worthy collaborator on this track, adding some piano flourishes that seem to
offer emotional as well as musical support, although judging by Pete’s equally
fine vocal the guitarist can’t decide whether he actually wants help or not. A
fascinating song and one whose even vaguely-naked sounding honesty its author
will not repeat again for a very long time.
And I Moved is
a similarly spectacular production, made up of a ghostly mix of piano, drums
and synthesiser with an is-it-there-or-isn’t-it? vocal flickering in and out of
the mix. This song might not have anything like as much substance to it as some
of the other songs on the album, but its hypnotic trance is impressive and the
fragmented lyrics make for a fun drugged-out re-write of folk song And She
Moved Through The Fair (Pete goes on to do a fair number of these
traditional tales, including the semi-hit North Country Boy, so its
possible he may have picked up on this song as well; Art Garfunkel does it too
for the benefit of our regular readers). Pete’s vocal now works in competition
rather than complementing Bundrick’s energetic piano chords, reflecting the awe
he feels when meeting his possible ‘maker’ (although in common with much of
Pete’s work its probably a reference to Meher Baba again and how spirituality
came in through Pete’s ‘doorway’ even though he felt he was moving in quite the
opposite direction at the time, what with his rock and roll lifestyle and all).
Studied closely, this song is all about how spirituality seems to be an active
trait rather than a passive one – to experience a deeper understanding of life,
Pete’s narrator has to ‘move’ towards his girlfriend to experience love and
later ‘move’ towards his maker despite not wanting to or being afraid to. A
song about sacrificing the ‘ego’ or self will a la George Harrison or the Moody
Blues, this is also a typical Townshend song in the way this most spiritual and
reflective of lyrics is stapled to a dancy, rocky tune that fittingly given the
title you can’t but help to move around to or at least tap your feet to.
Let My Love
Open The Door promises to be more of a traditional pop song than its
close cousins, with its strident sturdy synthesiser licks and breathtakingly
commercial tune, harking back to those far-gone days when Pete was writing
innocent singles like Happy Jack and Magic Bus. The lyrics dig a
bit deeper than this, though, and although on first hearing the singer sounds
like a hero – the sort of ‘rock’ a troubled partner can depend on in times of
trouble – dig a little deeper and the narrator starts sounding like a
controlling obsessive. In this context lines like “this is the only thing
that’s gonna set you free, let my love open the door” and the opening sneer
“when everybody keeps repeating that you’ll never fall in love” become less
like the sort of friendly chat-up line the song tries hard to be and more of a
cue for the narrator’s intended lover to run for the hills. The song’s
instantly catchy tune also becomes more eerie the more you play it, going
through some weird horrific mutations during the song’s coda and literally
taking the wrong turning in the song somewhere towards the end, suddenly
finding itself in a completely ill-fitting key that it does its best to break
out of. The effect is to turn one of Pete’s most breezy and effervescent tunes
into a monster, by sending it crashing headlong into an uncomfortable minor
chord just as the narrator’s true nature becomes apparent. Many tracks on Empty
Glass study the theme of complexity and not taking things at face value –
with its peculiar mix of catchy riffs and eerie atmosphere, Let My Love Open
The Door seems to be that theme in a nutshell. Having said all that, Door
still works as an innocent catchy pop single too, with some great hooks and
strong synthesiser work to recommend and sounds mighty fine when heard out of
context from the album too.
Jools and Jim
ends the side with Pete’s second knee-jerk response to punk and new wave,
styles which with their basic crunching guitar sound and noisy out-of-tune
singers mirrors the early Who (but not – on the whole - quite as successfully;
their music sounded far better at the time than it does now, whereas with much
of The Who’s stuff it’s the other way round). With its short, fragmented lyrics
attacking music critics who should be doing something more fulfilling with
their lives (oops, you’re great Pete, just in case you’re reading this review and
fancy adding another verse to the song) and their unsympathetic response to
Keith Moon’s death and The Who’s growing sense of mortality, this is Pete’s
angriest recording since Who Are You, lashing out at some hypocritical
holier-than-thou characters along the way, with sideswipes at religion and
false leaders in there somewhere too. Copying the short snappy protest
sound of The Jam to the letter, Jools and Jim sounds even more like a
Paul Weller song than The Jam’s two classic Who covers (So Sad About Us and
Disguises) and although it doesn’t stand up to Pete’s best material it’s
a welcome return to the two-minute bursts of adrenalin The Who used to do in
their sleep. A welcome chance for Pete to get this little rant off his chest,
this song isn’t that great in its own right but coming where it does in this
album it seems to mark the welcome return of Pete’s swagger and anger and on
those terms alone can be judged a success. (One puzzling thought though: why oh
why oh why does this otherwise straightforward song end with the lines
‘Oklahoma OK’, seemingly out of nowhere?!? Is Pete laughing at critics who
think his work is as ‘simple’ and as straightforward as a typical Hollywood
Keep On
Working starts off Empty Glass’ second
side by slowing it down to a crawl. A sleepwalking monotonous song that sounds
as if Pete is half-asleep himself and trying hard to convince himself of the
message in the lyrics, never mind passing that message on to the rest of us,
this is one of the most peculiar tracks in the Townshend catalogue. Telling us
of his financial worries and his need to work, Pete seems to be deliberately
writing down any old rubbish just to get paid, so sick of the working of the
music business is he (for those who think this song is actually a straight plug
for hard work getting you out of any difficulties, just listen to the way
Pete’s voice lights up on the line ‘but if you don’t enjoy yourself you might
as well be dead’ – hinting that Pete wants to get this rubbish out of the way
now so he can go and party). Pete was, however, genuinely one of the
hardest-working musicians in history judging by the amount of demos he recorded
never mind finished songs throughout his career and if anyone could lecture
about the importance of hard work then its him – but somehow, his heart’s just
not in this song at all. Ironically, Working’s lack of tune, memorable
hook or interesting lyrics suggests that the song – compared to the others on
this admirable album at least - needs more work.
Cats In The
Cupboard is one of those delicious nonsense songs Pete used to
throw into the mix from time to time. However, compared to many of the muted
songs on this album, Cupboard is notably delivered by Pete with a
definite sense of conviction despite the stupidity of the lyrics (just compare
his towering rock performance here to his earlier confused weary tone on I
Am An Animal). A terrifically on-form band featuring Who sideman ‘Rabbit’
Brundrick on piano and Pete Hope-Evans playing a mean harmonica rise and
slacken the tension perfectly, with Pete hollering his lyrics about cats in
cupboards and rats in high streets being set free over the top. These words
truly are gibberish which is unusual for Townshend—there’s usually something
going on in there somewhere even if—just as on patches of Tommy—the storyline
gets so complicated and vague that any number of things could be going on.
There is a sense of things being trapped though, perhaps forgotten promises
lurking in the dark ’cupboard’ spaces of the inner mind, but why these thoughts
should have turned into cats and rats is anyone’s guess. The breathless race to
the finish – a trick The Who used a lot in their career - is particularly good,
possibly Pete’s best use of this tactic since Baba O’Riley nine years earlier.
However good the rest
of the material is, though, it’s the closing trilogy that makes this album so
special. A Little Is Enough is another terrific pop song with an edge
and would have made a fine Who single, complete with its sneaky pinch of a
famous Prokofiev phrase on the synthesiser and Pete at his vocal best. With an
addictive, rich melody your ear keeps coming back to long after playing the
album and complex lyrics to match about an equally addictive relationship, this
single is infectious and deserved a much better fate than to miss the charts
completely in the UK
Empty
Glass is
another classy song, a Who Are You refugee that’s better than most
tracks on that album, despite that group release being another album archive
favourite selection. With angry fed-up verses reflecting on the stupidity and
pointlessness of life turning to a more hopeful, reflective chorus about looking
for redemption, this song is like hearing all of Pete’s career themes compiled
into a single song, veering from all-out angry rock to philosophical concept
and back again to confessional singer-songwriting. Glass also uses one
of Townshend’s better metaphors too: using his drinking days as inspiration, he
pictures himself at a ‘bar’, waiting for some divine spiritual intervention to
‘fill his glass’ and help him carry on with life. The very fact that Pete’s
narrator is looking for inspiration in a bar suggests what he’s really looking
for is escape rather than spirituality, however, and the real motivation for
the narrator is in question throughout the song. The narrator, you see, seems
to turn his back on spirituality when it is quietly offered to him in the song,
returning to it only after another verse of vented anger as if he’s busy
weighing up whether he really does have the courage of his convictions to let
his ‘empty’ party lifestyle go or whether he just enjoys moaning at his
problems too much.
Pete
really barks out his vocal on a song that would have suited Roger Daltrey down
to the ground in some alternate Whoniverse out there somewhere and the
little-boy-lost middle-eight is classic Townshend, pushing the song to a deeper
level just as your interest is beginning to ‘peter’ out. Listen out for the use
of the staggering slashing guitar phrases (three on top of each other!) that
leap out of the speakers at the end of an otherwise meandering solo, with Pete
clearly enjoying the fact that he didn’t have to make this song suitable for
The Who’s stage act (where they only had one guitar player). Even by the end of
the song, the narrator can’t make up his mind about whether he really wants
guidance and intervention and this song
does, in fact, have a number of false endings, dodging backwards and forwards
before more melancholia and a surprisingly moving upbeat passage tells us the
recovering Pete’s new philosophy: ‘Don’t worry, smile and dance, you just can’t
work life out, don’t let bad moods entrance you, take the wine and shine’.
That’s that, we think, and turn our attentions to the next song – but Pete
second-guesses us and kicks the song back in again, turning one last time
towards the empty glass in his hand. Confused, isolated and desperately seeking
help, this is one of the barest and bravest songs of Pete’s career, with even
all of his old musical tricks and styles unable to keep him company on this
lonely journey.
I’m Gonna Get
Ya takes the last song’s drama a scene further and might well
be the highlight of the entire record, despite its rather off-putting name. In
fact, I’m not too sure why this song works so well and I must admit that when I
first bought the record and read the lyric sheet I thought this was going to be
one of the biggest clunkers of all time, so basic and banal are the lyrics. For
once on this list, though, forget the words: this track has one of the greatest
persistent grooves of all time and is played by another noticeably ‘together’
band. Complete with a classic call-and-response arrangement and a long,
ever-circling piano solo that skirts as close as it can to the song’s main riff
without ever actually playing it, the energy in the recording room simply
fizzes out of the speakers. The theme of this song seems to be addiction
(again), with Pete vainly searching for…something (what is the ‘ya’ he’s trying
to get hold of? A partner? Spiritual enlightenment? Punk and new wave? The
listener? A nice hot cup of tea? We never quite find out).
The noisy riff does
its best to shake us off the scent at every turn, twisting its way through
several complex passages with only a group of backing singers who don’t seem to
take a breath in throughout most of the song there to ease the journey. The
highlight of this song is the piano solo in the middle, already an unusual
variation seeing that most of the beginning of the song has been dominated by
typical Townshend windmilling guitar chords. Compared to most of The Who’s
straightforward band attack this segment takes an age to find its way back into
the main riff – a good two minutes in fact – but the anticipation and
excitement of how long this piano solo can hold off the inevitable may well be
the best thing on the whole of the record. The way that Brundrick tries to
musically fight its way out of the narrator’s imprisoned situation is well
worth the extended running time, with the piano knocking on every door and
musically trying every major and minor key to see if it can break the lock of
this song’s desperate unfulfilled need. The tension builds and builds and
builds until at last it settles down (in yet another false ending, which seems
to be a running theme on this album) before finally exploding into a stupendous
rousing climax. One of the greatest recordings of Pete’s career, it even makes
you think the unthinkable: perhaps Pete really didn’t need The Who after all
with players this good?
So, the last three
closing tracks aside, there are minor criticisms to be made about Empty
Glass. It’s way too short for starters at only 35 odd minutes, which is
stingy even in the pre-CD age, but for charisma, commitment and excitement it’s
a definite classic. Pete has done plenty of fine stuff on his other solo albums
– and even finer stuff with The Who – but this album contains some of his better
material and some of his most consistently brilliant performances, no question.
If only Empty Glass had been a Who album it would have been one of their
finest and most respected creations – as a Pete Townshend solo album it
deserves a much better fate than history has given it to date. Far from being
empty, Pete sounds positively overflowing with ideas on Empty Glass and fans wouldn’t have one of rock’s
greatest characters any other way.
A complete collection of Who reviews:
'The Who Sing My Generation' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-who-sing-my-generation-1965.html
'The Who Sing My Generation' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-who-sing-my-generation-1965.html
'A Quick One While He's
Away' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/news-views-and-music-issue-67-who-quick.html
'Sell Out' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/19-who-sell-out-1967.html
‘Tommy’ (1969) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-who-tommy-1969.html
'Live At Leeds' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-33-who-live-at-leeds-1970.html
'Lifehouse' (As It Might Have Been) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-81-who.html
'Who's Next' ('Lifehouse' As It Became) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-14-who-whos.html
'Quadrophenia' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-60-who-quadrophenia-1973.html
'The Who By Numbers' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-69-who-by-numbers-1975.html
'Who Are You' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-72-who-who-are-you-1978.html
'Face Dances' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-137-who-face.html
'Empty Glass' (Townshend solo 1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/pete-townshend-empty-glass-1980.html
'It's Hard' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-who-its-hard-1982-album-review.html
'Endless Wire' (2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-who-endless-wire-2006.html
‘WHO’ (2019) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-who-who-2019.html
'Quadrophenia' (Director's Cut Box Set) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/abeach-is-place-where-man-can-feel-hes.html
'Quadrophenia' (Director's Cut Box Set) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/abeach-is-place-where-man-can-feel-hes.html
Surviving Who TV Clips
1965-2015 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-surviving-tv-and-film-clips.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1964-1967 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-non-album-recordings-part-one.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1968-2014 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-non-album-recordings-part-two.html
Pete Townshend “Scoop” 1-3
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-who-pete-townshends-scoop-demo.html
The Best Unreleased Who Recordings https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-best-unreleased-recordings.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Competition
Albums Part One 1965-1972
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Competition
Albums Part Two 1972-1975 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_9.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Three 1976-1982
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_16.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Four 1983-1990 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_23.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Five 1991-2000 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_30.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Six 2001-2014
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
Landmark Concerts and Key
Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-who-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
Essay: Who Are You And Who Am I?: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-who-essay-who-are-you-and-who-am-i.html
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