The Deaf, Dumb And Blind Kid Is A Cork On The Ocean

Right from the start, The Who sprang from youth culture in the way the Beatles never did. Mod was the first truly indigenous UK youth culture, and The High Numbers were its house band. Rockers - pitted in tabloid-staged seaside battles against the Mods - were greasemonkeys abetted by Teddy Boys - ageing dandruff dandies clinging to scratched American 78s, the fag-end last gasp of the dying decade.

At the birth of the 'sixties the USA was in youth culture limbo, black origins being whitewashed into the family values that would attract TV sponsors, so the Mods took their tailoring cues, as did Motown, from Italy. Cutting-edge, finger-popping sharp. Meanwhile, the Beatles were doing their show band schtick, affecting rebel leather (yeah, ri-ight) or beat group uniform, completely out of touch with street level London. But they were cute and pretty and happy in a way The Who could never be, never wanted to be, and the lovely lads were welcomed into the cosy coal-fire parlours of an England in dire need of a knees-up. The Who were ugly fucked up pill-poppers, and fucking furious. They smashed stuff up. They were a pre-psychedelic explosion of colour and wildness, living Pop Art, not appropriating it, and their look was their own, not the artifice of a Hamburg stylist. Their music offered no comfort to the mums and dads who'd lived through the war, but confronted them with noise and shock value that still holds its edge; My Generation is the definitive fuck you to the nine-to-fivers. For this they fought on the front lines? Had their houses bombed? Where was the gratitude? The respect?

Townshend was obviously aware of the Fab Four, but it's tough to point at any overt musical debt. Check out Ol' Bignose with his record collection [left - Ed.]; face out in the stack is Surfin' Safari. He was an admirer of the Beach Boys, influenced more by the California of Paul Revere & The Raiders than the Liverpool of Gerry And The Pacemakers. The Beach Boys were also embedded into their own youth culture, inseparable from it, and sang about cars, the beach, school, surfing, clothes ... and girls. The Beatles were self-isolated from cultural context, a kind of magpie nest to display stolen glitter. They mostly sang about ... girls. Brian Wilson had another link with Townshend - he wasn't embarrassed to express his interior life, and it's this rare balance of intro- and outro-spection that makes them both sensitive songwriters and documentary journalists. Pop as celebration and psychotherapy, without being self-conscious or ironically removed - accurate reflections both of the times and the soul of the artist. Go to the mirror! Smash the mirror!

Where Wilson was the suburban teen dreaming of love and marriage, Townshend struggled with the twisted legacy of his own childhood in the ruins of WW2, uprooted, abused, and searching for redemption and meaning. Brothers in spirit, both performing for the party happening outside their bedroom door and locking themselves away from it, shut out, shut in, shut down. My Generation and I Get Around are the same song - this is us! youth anthems without a Beatles equivalent. People try to put us down, just because I get around, round, get around ... Similarly, In My Room and Pictures Of Lily are polarised views of the same interior space. Brian finds spiritual comfort in his lair of solitude while Pete rubs one out under the sheets. When I grow up to be a man is drawn from the same dark well as hope I die before I get old - the deaf, dumb, and blind kid is a cork on the ocean.

As of right now, both these guys are still, blessedly, alive, and their music will live as close to forever as makes no difference - that is, longer than you and me.