A Band with Built-In Hate

‘Ours is music with built-in hatred.’ Pete Townshend

A Band with Built-In Hate pictures The Who from their inception as the Detours in the mid-sixties to the late seventies, post-Quadrophenia. It is a story of ambition and anger, glamour and grime, viewed through the prism of pop art and the radical levelling of high and low culture that it brought about – a drama that was aggressively performed by the band.

Peter Stanfield lays down a path through the British pop revolution, its attitude and style, as it was uniquely embodied by The Who: first, under the mentorship of arch-mod Peter Meaden, as they learnt their trade in the pubs and halls of suburban London; and then with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two aspiring filmmakers, at the very centre of things in Soho. Guided by contemporary commentators – among them George Melly, Lawrence Alloway and most conspicuously Nik Cohn – Stanfield describes a band driven by belligerence, and of what happened when Townshend, Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle moved from back-room stages to international arenas, from explosive 45s to expansive concept albums. Above all, he tells of how The Who confronted their lost youth as it was echoed in punk.