THE WHO: "I Can't Explain"
When it came to crafting The Greatest Record Ever Made, The Who didn't waste any time. The lads nailed it on their debut single.
Well, "I Can't Explain" was at least technically The Who's first single. The group was billed as The High Numbers when their very first single "I'm The Face"/"Zoot Suit" was released in 1964. Either way, The High-Numbered Who got it right pretty quickly. "I Can't Explain" was released at the beginning of 1965, effectively helping to kick off pop music's best year ever.
Before The Who became iconic, rivaling Led Zeppelin as the embodiment of classic rock, they were already an odd quartet. Drummer Keith Moon was a flamboyant freakin' lunatic, a strange visitor from another planet, a Beach Boys fanatic who played faster--and louder!--than a speeding bullet. Bassist John Entwistle could have found employment as a statue, a sculpted objet d'art, his deep booms resonating from a somber figure as still as stone, except for the blinding flash of his fingers upon the fretboard of an instrument no one ever convinced him wasn't meant to play lead, not rhythm. Singer Roger Daltrey, eventually to assume the persona of a presumed Rock God parading before mere mortals, seemed initially like he'd just as soon abandon his mic stand to pick a fight with some punter mid-song, just cuz he didn't like the guy's face. And guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend was the squarest of square pegs, a nose emerging from a face topped by straight Mod hair, propped atop a skinny form that should have been incapable of remaining upright under the weight of that head, tossing off a surly bravado to camouflage insecurity, playing power-chord noise to give sheer volume to thought and poetry, smashing things to combine chaos with ambition, combustion with creation, destruction with inspiration. Together, they formed a rhetorical question that served as its own authoritative answer. Who? The Who. The fucking Who, man.
"I Can't Explain" offers few clues to what The Who would become. Where "I'm The Face" is a blatant rip-off of Slim Harpo's "Got Love If You Want It," "I Can't Explain" is a sincerely flattering tribute to The Kinks. "I'm The Face" is outright thievery; "I Can't Explain" transcends penny-ante pilferage, using The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night" as templates to build something new, something that isn't just an imitation. On the record, backing vocals by The Ivy League sell the song with incomparable aplomb, Perry Ford tickles the ivories, and Jimmy Page may or may not provide rhythm guitar (reports vary). Shel Talmy produces, and The Who do everything else. The lyrics convey the tongue-tied, inarticulate fumble of the infatuated, and that odd quartet detailed above comes together as one magic, irresistible force.
To some, "I Can't Explain" is a nice but largely inconsequential step on The Who's path to being The Who!! It can't match the explosiveness of "My Generation" or "Substitute," the transcendence of " I Can See For Miles," the higher goals of "A Quick One (While He's Away)" and later Tommy, the statements of Who's Next and Quadrophenia. And, like, the horniness of "Squeeze Box." I mean, "The Kids Are Alright" may be the all-time definitive power pop track, and it deserves a turn as The Greatest Record Ever Made. If (as may have seemed likely in '65) The Who had imploded and turned to ash after the release of "I Can't Explain," that single would not have been nearly enough legacy for us to remember and celebrate The Who.
In 1978, Bomp! magazine writers Greg Shaw and Gary Sperrazza! credited The Who as the inventors of power pop. I would trace power pop's true origin a tiny bit further back (to "Please Please Me" by The Beatles), but there's no question that Pete Townsend coined the term back in
a 1967 interview: "Power pop is what we play--what The Small Faces used to play, and the kind of pop The Beach Boys played in the days of 'Fun, Fun, Fun,' which I preferred." Shaw and Sperrazza! did not list "I Can't Explain" alongside Who standards like "My Generation" in Bomp!'s litany of power pop's defining tracks. The track is sometimes omitted from compilations of the best of The Who.
Yet "I Can't Explain" remains my favorite Who track, and I betcha it will always be my favorite Who track. I never tire of it, and I never will. I got a feelin' inside, a certain kind. I can't explain. I think it's love.
The greatest record ever made.
Who's with me?
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