Chalk that up to innocence, but a closer look at the lyrics to this bawdy, banjo driven romp suggests otherwise. I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first heard the song in 1975, and for some time afterwards, I really thought Townshend was singing about an accordion.
The flip side, of course, was “Squeeze Box”, a complete about-face and one of the most obvious sexual metaphors you’re likely to encounter this side of Spinal Tap.
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Didn’t these guys always get what they wanted in the bedroom? Rarely before had a rock and roll star, one of our manmade demigods, admitted to such sexual confusion and disappointment. These were sad, tragic, but heroically honest admissions from Townshend. I’m dreaming … dreaming – of the day I can control myself.” I’m dreaming … of a day when a cold shower helps my health I’m dreaming … but I feel tired and bound
But just as the first verse reaches its peak, it all comes crashing down with Townshend lamenting: Townshend talks of having the “hots for the sluts in the well thumbed pages of a magazine,” and how he wants to “fly, drive, hump, and jump” like he does in his dreams. Like the act of sex itself, the song alternates between the rising tension of wanton desire and the deflated dismissal of his own needs in the choruses. In “Dreaming from the Waist”, for example, Townshend attempts to understand and harness his sexual energy, often in shockingly graphic terms.
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Though Townshend’s deepest insecurities are on full display throughout the record, at times they are contradicted and counterbalanced with songs that offer unexpected contrast and hope. But beyond those, he was struggling with his own ego and just what it meant to mature as a musician in a business that valued youth above all else. Having just turned 30, Townshend was wrestling with a variety of personal demons, most of which seemed to center around his age, his sexuality and his addiction to alcohol. At times, it’s flat-out embarrassing and you want nothing more than to cover your ears and stop Pete from over sharing. Lyrically, The Who By Numbers is excruciatingly personal, confessional and melancholy. Only this time, the character was Pete Townshend, himself. With The Who by Numbers, the band took a deliberate step backwards and inwards, rediscovering their knack for recording smaller songs about quirky characters. While there were a few hard rocking tracks, “Slip Kid”, “Success Story” and “In a Hand or Face” to name three, it lacked any true knockout punches. Still, the more I played it, the more I became hooked on the album’s haunting minor key chord progressions, sophisticated arrangements and understated performances, even if the lyrics couldn’t have possibly made sense to a 12-year old kid. When you consider the records that preceded it – groundbreaking concept albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia, along with the epic Who’s Next, and the thundering Live at Leeds – The Who by Numbers was a remarkably restrained collection. small) record collection at the time, I played both sides of the album from start to finish on many occasions in my early teens. Where was this album’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or “Love Reign O’er Me” I wondered? But being of limited means and in possession of a very exclusive (i.e. I was immediately disappointed by the album’s lack of intensity, scope and grandeur. Like many albums I’ve purchased on a whim, it wasn’t at all what I expected.
Enticed by the band’s rep for gate crashing, guitar smashing, drum bashing rock and roll, and perhaps even the record’s clever connect-the-dots cover art, The Who by Numbers was the first Who record I ever bought.
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