"Can't pretend that growing older never hurts"

YouTube strikes again--two live versions of one of my favorite Pete Townshend songs, "Slit Skirts," neither of which I was aware existed before tonight. Townshend started releasing solo albums while he was still with the Who, and other band members began to feel that he was "saving" his best material for his own records. (One song, "Pure and Easy," was released on a solo album and recorded by the Who, but the Who's version was only released decades later.)

I think the charge was accurate from Empty Glass on. Soon, Townshend's solo efforts became transformed from song collections into concept albums, which is what the Who's "rock operas" really were. White City was an overlooked gem about growing up in a tough part of London: I still have the laserdisc of its visual version. Psychoderelict was an amalgam of a Townshend-like rock musician's failed career with the original ideas behind Townshend's "lost" epic musical experiment, Lifehouse. The songs that originally formed the basis for that experiment, plus new music, were released as a six-CD set, The Lifehouse Chronicles, available from the Who's website. He did a musical based on Ted Hughes's Ironman. He also presented Quadrophenia as a much more unified multimedia experience during a tour of the U.S. in the late 1990s.

This first version of "Slit Skirts" (1986) comes from the period when Townshend was playing with a large band called "Deep End," many of whom would continue to tour with Townshend and the Who in years to come. The lead guitar player, though, was a sporadic member, as he had a gig with another group.



The second version is from a couple of years earlier, as can be seen by the hair growth on the top of Townshend's head, as well as his jacket, which appears to be the same one he's wearing on the cover of the album, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes,* that contains the song. He flubs up the vocals here too, but his excuse was that he can't sing and play piano well at the same time; indeed, it's the only time I've seen Townshend play piano during a live performance. And I never thought I'd say this--but Phil Collins does an excellent job on drums.



*And they do: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Roy Rogers. Maybe that's why I never trusted Gene Autry or Yul Brynner as cowboys.