-review by Bill Glahn
In 1970 and 1972, two little known albums were released by the Universal Spiritual League titled Happy Birthday and I Am. They were tributes to Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, who had died in 1969, by Pete Townshend, Ronnie Lane, and associated followers of Baba. Only 2500 of each were pressed and distributed. They would form the core of Townshend’s first solo album, Who Came First.
By 1972, The Who had developed a reputation for being a dynamic hard rockin’ live act – helped along by the most ferocious of all live albums, Live At Leeds (1970). Their next studio album Who’s Next, with a few notable exceptions, carried that reputation into the studio. The first Who solo project, John Entwistle’s Smash Your Head Against The Wall, did nothing to change that perceived dynamic. Neither did a collection of singles spanning most of the band’s career, Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy. So imagine hearing Who Came First for the first time – an album almost exclusively sung and played by Townshend.
Things start off with “Pure & Easy,” a song, like many of those that appeared on Who’s Next, that was resuscitated from Townshend’s Lifehouse project. In his history of The Who, Before I Get Old, music critic Dave Marsh calls the song “ … Peter Townshend’s greatest statement of his beliefs; it is perhaps rock’s greatest song of faith.” “Pure & Easy” finishes with the most human of percussion, handclaps. It’s a musical theme that will repeat itself often on Who Came First.
The next track is the first song to derive from Happy Birthday, a Ronnie Lane contribution called “Evolution.” It foreshadows the greatness of Rough Mix, a collaboration with Lane that would come later. It’s a spiritual song as well as a tribute. The other song from Happy Birthday, “Content,” a meditative poem put to music, comes near the album’s conclusion. And when Townshend sings “I am content” as the song fades, you believe him.
The most striking difference between Who Came First and contemporary Who albums is in it’s sparseness of amplified instrumentation and the humbleness of the vocals. And those are entirely appropriate for the material. On this 45th anniversary edition, Universal has done well to separate the original (remastered) album onto a single disc and confining the bonus tracks to a second. The second disc will certainly be of interest to longtime Who fans, but it’s the first that you’ll be revisiting time and again.
To these ears, the sound production by Jon Astley sounds superior to the sound I remember on the original vinyl – the separation of the instruments being more pronounced. Especially the handclaps. They jump out of the speakers in a way I don’t remember.
Meher Baba Baba took a vow of silence that lasted the last 44 years of his life (he communicated by a form sign language and an alphabet board.) I listened and I heard music in a word? It’s hard to listen when you’re speaking. When you tune into Townshend's’s spiritual aspects (not the way I listened as an 18-year-old), it opens up a different way of hearing Townshend. In a world where people talk over each other, it's an album that is just as important in 2018 as it was in 1972. Maybe more so.
[Notes: The original Meher Baba tribute albums were bootlegged in the United States, but in even shorter quantities than the originals. All are extremely rare and in demand by collectors. More common are some of the unrealeased tracks, which have been splattered around bootleg CD compilations of “Who outtakes.” An official box set called Avatar compiles Happy Birthday, I Am, and a third Meher Baba tribute album recorded later, With Love (1976).] For the curious, it’s readily available on Amazon..]
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