Eminence Front

The Zoo Crew has got “Eminence Front” up on the turntable right now, The Who off the 1982 album It’s Hard, and if you are a Zoo Freak who likes a groove that sneaks up on you, this is the one. Pete Townshend wrote it and sang the lead, which already sets it apart from the usual Roger Daltrey roar. The record came out in the early fall of 1982, the second album after Keith Moon was gone, with Kenney Jones on the drums and John Entwistle still holding down that thunderous bass. It went to number 8 in the States and number 11 in Britain, and the single of this song slipped onto the Billboard Hot 100 at the end of that year and topped out at 68. The British single never even made it out the door. Polydor had a catalog number ready, WHO 7, and a picture sleeve by Richard Evans showing a 1930s Art Deco house in Miami, then pulled the release. You can still read the album notes and the track list, with “Eminence Front” sitting right there between “Dangerous” and “I’ve Known No War,” over on the band’s own pages at thewho.com.

Townshend has been pretty plain about what the song is driving at. He has said he hesitates to explain it, then explains it anyway: it is about the absurdity of drug-fueled grandiosity, and he cannot quite remember whether he was pointing the finger at himself or at the cocaine dealers of Miami Beach. On stage he used to introduce it even more bluntly, telling the crowd the song was about what happens when you take too much white powder, and then naming it. An eminence front is a put-on, a mask of importance. The drinks flow, people forget, the shares crash, the hopes are dashed, and everybody is dressed to kill while the real business is happening behind the sunglasses. He wrote the lyric fast, after a stretch in an Ativan detox, and he has owned up to feeling like a bit of a hypocrite singing it, because he was inside that world, not lecturing from the curb. The groove itself came off a chord progression he found on his faithful Yamaha E70 organ with the Auto Arpeggio switched on, the same trick he had used on “You Better You Bet.” That looping keyboard is the whole point. It feels like it is going somewhere, then it comes right back to the same place, which is exactly how a party on powder feels at four in the morning.

Roger Daltrey was not shy about the album. He has said he hated It’s Hard and figured this was the only song on it worth releasing. When they played it live he picked up a rhythm guitar and let Pete keep the vocal. Years later, for Record Store Day 2022, the band put out a 40th anniversary double vinyl of It’s Hard, remastered by Jon Astley and cut at half speed at Abbey Road, and side four carried a previously unreleased take of “Eminence Front” with Roger on the lead vocal alongside Pete. The studio version was cut in June 1982 at Turn Up-Down, the studio at Glyn Johns’s place in Surrey, with Johns producing. It was the last studio album to include Entwistle, who died in 2002, and the last with Jones. After this one the band went quiet on new records until Endless Wire in 2006. Townshend later said that from 1982 to 1989 he felt The Who did not exist and he let the band go in his heart, though Daltrey would not let go. That tension is sitting under this track if you listen for it. The song is cool on the surface and uneasy underneath, which is why it still sounds fresh when a lot of the rest of that record feels like a band trying on the new decade and not quite liking the fit.

If you want the long view on how these four characters even got in a room together, you have to go back to Acton in west London, not to some polished origin myth. Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle all came through Acton County Grammar School. Daltrey was a year ahead, had a hard time fitting in, ran with a tougher crowd, and got expelled at 15. He went to work on a building site and in 1959 started a band called the Detours that played weddings and works functions, with Daltrey keeping one eye on the money. Townshend’s dad Cliff played saxophone and his mum Betty had sung with the entertainment wing of the Royal Air Force, so the house was already full of music. Pete and John became friends in their second year and messed around in a trad jazz outfit. Entwistle also played French horn in the Middlesex Schools’ Symphony Orchestra, which is a long way from smashing a Rickenbacker, but it explains that precise, almost classical attack he later put on the bass.

Daltrey has told the meeting story more than once. He was out looking for a bass player, spotted Entwistle on the street carrying a homemade bass, and took him in. John then said he knew a guitarist who played banjo in his trad band and was worth a try. That was Pete. Townshend joined the Detours around 1961. Daltrey was still on lead guitar at first, with another singer out front, and he ran the band the way he wanted. Townshend later joked that if you argued with Roger you usually got a bunch of fives. The early drummer, Doug Sandom, was a bricklayer and quite a bit older, and by early 1964 a Fontana audition made it clear he was not the fit. They went looking, and Keith Moon turned up in front of the stage in a bright ginger suit. He had been with the Beachcombers, doing Beach Boys material, and had tried to dye his hair blond to look like a surfer. It came out ginger and matched the suit. He looked at Daltrey and said he could play drums better than the man they had, and could he have a go. By the end of 1963 the unit we know was coming together, right as the Beatles were breaking. They tried the name the High Numbers for a minute under manager Pete Meaden, then settled on The Who. Townshend went on to Ealing Art College, which he has called one of the things that shaped the band’s ideas, the auto-destruction, the pop art, the long-form records. None of that was in the room yet when a kid with a homemade bass walked Entwistle’s friend into a wedding band. That is the start. The rest is volume, busted guitars, and songs that still fill a room.

The Zoo Crew will keep spinning the deep cuts and the big ones for the Zoo Freaks over at THE ZOO. If you want the band’s own word on the catalog, the tour dates and the store, the official site is The Who. Their official Facebook is The Who on Facebook, the official Instagram is @officialthewho, and the official account on X is @TheWho. For the unofficial camp that has been keeping the day-by-day history for more than twenty years, the fan site is thewho.net. Fans also gather in The Original And Best The Who Fan Group and over on the John Entwistle Fan Page, trading stories, photos and the odd live tape. Put the needle back on “Eminence Front,” let that organ loop do its slow work, and remember it is a put-on. The drinks flow. The people forget. The song does not.