Music - Cry If You Want

This is an old post - first written on August 29, 2006 - before the new Who album was released.


The Who is playing some relatively obscure songs on their current World Tour. Some of these songs are gems ("So Sad About Us", "A Legal Matter", "How Many Friends", etc). But for me, the one I really want to listen to live is "Cry If You Want".

"Cry If You Want" is the last song on their final album they made back in 1982. The album ("It's Hard") is by their high standards, insipid and characterless. The lyrics lack the wit, intelligence, humour and sarcasm of their earlier albums - it sounds like a Sting solo album (I now await the righteous indignation of Sting fans). The band sounds like they are just going through the motions here, and this is the only Who album that doesn't tell you a story or advance a well-thought out point of view. Musically, it lacks any sting or punch whatsoever. Though the album sold very well when it was released, it was a critical disappointment.

It was the sad story of popular music in the 1980s - a barren decade for good rock music. It would have been a great album by the standards of corporate rock bands like Styx or Journey or Foreigner that dominated the airwaves in the early 1980s. But by Pete Townshend's own high standards, it was a sad way to say goodbye.

The album was poor - all except for the last song "Cry If You Want". Just when the listener had despaired of ever finding anything worthwhile on the album, this song came on. The opening bars crackle with menace and tension, and then Roger Daltrey's voice - unapologetic and whip-like, suddenly makes an appearance.

The song is about looking back at youth from the vantage point of rapidly advancing middle age. In the hands of anyone else, this would be a nostalgic, weepy, sentimental song. Not when Roger is singing it, though. Instead, it becomes a clear-eyed look at a past that started out full of innocence and high hopes, and ended in hearbreak.

The song focuses on the disasters that occured along the way - the deaths of geniuses like Keith Moon, the sheer waste of young life through over-indulgence and excess, the breakdown of marriages and relationships and the way the whole brave new world of the 1960s was hijacked and distorted by drug-crazed radicals, a mercenary record industry and a ravenous media hungry for sensationalism.

The beauty of the song lies precisely in its refusal to look at the past through rose coloured glasses and the ability to look at one's own flaws and follies without giving excuses. This song challenges the listener - it is not friendly or forgiving, it is in-your-face and real. When Pete Townshend writes such brutally honest, intense songs, nobody can match him, except maybe John Lennon in his "Working Class Hero" days. Songs like this are not for everybody because they are uncomfortable to listen to. But for those who decide to stay, there is no other way to write (or listen to) modern music.

"Once there was just innocence,
Brash ideas and insolence,
But you will never get away,
With the things you say today,
You can cry - if you want"

And finally, right at the very end of the song come the staccato machine-gun bursts of electric guitar - the famous Pete Townshend power chords that are absent in the rest of the album. They will blow you away, I promise. Maybe this was Pete's way of saying goodbye to the band he created. Maybe at the very end of the first incarnation of the band, he felt guilty that had foisted such a mediocre album on the fans that had stayed loyal for more than a decade and a half. Who knows?

If the band's first album in twenty four years (about to be released) contains songs even half as good as "Cry If You Want", it will blow every single current band out of the water. Anyway, the old boys are back in business and playing this song at several venues of their current World Tour. For those who are fortunate enough to catch the band live - enjoy!!