1978 · Behind the Songs
A bar encounter, a synthesizer swell and a farewell.
“Who Are You” was written after a drunken encounter in a Soho bar — and it became a farewell. The title track of the Who’s 1978 album was the last single the band released with Keith Moon, who died weeks after the record came out.
Pete Townshend wrote the song after running into Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols in a London pub; the pair reportedly followed him home, and the morning after gave him the song’s famous question. The recording opens with a long synthesizer swell before the acoustic guitars enter, and builds to Daltrey bellowing the title — profanity and all — over Moon’s final studio drumming.
Released as a single, it reached number 14 in America, the band’s last big hit of the decade. The album Who Are You arrived in August 1978; on September 7, Moon was dead. The song’s question, meant as a joke about punk rockers, became something sadder: who were the Who, without Keith Moon?
What to listen for: the synth intro, stately before the storm; Entwistle’s bass, melodic as ever underneath; and Moon, playing with all his old mischief on the last record he would ever make.