The Who is a band that almost didn’t have much of a recording career. For most of their early years, the band members couldn’t get along with each other (particularly Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend). They had only released a few singles when they returned from a brief tour of Denmark in the fall of 1965 ready to call it quits.
Townsend arrived back at his London digs only to discover his 1935 Packard hearse had been towed away. Why? It seemed the Queen Mother had seen the hearse while driving on that street and had become quite upset. The hearse was a dead ringer (pun intended) for the one that had carried her late husband to his final resting place. To add insult to injury, Townsend had to pay a £250 “towing fee,” or about 10 times what he had paid for the hearse in the first place.
Incensed over the injustice the older generation seemed to be heaping on the younger, Townsend put his anger into a new composition. He called his bandmates into the studio and very quickly “My Generation” was born.
While the song became a massive hit in the UK and across Europe, propelling the Who into the forefront of British rock, the single went nowhere in America, barely reaching #74 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was only after “Tommy” broke the band big in the States that “My Generation” finally began getting airplay and attention on this side of the pond.
Fortunately for all of us, the song’s most quoted line, “Hope I die before I get old” did not come to pass.
