My Generation (album)
My Generation (1965) is The Who's first album. It was released in the USA under the title The Who Sings My Generation, with a different cover and a slightly different track list.
The album was made right after The Who got their first singles on the charts, and according to the booklet in the Deluxe Edition of the remastered CD it was later dismissed by the band as something of a rush job that did not accurately represent their stage performance of the time. Critics on the other hand very often rated it as one of the best Rock albums of all time back in the 1970s and 1980s when such list-making was common.
The album was made during The Who's early "Maximum R&B" period and features several covers of popular R&B tunes, in addition to the R&B leanings of the tracks written by the band's guitarist Pete Townshend.
Track List:
| My Generation (UK Release) | The Who Sings My Generation (USA Release) |
| "Out In The Street" | "Out In The Street" |
| "I Don't Mind" (Brown) | "I Don't Mind" (Brown) |
| "The Good's Gone" | "The Good's Gone" |
| "La-La-La Lies" | "La-La-La Lies" |
| "Much Too Much" | "Much Too Much" |
| "My Generation" | "My Generation" |
| "The Kids Are Alright" | "The Kids Are Alright" |
| "Please, Please, Please" (Brown/Terry) | "Please, Please, Please" (Brown/Terry) |
| "It's Not True" | "It's Not True" |
| "I'm A Man" (McDaniel) | The Ox" (Townshend/Moon/Entwistle/Hopkins) |
| "A Legal Matter" | "A Legal Matter" |
| "The Ox" (Townshend/Moon/Entwistle/Hopkins) | "Circles" |
| "Circles" |
All tracks were written by Pete Townshend, except as noted. On the first USA release the "Circles" track was misidentified as "Instant Party", and was later listed as "Instant Party (Circles)". ("Instant Party" is actually a completely different song.) According to the booklet in the Deluxe Edition of the remastered CD, "I'm A Man" was eliminated from the USA release due to its sexual content. The USA release also eliminated several bars of the rhythm section near the end of "The Kids Are Alright", hiding some of the idiosyncratic musical creativity that made The Who what they were.
The USA release also substituted an almost colorless portrait of the band with Big Ben in the background for the very artistic portrait on the cover of the UK release, where the band was photographed standing beside some drums and looking upward to the camera and a splash of color was added by the red and blue stenciled letters of the title and a jacket patterned on the Union Jack thrown over Entwistle's shoulders.
Most of the songs have enduring qualities and the engineering was very clean, so the album still rewards the interested listener.
References:
- A good historical background of the album is given in the booklet in the Deluxe Edition of the remastered CD, ISBN 08811-29262. (Much of the information in this article was gleaned from that source.)