This late 1965 interview with Alan Freeman, published in the February 1966 edition of Rave, is the best contemporary summation of the breakneck speed of change in pop that the band were now pushing. The shift away from Mod and then Pop Art is discussed: ‘We found out Mods were just as conformist and reactionary as anyone else’ . . . ‘So far as The Who are concerned, the pop art image that stunned listeners last summer with things like “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” is already a dead carcass’ . . . staying ahead of the pack was the only consistent philosophy, innovation and renewal – ‘searching endlessly for newer musical forms that would reflect nobody’s ideas but their own’.

Townshend reiterates the importance of creative violence in the band’s acts of reinvention, comparing what they do to the everyday violence of bar-room fights, dance hall punch ups and war in Vietnam – all ignored by the man in the street. But ‘immediately a bit of property is smashed up he goes potty and cries out about senseless destruction’.

‘I reckon it’s this unfortunate national knack of putting higher value on things than on people that has made The Who the most unpopular group in pop’, wrote Freeman. And, as if to echo Kit Lambert’s claim that the band were involved in a ‘new form of crime’, one that attacked bourgeois propriety, he noted that the band were now starting to attract ‘quite a few gamblers and reformed villains who turn up at various parties and first nights. And I’ve heard some of them raving about the Who’s records’.

Townshend digs deeper into the art influences on his auto-destruction, including Metzger’s idea for ‘putting up statues with weak foundations so that they’d all fall down inside a year’, which was new to me. All this emphasis on violence and aggression was clearly understood to be the prelude that logically ends in the group’s own demise; its self-destruction: ‘It doesn’t matter in the long run. Eventually we’re going to destroy ourselves as a group. It has to happen sometime’.

Enjoy!