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The Who's Weirdest Songs #15
10:16 AM GMT 23/02/2009
15. I'm A Boy
(single, 1966)
It says something about the strangeness of Pete Townshend's ouevre that a #2 hit about a boy made to dress as a girl by his mother and sisters is pretty much par for the course. Perhaps the first evidence of Townshend "over-sharing" his neuroses, it's the prototype of the sexual darkness that variously haunts Fiddle About and Dreaming From The Waist, to name but two future nightmares. Exactly where this all comes from it's not certain even Townshend knows for sure. He has alluded to abuse in his childhood, but detail has been scant and he's yet to name names - one for the book, perhaps. What is certain is that The Who are driven by something troubled and at their best they turned that conflict vividly into noise. Because above all, I'm A Boy is thrillingly oddly-shaped music - like girl groups and English folk mashed up and electrically charged, a mile from the straightahead R&B then favoured by the majority of UK beat groups. You can see why The Beatles admired them so much. [DE]
WATCH! The Who miming to I'm A Boy in 1967
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Posted by Ross_Bennett at 10:16 AM GMT 23/02/2009
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Did not John Entwistle write Fiddle About?
It was a dark Who song, and Entwistle certainly penned many of such.
This post made it sound like Townshend had written it. It really does not matter--just an observation from a nit-picky die-hard Who fan.
Posted by Lisa--Asheville NC at 1:36 PM GMT 21/03/2009 Report Abuse
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