Rating: 
November 3, 2007
IT'S not amazing that the music of The Who, maybe the greatest rock band ever, has survived 40 years.
What's amazing is that two of its original members have managed to survive at all.
The survivors, of course, are Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey who, along with the dead members - John Enstwistle and Keith Moon - lived the full-out over-the-top, drug-and-booze-soaked rock star lives. If ever there was a group who personified "Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse," it was this group of musical geniuses.
Genius is however, perhaps an exaggeration, according to Townshend, who actually says in the film, "Keith was a genius, John was a genius, I was certainly on the edge of it. Roger was a singer. That's it." And trust me, that's not the only "whew" moment in the film.
Starting with archival footage from the 1960s, the journey of the band is minutely - and more importantly, irreverently and entertainingly - documented.
How-in-hell, you might ask, can there be footage of a bunch of working-class punks playing in down-and-out pubs? I'm glad you asked.
The reason is because, way back when, entrepreneurial young guys Kit Lambert and Terence Stamp were looking for a band to manage and promote while filming them for a documentary. They found it - although at the time The Who was calling themselves The High Numbers.
Perhaps given the history of the band, the candidness with which Townshend and Daltrey speak about themselves and each other and their years working together shouldn't be surprising. But it is.
For example, even Entswistle and Moon, both of whom died of overdoses, aren't canonized. Missed and dissed is more like it.
Townshend says of Moon at one point, "He was an alcoholic, an addict, a sex addict with tremendous esteem problems. He was a complete little ball of difficulty."
Townshend, who became the group's songwriter, also discusses how he himself came to be a guitar-smasher. A former art-school student, Townshend says his bandmates thought the carnage was "pompous drivel. I said: 'No! It's auto-destructive art!' "
One ugly chapter that is not discussed at any length, however, is Townshend's child porn charge, which was later dismissed.
The documentary flies however, with interviews with everyone from Sting to Eddie Vedder, plus all the people who were there when The Who became the "What the Hell is that?" explosion of sound and poetry.
Perhaps Noel Gallagher's (of Oasis) quote about one of Townshend's riffs explains the power of the band. "If you could write that in words, it's what you'd have on your gravestone, wouldn't it?"
"Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who"
Tonight at 9 on VH1
