Review: 'A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk'

The great irony of The Who’s career is that despite their utter musical uniqueness they were constantly on the look out for a gimmick to distinguish them from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and the rest of their Rock & Roll peers. Although no group had a songwriter as equally tender and perverse as Pete Townshend or such combative yet virtuosic instrumental interplay, The Who and their management were convinced that the only way they could rise above the throng was to refashion themselves as Mods… or end their act with a brutish yet intellectually rooted act of “auto-destruction” (i.e.: guitar smashing)… or maybe position themselves as the pop equivalent of an Andy Warhol silkscreen… or compose rock operas.

That The Who’s image was constantly shifting according to whatever they thought would best promote their music in the moment is the focus of Peter Stanfield’s new book A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk. Stanfield examines how The Who took in disparate influences from outside the rock world—influences flying in from the fine and pop arts, youth culture, and so-on—and shipped them back out to be co-opted by everyone from The Creation to The Sex Pistols. It is the first deep, book-length look at an important aspect of The Who’s persona and art that is an integral portion of every book on the band.

Throughout A Band with Built-In Hate, Stanfield views The Who through the lens critic and Townshend’s confidant Nik Cohn shaped. Cohn believed that Rock & Roll was truest when it was trashiest, though there is nothing trashy about A Band with Built-In Hate despite the clashing promise of its title. It is fairly academic as far as Rock & Roll books go, and I’ve never been a proponent of reducing rock to an academic topic, but it moves quickly enough and fills in the gaps of an important area of Who history satisfactorily.