The years between 1964 and 1968 represented the adolescence of The Who as a group. Their early years were a host of garbled impressions and varied influences which they assimilated uncritically; their middle years show them, like their audiences, struggling for some kind of identity in the chaos of the world at that time; since about 1968 they have achieved the mark of maturity—the faculty of self-critical development.

Among the influences which the group did assimilate, artistic movements played the most important part. The music and stage act of the middle years shows influence from auto-destructive art, the Theatre of Cruelty and electronic or concrete music, besides the more obvious debts to the blues and American rock 'n' roll. In assimilating these influences, The Who gave a perspective to their art and thus gave both their own music and rock in general, which had too long paid little attention to...