Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who (2007)

Let's be honest, like always (yeah right): I love the Who but I have yet to visit a lot of their stuff. Right now I'm listening to the Who a lot, the list of recent reproductions in my iTunes is basically of the Who, Tom Waits (can't wait to find a copy of the film Big Time), Kings of Leon (probably my favourite "modern" band, I'm listening a lot to their first two albums, also I love the third one and some songs of the latest one, and ready for their show in Mexico City in October!), Creedence Clearwater Revival (last week I got the new edition of Woodstock on Blu-Ray and I'm loving the 3 songs of CCR. Wish we had more CCR but still are awesome the bonus performances of them, of the Who, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, Santana, etc.) and Isaac Hayes' (from the soundtrack of Shaft mostly) songs.

So I came across with the R4 DVD of this documentary, Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, and I'm so glad I decided to get it. Frankly, I know much more about the Who after seeing it, one of the other two prolific authors here in the IMDb page of Amazing Journey remarks that he didn't learn anything new, I saw part of the documentary with my uncle and he pretty much knew everything but he agreed with me that this is extremely well-done.

Pretty much when the runtime marks 30 minutes is when "I Can't Explain" appears. At one point, just before we can hear "I Can't Explain" Roger Daltrey says this: "I got to admit that I felt that we were special…I remember one thing that we were very much aware of was that we were still copying another people's songs". And it's just great when the Who's first release starts, but what was going on before? Well, the first ones that began playing together were Pete Townshend and John Entwistle and later on John met the bully Roger…you know. Certainly it's awesome the chapter "Who the f*** are you?" that begins with Roger recalling when a ginger Beach Boys fan came and said to him with all the arrogance in the world something like "I heard you are looking for a drummer, well I'm much better than the one you got". A Who fan and original mod recalls how the Who came out as the High Numbers and how the drummer was absolutely mental! (just awesome that footage of the High Numbers at the Railway Hotel from 1964, there are bits in the film but the full 7 or so minutes of the only left footage of the uncompleted film by Stamp and Lambert are on the second disc).

Apart of having interviews with Roger, Pete, Who managers, familiars, etc. we have musicians, fans better said: Eddie Vedder, Sting, Noel Gallagher, the Edge. I love when the Edge picks up his acoustic guitar and plays "My Generation" ("when you're a kid and you pick up the guitar for the first time you just want to make that sound"). And well the different periods in the story of the Who, the tension between 1966 and 1967 (Monterey, going before Hendrix), LSD with Pete into Maher Baba (legendary American TV appearance, explosives!), 1968 with a change in the industry, Tommy (glorious years, balance, good marriage, I am you and what I see is me), that intro of the most successful Who album, Quadrophenia (fight between Roger and Pete), Keith ("can anybody play the drums?"), no more concerts and the awesome "Who Are You" after the return of Keith to England (Keith died weeks after Who Are You was released). Is just fantastic the "Won't Get Fooled Again" part from the Concert for the New York City, "just celebrating the old music". And sadly John passed away in 2002, he died like many musicians would like to and I just love what happened with Roger and Pete after their friend passed away. The Who is for sure one of the great bands of all-time and I simply loved this documentary… 10 out of 10

PS: I haven't seen yet the Tommy film. In the documentary is totally bashed by Noel Gallagher and Steve Jones yet Pete loves it.