Before The Who made it big, they were briefly known as The High Numbers. Well, they weren’t really known as The High Numbers, but they did actually manage to get two songs recorded for Fontana under that very name. Those tracks are now considered the last few baby steps taken before the band blossomed into The Who, but with time spent it becomes obvious that “Zoot Suit” and “I’m the Face” deserve a lot more credit than that.
After The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, The Who is basically a cinch for the distinction of the most well-known band produced by the whole British Invasion. Mind you this is not a qualitative assessment but purely a matter of notoriety, and The Who has achieved third place through a combination of ambition and longevity; they kept on keepin’ on even after death’s door opened wide and slammed shut one half their original membership.
Some sticklers might not consider the third spot to be all that impressive an achievement. But I bet those folks haven’t spent much time considering just how deep a playing field that whole UK explosion was. Somehow The Who clawed over such major units as The Kinks, The Animals, Them, The Dave Clark Five, The Moody Blues, Manfred Mann, The Tremeloes, The Troggs, The Yardbirds, The Hollies, and The Zombies.
That’s not even a complete list of every band in the movement that had a fleeting moment which could be legitimately called great. And yet they all take a back seat to The Who in terms of celebrity. Again, longevity surely has a lot to do with it. But while I tend to agree that much of the band’s behavior post-Keith Moon has been quite mercenary in nature, I do not believe that The Who has been forcing themselves onto the public; while they surely had something to sell the masses have proven consistently eager to buy it.
An indispensible bit of The Who’s lore pertains to The High Numbers, who in 1964 released a lone 45 on Fontana Records, “Zoot Suit” backed with “I’m the Face”, that failed to chart. Its lack of commercial success caused the band to revert back to the name for which they are so hugely famous, as the group had already momentarily used the moniker after deciding that being called The Detours just wasn’t good enough. It also led them to begin recording their own material; later in the year they released “I Can’t Explain,” an event that marked the beginning of a very big thing.
Many of those familiar with the songs on this single know them from either the various CD issues of the Quadrophenia soundtrack or the band’s Thirty Years of Maximum R & B box set (“I’m the Face” has also been on every version of the comp Odds and Sods). In 1980 a label called Back Door reissued the single (inexplicably flipping the sides in the process) where it reached an impressive #49 on the UK charts. Not bad for a couple tunes most consider as a mere bump in road on the way to stardom.
However, sometimes I like to consider what might have transpired had The Who simply been a bunch of quitters. With lyrics written by their manager Peter Meaden, “Zoot Suit” was intended to be a sort of mod anthem, which is probably the largest part of the reason the song tanked. If you were a mod you certainly would’ve resented any attempt to encapsulate the essence of your life in song (how dare they…) and if you weren’t a mod you probably couldn’t have cared less.
Make no mistake, mod culture was hipster culture, and The Who (at least early) was a pretty good example of what a hip young rock band should be; they were quick, they were slick, and they drew lines in the sand. If you only half listen to “Zoot Suit” it can almost seem like a parody of fashion consciousness, for that’s how blunt the song’s celebration of looking sharp comes across. What rescues “Zoot Suit” from the oblivion of perceived superficiality is closer listening and the resonance of one couplet toward the end of the song; “so the action lies with all of you guys/it’s how you look in the other cat’s eyes.”
It’s a line that sheds a fine light upon the nature of any movement that’s accompanied with a fashion imperative; think Beats, Rockers, Mods, Hippies, Glammers, Punks, Wavers, Hip-Hoppers, all the way up to today’s supposed hipster elite. The one thing they all share is their ability to breed resentment which in turn leads to lampoonery and even hostility from the dubious and/or jealous, who proceed to jeer and/or vent at the unmitigated gall of a group presuming they are cooler than you or me or him or her or them or us.
The value of “Zoot Suit” increases with the knowledge that the song was meant to extol (or if you will, exploit) the virtues of a subculture that basically defined itself through a separation from the mainstream. In other words it brought out into the open what had previously been more secretive (or at least aloof). But mod like glam and punk can be superficially (i.e. incorrectly) read as lacking an ideology, which is why Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” was a big hit and “Zoot Suit” stiffed mightily. Hippies were a curiosity often seen as benevolent and even progressive. Mods are still often castigated as a bunch of shallow too-cool-for-school assholes.
But thankfully the concept of empowerment (both of self and of the group) through looking sharp has at least somewhat taken hold. Thanks, Paul Weller! Seriously, it’s far preferable to be spotted on the street standing tall by dressing suave than to be seen slouching along toward someplace like a slovenly bum. And by extension, if you’re going to nick then nick from the best.
That’s why “Zoot Suit” so boldly rips off The Dynamics’ “Misery” and additionally finds Daltrey blatantly copying the dulcet tones of the great Sam Cooke. And it’s not authenticity that’s being attempted but rather the pure identification of value that’s in turn applied to the band’s own barebones musical sensibility; what results can be described as a transfusion of cool. Sometimes this practice was so blunt as to take on the patina of plagiarism, and if “Zoot Suit” had been a hit there’s no denying The Dynamics would’ve had a legitimate case in the courts.
Naturally there are poseurs in any hip scene. But I tend to think that fakers lack the tenacity to do much more than ultimately act as hangers-on, siphoning energy from those with the need to create and the desire to live a full, righteous life. Very seldom do they show the persistence to record a killer 45. Sure, “Zoot Suit” might initially register as just a brief bit of tossed off half-stolen fashion-obsessed Caucasian R&B; indeed, that’s exactly what it is. But the more it’s played the more its surface insubstantiality becomes a true virtue.
And to elaborate about the sheer lack of authenticity, the flip grabs lustily from Slim Harpo’s slice of majestic swamp junk “Got Love if You Want it” and in so doing serves up an early template in admirable non-purism. This time out Daltrey indulges in a steady stream of lifestyle braggadocio that gives way to some solid harp blowing and a tight little solo from Townsend. And the rhythm section is as in-the-pocket as any fan of Entwistle and Moon would suspect. In sum, it’s a tidy bit of Beat-group blues approximation, not unlike a more modish, less virtuosic early Yardbirds.
Much of The Who’s success comes from their ability to appeal to a very diverse listenership. On one side there’s the mods (see above) and the punks (see The Sex Pistols’ “Substitute”) and the alt/indies (see Blur’s “Substitute”) and on the other there’s the hippies (they played Monterey and Woodstock), the hard rockers (Who’s Next, y’know?) and even the progsters (rock-operas are concept albums, after all). With this said few people love all aspects of their growth with equal intensity.
I happen to be partial to the early stuff; My Generation, A Quick One/Happy Jack, The Who Sell Out. Plus, nobody destroyed instruments like these guys (just watch The Yardbirds in Antonioni’s Blow Up for proof). But I consider Tommy to be one of the most overrated records ever released. Who’s Next was a vast improvement (how could it not be?), but the signs of creative wear were becoming ever more apparent. And for me Quadrophenia is a great last gasp before that aforementioned mercenary behavior set in, their second full opera succeeding where Tommy most definitely did not.
That’s a whole lot of stuff that never would’ve occurred if The High Numbers had called it a day after “Zoot Suit”/”I’m the Face” failed to meet expectations. And if The Who had never released as much as a peep, this single would’ve no doubt become a complete obscurity, with the songs at best fighting for space on exhaustive retrospective compilation box sets ala Nuggets II.
That doesn’t mean it’s not actually a terrific little single, though. And I think it’d make a dandy limited edition reissue, with those sweet blue Fontana labels popping out from inside a matching paper cover (sorry, no picture sleeve; that’s for rock stars) and “Zoot Suit” back on the A-side where it rightfully belongs. Sure, it’ll be eternally known as the beginnings of The Who, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be allowed to momentarily bask in the riches of its own considerable élan.
(RE)GRADED ON A CURVE:
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