Peak
74
Weeks
5
Score
256
Chart Year
1966
Roger Daltrey sang the lead vocals with a stutter, which was very unusual. After recording two takes of the song normally, The Who's manager, Kit Lambert, suggested to Daltrey that he stutter to sound like a British kid on speed. Daltrey recalled to Uncut magazine October 2001: "I have got a stutter. I control it much better now but not in those days. When we were in the studio doing 'My Generation', Kit Lambert came up to me and said 'STUTTER!' I said 'What?' He said 'Stutter the words – it makes it sound like you're pilled' And I said, 'Oh… like I am!' And that's how it happened. It was always in there, it was always suggested with the 'f-f-fade' but the rest of it was improvised." Pete Townshend wrote this on a train ride from London to Southampton on May 19, 1965 - his 20th birthday. In a 1987 Rolling Stone magazine interview, Townshend explained: "'My Generation' was very much about trying to find a place in society. I was very, very lost. The band was young then. It was believed that its career would be incredibly brief." >> Townshend wrote this for rebellious British youths known as "mods." It expressed their feeling that older people just don't get it. Back in 1967, Pete Townshend called this song, "The only really successful social comment I've ever made." Talking about the meaning, he explained it as "some pilled-up mod dancing around, trying to explain to you why he's such a groovy guy, but he can't because he's so stoned he can hardly talk." This contains the famous line, "I hope I die before I get old." The Who drummer Keith Moon did, dying of a drug overdose in 1978 at age 32. The rest of the band found themselves still playing the song 50 years later, giving that line more than a hint of irony. The Who first charted with their debut single "I Can't Explain" in 1964. When it came time to make a complete album, their first attempt was a set of cover songs, but after an influential music journalist named John Emery chastised it for lack of originality, the band decided to write more of their own songs for the set. Pete Townshend took the lead, writing eight songs for the album, which were added to three of the covers they recorded ("I Don't Mind" and "Please, Please, Please" by James Brown; "I'm a Man" by Bo Diddley) with the instrumental jam "The Ox" at the end. The album ended up becoming a classic, with "My Generation" a defining song of the rock era. A Singapore magazine called BigO is named for the famous line in this song - it's an acronym for "Before I Get Old." In 1993, the publication interviewed a then-48-year-old Pete Townshend and immediately asked if the line still resonated with him. "I think it does," Townshend replied. "The line actually came from a time when I was living in a really wealthy district of London, just by accident. I didn't really understand quite where I was living at the time. And I was treated very strangely on the street, in an imperious way by a lot of people, and it was that that I didn't like. I didn't like being confronted with money and the class system and power. I didn't like being in a corner shop in Belgravia and some woman in a fur coat pushing me out of the way because she was richer. And I didn't know how to deal with that. I could've, I suppose, insisted on my rights and not written the song. But I was a tucked-up little kid and so I wrote the song." This song went through various stages as they tried to perfect it. It began as a slow song with a blues feel, and at one point had hand claps and multiple key changes. The final product was at a much faster tempo than the song was conceived; it was Kit Lambert's idea to speed it up. This is the highest charting Who song in the UK, but it never cracked the Top 40 in America, where they were less known. In the UK, the album was also called My Generation, but in America it was titled The Who Sing My Generation. This features one of the first bass solos in rock history. John Entwistle used a new-on-the-market Danelectro bass to play it, but he kept breaking strings trying to record it. A bit of a bummer that replacement strings weren't available, as he had to go out and buy an entire new bass. Entwistle was the least visible member of the band, and his bass solos on this song threw off directors when The Who would perform the song on TV shows. When it got to his part, the cameras would often go to Pete Townshend, and his fingers wouldn't be moving. Entwistle played the solos using a pick, since their manager Kit Lambert didn't think fingers recorded well. Most of Entwistle's next recordings were done with fingers. The Who recorded this, and the rest of the album, with an American producer named Shel Talmy, who had come to England to expand his horizons. Talmy had worked as an engineer in America, where he learned the ins and outs of rock and roll recording. He kept a tight schedule, making sure everyone was rehearsed when they entered the studio. One of Talmy's innovations was using 12 microphones on the drums instead of the standard three. "I had overheads, kick drum, two mics on the snare, toms, and all kinds of stuff," he told Songfacts. Talmy enjoyed working with Keith Moon, who he considers the greatest rock drummer of all time. Remarkably, Moon obeyed Talmy's request not to destroy. "I said, "Do me a favor Keith. I don't care how close you get... don't hit the damn mics, they're too expensive," Talmy explained in his Songfacts interview. "And he never did. He got within a millimeter or two, but he never hit a mic." The BBC refused to play this at first because they did not want to offend people with stutters. When it became a huge hit, they played it. In 1965, Roger Daltrey stood by this song's lyric and claimed he would kill himself before reaching 30 because he didn't want to get old. When he did get older, he answered the inevitable questions about the "hope I die before I get old" line by explaining that it is about an attitude, not a physical age. On September 17, 1967, The Who performed this song on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Keith Moon set his drums to explode after the performance, but the technical crew had already done so. The resulting explosion burned Pete Townshend's hair and permanently damaged his hearing. Also of note during this performance was Moon's total disregard for the illusion of live performance. The band was playing along to a recorded track (common practice on the show), and while his bandmates synched their movements to the music, Moon made no effort to keep time, even knocking his cymbal over at one point. The Who cut ties with producer Shel Talmy after the My Generation album was released, breaking their production contract. This prompted Talmy to file a lawsuit that proved very expensive for The Who: the group ended up paying him royalties on everything they recorded through 1971. Talmy also controlled the master tapes to the album, which kept it from being issued on CD in original form until 2002. Talmy put the tapes up for auction on eBay in 2000 to accelerate the process. Nobody paid the $500,000 asking price, but it did get the group's attention and they were albe to strike a deal. The ending of this song is electric mayhem, with Keith Moon pounding anything he can find on his drum kit and Townshend flipping his pickups on an off, something he also did on the album opener "Out in the Street." Townshend and Daltrey go back and forth on the vocals, intentionally stomping on each other to add to the chaos. The Who played this during their set at Woodstock, which didn't begin until 5:00 a.m. on the second day. The group turned in a solid performance, but they weren't pleased with the scheduling and weren't feeling the peace and love - at one point an activist named Abbie Hoffman came on stage uninvited and was forcibly ejected by Pete Townshend. This was covered by Iron Maiden, who was usually the Who's polar opposite both musically and lyrically. One connection they share is the BBC-TV series Top of the Pops. Performances on the show were customarily lip-synched, but The Who performed live on the show in 1972. In 1980, Iron Maiden also performed live, and was the first band to do so since The Who. Maiden put their version of "My Generation" on the B-side to the single for "Lord of the Flies." >> This song fits nicely into the "primal rock" genre, which covers tunes that are raucous, rebellious, unusual, and also celebratory. Roger Reale, who was in one of these primal rock bands with Mick Ronson, explains the impact of the song: "'My Generation' had no lead guitar, but a lead part played on the bass. It also had a bass breakdown, and unless you listened to a lot of jazz, there were no bass breakdowns in pop music. I remember playing the end of that track over and over and over again, because you could hear the feedback of the guitar, which was so exciting to listen to. In those days, you weren't supposed to have an outro that was pure noise." Green Day recorded this for their 1992 album Kerplunk!. >> When the teen pop singer Hilary Duff covered this as a B-side for her 2005 single "Someone's Watching Over Me," she made the curious decision to rewrite some of the lyrics. "I hope I don't die before I get old," doesn't really have the same rock 'n' roll attitude as Townshend's original words, and her rendition caused some consternation among Who fans.
People try to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation) Just because we get around (talkin' 'bout my generation) Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation) I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation) This is my generation This is my generation, baby Why don't you all f-fade away (talkin' 'bout my generation) Don't try to dig what we all s-s-s-say (talkin' 'bout my generation) I'm not trying to 'cause a big s-s-sensation (talkin' 'bout my generation) I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (talkin' 'bout my generation) My generation This is my generation, baby Why don't you all f-fade away (talkin' 'bout my generation) And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (talkin' 'bout my generation) I'm not trying to 'cause a b-big s-s-sensation (talkin' 'bout my generation) I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (talkin' 'bout my generation) This is my generation This is my generation, baby My my my generation People try to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation) Just because we g-g-get around (talkin' 'bout my generation) Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation) Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation) This is my generation This is my generation, baby My my my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) (Talkin' 'bout my generation) (Talkin' 'bout my generation) (Talkin' 'bout my generation) (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation) this is my generation
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jan 15, 1966 | 98 | 28 |
| 2 | Jan 22, 1966 | 77 | 49 |
| 3 | Jan 29, 1966 | 77 | 49 |
| 4 | Feb 5, 1966 | 75 | 51 |
| 5 | Feb 12, 1966 | 74 | 52 |