A Band with Built-In Hate | Peter Stanfield

'The best book on The Who.
Stanfield understands that they were built entirely around opposition - they didn't want to be The Beatles or The Stones;
they didn't even want to be The Who most of the time.
He smartly states the case for peak Who as transgressive .
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the closest thing to Pop art British music has ever produced.' Bob Stanley, author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop'With impressive eloquence, A Band with Built-In Hate situates '60s Britain's most volatile and incendiary group at the heart of pop's wild vortex .
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Stanfield digs brilliantly into The Who's transgressions, their up-ending of pop music into art-rock and proto-punk.
He can see for miles.' Barney Hoskyns, author of Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion and creator of Rock's Backpages'Ours is music with built-in hatred.' Pete TownshendA Band with Built-In Hate pictures The Who from their inception as the Detours in the mid-sixties to the late seventies, post-Quadrophenia.
It is a story of ambition and anger, glamour and grime, viewed through the prism of Pop art and the radical levelling of high and low culture that it brought about - a drama that was aggressively performed by the band.Peter Stanfield lays down a path through the British pop revolution, its attitude and style, as it was uniquely embodied by The Who: first, under the mentorship of arch-mod Peter Meaden, as they learnt their trade in the pubs and halls of suburban London;
and then with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two aspiring filmmakers, at the very centre of things in Soho.
Guided by contemporary commentators - among them George Melly, Lawrence Alloway and most conspicuously Nik Cohn - Stanfield describes a band driven by belligerence, and of what happened when Townshend, Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle moved from back-room stages to international arenas, from explosive 45s to expansive concept albums.
Above all, he tells of how The Who confronted their lost youth as it was echoed in punk.