Sunday, July 17, 2005

The Who - 'Eminence Front'










Eminence Front

The Who
It's Hard


After years of intense success, British rockers The Who were slammed by tragedy. With the death of legendary drummer Keith Moon in 1978, just months after the release of Who Are You, the band had seemed to have met an all-too-abrupt end. Prior to Moon's death, the band members had already been forming independent careers, and it wasn't unknown that Moon and guitarist-songwriter Pete Townshend had each struggled with addictions; however, the band had held together. After Moon's overdose, the remainder of the band had to consider whether or not to go on working together.
In 1979 they hired a new drummer and added a keyboardist, and decided to work on new material and tour towards the end of the year. But that wasn't an end to the band's tragedies. In December, eleven people were trampled to death while trying to attain festival seating at a show in Cincinatti. The band fell apart, with each of the three going solo. After a solo album featuring the hit 'Let My Love Open the Door', Townshend became addicted to cocaine, tranquilizers, heroin, and alcohol - nearly dying himself from an O.D. in '81.
That same year they managed to reform, and put out two final LPs by the end of '82. Face Dances, the first of the two, sold well but received mixed reviews. The second, It's Hard, wasn't that lucky. Critics thought the band was starting to sound too much like Townshend's solo creations, but without producing anything all that captivating.

So this finally brings me to the real meat of this post. Now, some die-hard fans of The Who might disagree with me here, but for their last album, they did produce at least one song that I feel is most definitely worth mentioning. 'Eminence Front', a song which Townshend lends his vocals, is a great track - chilling, and worthy of being one of the group's last recording efforts. The song opens with keyboards,and then the other instruments enter to break it down to a groove. The guitar whips out a mellow solo within the first two minutes prior to any vocals. From there, Townshend begins to lay down his concise,unnerving lyrics over the funk of the rhythm section; periodically breaking into a call and response of "It's an eminence front - It's a put on!" The entire song reminds me of something you'd expect to hear on some '80s cop-drama, maybe even Miami Vice. Apparently the song is featured on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack, so maybe that is appropriate. Anyway, the song continues this path, with Townshend reminding the listener that "people forget that they're hiding." To me, this might be the perfect ending to the band. The three original members later admitted that they felt The Who died with the loss of Keith Moon, and the fact that the band had tried to forge on into the '80s might make the entire song. Aging rockers faced with the crossroads of where to go next, perhaps? Maybe Townshend was reflecting upon himself, pondering about hiding his feelings about Moon's death, or his subsequent struggles with drugs afterwards? These are all just my own thoughts on the song, but despite the true meaning, the song has a quality of strength - denying to go down without a fight.



The sun shines and people forget
The spray flies as the speedboat glides, and people forget
Forget they're hiding
The girls smile and people forget
The snow packs as the skier tracks, and people forget
Forget they're hiding
Behind an eminence front
Eminence front, it's a put on
Come and join the party, dress to kill
Won't you come and join the party, dress to kill
The drinks flow, people forget
The big wheel spins, the hair thins, people forget
The news slows, people forget
The shares crash, hopes are dashed, people forget
Forget they're hiding
Behind an eminence front
Eminence front, it's a put on
Come and join the party, dress to kill
Won't you come and join the party, dress to
Won't you come and join the party, dress to
Won't you come and join the party, dress to
Won't you come and join the party, dress to
Dress yourself, dress to kill

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The song did in fact appear in an episode of 'Miami Vice'

Blain Newport said...

You're right about GTA: San Andreas. I recently replayed the game on PC. The game is set in the 90s and the song plays on the retro rock channel. Eminence Front convinced me to pick up "the ultimate collection" and see if I like The Who.

It's the first song I ever heard by the band that spoke to me, so you've got at least one person who agrees with you that Eminence Front is something special.

Anonymous said...

Excellent song. I think its a personal song to him but can relate to anyone. everyone puts on a different face to hide their true selves. the verses talk about how everyday life and how our actions and thoughts are compressed and form a compact mask of who we really aren't. But that is the beauty of life. You can be whoever you want to be.

Anonymous said...

eminence front is not a great song to play on the $17,000 stereo component you just purchased... specially when you're wasted on coke.

Anonymous said...

One of my favorites...

Anonymous said...

That's definitely the best song on their sort of a come back album "It's Hard", for me it is probably the best one. Cheers for the text!

Anonymous said...

I love The Who. They are amazing. Rap is shit compared to them. I don't give a shit about what the majority of America likes anymore. America used to be a working type of country. Now the majority of America is obese.

Anonymous said...

It's about the New World Order.

The Zionist run it. The banks/media/government. But people forget, forget history.
So they hid and planned.

Come and join the party, dressed to kill. (Military).

It's an emminence front. It's a put on. Cause guess what, they ain't no more important than the rest of us.

Now they put the Georgia Guidestones up. Boldly telling us that they want to reduce the population down from 6-7 billion down to 500 million.

Don't beleive it, look it up. Pleanty of pictures. It's also known as the American Stone Hinge.

Anyway, the worse is the genetics/gmo. The Eugenics people (Obama's HOldren lead scientist is a Eugenics champion). They talk about the capacity of the earth. Same number 500 million as Guidestones says.

The Eugenics movement was started before Hitler. They would force sterilization of those they deemed "Feeble minded". No lie. Even kids who got poor grades where forced sterilized.

This was all headed up by Zionist Rockefeller. Related to Rothchild. And after Hitler put blemish on Eugenics movement, it went underground to many offshoot sciences including genetics.

Geneticist have been working on stealth sterilization for a while. They made progress with hiding it in vaccinations. But many where refusing.

So they decided to go with GMO (Growth modified organism) GMO food causes rats to be infertile after 3 generations and die early of various cancers.

The apparent initiative was to produce crops that had self protecting insecticide grown internally.

Monsanto pushed this. Their product is called round-up and is somehow genetically engineered into the plants.

They started out with a few like soy, corn and potatoes. But now are moving to do 100s.

Thankfully consumers objected. But this is only temporary as laws are being put into effect to change this.

Also FDA did not oversee saftey but MONSANTO did. Or some agenda got pushed through anyway...

RJ

Anonymous said...

This song is about people partying to forget their mortality.

Especially when you're middle age substances can medicate and get you to that other place in life. I'm not there yet but the context you wrote about and their age really represents what I get from the song.

Even recreational or binge use of substances is OK. When you get to the place where you escape all unpleasant feelings and thoughts it might be a can of worms.

Whether or not is a can of worms if you're at a Widespread Panic show and this comes on between sets you really wish you had some coke on you.

david said...

The song was a dance staple of the underground gay clubs the second it came out. It was mysterious, very danceable, no one dissected it or tried to explain it or subjected it to psychoanalysis - it was a great song that you could dance to. Like Steve Miller Band's Macho City, it was a fun song that you could dance to. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart/Faces, great music to dance to that hardly requires so much introspection or discussion! Just enjoy the music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

As usual Pete nailed it Millions want to share in your loneliness and your misery

Unknown said...

As usual Pete nailed it Millions want to share in your loneliness and your misery