The Movie: The Kids Are Alright (1979)
What Is It?: This isn’t a “let’s sit back and
reflect nicely on what a nice band the nice, old Who were” documentary.” This is
complete anarchy. There are no gestures toward chronology, or telling the story
of the band properly, or finding out what The Who’s colleagues thought of them
(aside from a barely coherent rant from Tommy
filmmaker Ken Russell). This is a movie in which Keith Moon conducts an
interview while wearing a leather mask and getting whipped by a dominatrix.
This is a movie in which John Entwistle goes skeet shooting with his collection
of gold records (which he later joked were Roger Daltrey’s solo albums). This
is a movie in which a really, really drunk Pete Townshend regales his drummer
with a side-splitting story about how his doctor warned him that he’s going
deaf. This is The Kids Are Alright. Put it on your television. Then throw your television out the window.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1967, The Who appeared
on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which would be used as the first
sequence in The Kids Are Alright a
dozen years later.
