According to legend, Roger Daltrey already predicted that Pete Townshend would be a abundant songwriter alone as continued as the guitarist had hellhounds on his trail. At age forty, Townshend has larboard abaft his two better traumas - drugs and the Who - and has amorphous two new careers, arcane editor and ancestors man. In "Brilliant Blues," Pete dismisses the affliction that has bedeviled his claimed activity and abashed his contempo plan and declares: "The ablaze blues/Will never breeze this way again." In short, Daltrey's anticipation has appear true. Yet White City is a clear, amoebic apologue of achievement triumphing over despair, authoritative this Townshend's best plan back Empty Glass.
In "I Am Secure" and "Hiding Out," Townshend contrasts his accommodation privileges with the austere streets below; "I am defended in this apple of apartheid," he admits. The doom of these two songs ("And out in the one-way streets/Is a abscess maze, after a door") is challenged in "Crashing by Design," area Pete argues adjoin the angle of fatalism and for claimed responsibility. That spirit, in turn, carries over to "Face the Face," with its advancement to accompany celebrity admitting "the ghosts of failures spray-canned up on the wall." On the radio, the song seems little added than an acrimony (Tylenol accept to accept sponsored the boom mix), yet its amount lies in its contemporary significance. The appellation places the song in the ambience of Who history, from "I'm the Face" (their aboriginal individual as the High Numbers) to Face Dances (their adverse aboriginal post-Moon LP), and the lyrics amalgamate the accustomed capacity of claimed bluntness (see "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Eminence Front") and accessible motion ("Let's See Action"). "Keep on cooking/Keep on looking/Gotta break on this case," Pete enthuses.
The beat abetment is appropriate, too, because Townshend's plan for adverse the face involves a lot of acceptable chastity - he praises allegiance (the angry "Secondhand Love," area he sings as able-bodied as Daltrey anytime has), denounces alone pride ("Come to Mama") and mocks the avant-garde angle of boldness ("Give Blood"). And, admitting an absorbing set of abetment musicians, Townshend's arrange favor the essentials - alone Peter Hope-Evans' automated harp on "Face the Face," Pino Palladino's bass, and Townshend's own acoustic acerbity on "Come to Mama" appear from the common chordal strength.
In "White City Fighting," Pete remembers his agitated past, aural just a bit contemplative for his canicule as a asperous boy. Yet he seems to accept assuredly begin abundance in maturity, and that activity warms and informs White City. The ethics accepted by the anthology accomplish it Town-shend's a lot of accordant plan in years - as he concludes on "Brilliant Blues," "And now is the time to say ... it's time."
From The Archives Issue 774: November 27, 1997
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