Tomorrow is the birthday of The Who’s drummer, the irrepressible
Keith Moon. Moony, who died in 1978, was a looney, but, for the most part it seems, a rather
jovial loon. To see Moon play drums in the early days of The Who, as for
instance in some of the footage preserved in the film The Kids Are Alright (1979),
is to see a whirling dervish of a drummer, creating a kind of waterfall of
percussion behind the sallies of John Entwhistle’s bass and the slashes of Pete
Townshend’s rhythm guitar.
Today’s song features one of my favorites of Moon’s
performances. At the time Who’s Next was released I only knew of The Who
through “See Me Feel Me” and “Summertime Blues,” both of which had radio
airplay in 1970. Nothing quite prepared me for how much I would love “Won’t Get
Fooled Again” and then the album it’s from, in 1971. One of the pleasures of
the album is how well recorded it is, particularly Moon’s drums. There’s a
spaciousness to the sound, very uncluttered, very clean, but not slick. It’s
great classic rock for that reason.
“Bargain” sounded like an instant classic and has become
more so in the intervening years. The power chords are vintage Who and Who’s
Next is the album where they developed a studio sound that was equal or better
to what the Stones were achieving. And Townshend’s dabbling with the ARP synthesizer
throughout the album made it sound startingly contemporary, even a tad
futuristic. On “Bargain” the keyboard creates a sound both grand and mournful,
perhaps elegiac.
The lift of the song is all about the effort to find a pure
love. Townshend at the time was deeply under the influence of his guru Meher
Baba, and the idea of a driving desire to find God fuels the song: “I’d gladly
lose me to find you / I’d gladly give up all I had / To find you, I’d suffer
anything and be glad.” The idea of the “bargain”—giving up everything to find “you,”
suffering any deprivation—“I'd stand naked, stoned and stabbed” to prove one’s
devotion—adds a humility to the lyrics that the song’s kick and charge
over-ride. It’s the most boastful sounding surrender one could imagine. And
that’s because the band has the song fully in hand, with lively guitar fills
from Townshend and Moon’s cymbal-happy rolls that are always so musical.
The bridge, which Townshend sings in his straining vocal, is
perhaps the most effective part of the song—particularly the way the music
leads out of: “I know I’m worth nothing without you / In life one and one don’t
make two / One and one make one / And I’m looking for that free ride to me / I’m
looking for you”—back when I first encountered this song, that was a statement
of prospective love that I could believe in: not two but one, and especially
the idea that I could only know me, really, through “you.” During my first
experience of actual love, years later, “Bargain” came back to me as a perfect
expression of what is hoped for. For such, one is willing to strike a bargain,
indeed. The ride back into the song proper is truly grand—Entwhistle’s bass
lines working their magic, and Moon’s fill around 2:44.
The final coda of the song, from 3:55 or so, is where it
truly attains greatness. The synthesizer sound creates something of a phantom
trace that the band seems hell-bent to pursue, and the little pause punctuated
by acoustic strums before Moon strikes up the chase again (4:18) kills me—then it’s just
blissful playing until that final bit of Moon's tapping out (5:26) and descending
pass that sounds so crisp and fixed. As if one just stepped onto dry land after
a time in choppy seas.
I’d call that a bargain—the best I ever had
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