Song Musings

It’s Wednesday and I hope this week has been kind to you so far. Once again, the time has come to take a closer look at another song I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all to date.

One of my longtime favorite bands are The Who. Since I’ve already covered many of their popular songs, I decided to pick a tune that outside of fan circles is less widely known: Anyway Anyhow Anywhere.

More casual listeners, who are primarily familiar with classics like My Generation, Pinball Wizard and Won’t Get Fooled Again, probably find Anyway Anyhow Anywhere sounds a bit underwhelming. However, not only is it a pretty good early tune by the English rock band, but it also has some intriguing aspects.

To start with, the song that first appeared as a non-album single in the UK in May 1965 was co-written by guitarist Pete Townshend and lead vocalist Roger Daltrey. Most of the group’s tunes were solely penned by Townshend. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere also represents one of the first songs using guitar feedback. According to Wikipedia, it was the first to use the effect in the guitar solo.

The use of feedback throughout the song was crucial, Townshend stated. He explained The Who “were trying to achieve the sound which we get on the stage at present, all in a commercial song that will sell.” Speaking of live, here’s a great clip of the tune, captured in 2000 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Anyway Anyhow Anywhere was the second single The Who released under that name and their third overall. The debut, Zoot Suit/I’m the Face appeared under their initial name The High Numbers. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere became their second top 10 single in the UK, reaching no. 10. It also made the top 40 in France, climbing to no. 38. But unlike its predecessor, I Can’t Explain, it missed the charts in the U.S. and in Australia. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere was subsequently included on the October 1971 singles compilation Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.

In the liner notes of that album, Townshend recalled the following about the tune: Roger Daltrey helped a lot with the final arrangement and got half the credit. Something he does today for nothing, bless him. I was lying on my mattress on the floor listening to a Charlie Parker record when I thought up the title. (It’s usually title first with me.) I just felt the guy was so free when he was playing. He was a soul without a body, riding, flying, on music.

Listening to the compulsory Dizzy Gillespie solo after one by Bird was always a come-down, however clever Gillespie was. No one could follow Bird. Jimi Hendrix must have been his reincarnation, especially for guitar players. The freedom suggested by the title came restricted by the aggression of our tightly-defined image when I came to write the words. In fact, Daltrey was really a hard nut then, and he changes quite a few words himself to toughen the song up to suit his temperament. It is the most excitingly pig-headed of our songs. It’s blatant, proud and, dare I say it, sassy.

The studio recording was the first by The Who, which featured Nicky Hopkins on piano. At the time, Hopkins was a session musician. Widely considered to be one of the greatest studio pianists in the history of popular rock music, Hopkins worked with many other artists, particularly The Rolling Stones, playing on all of their studio albums from Between the Buttons (1967) through until Tattoo You (1981), except for Some Girls (1978).

Following are some additional insights by Songfacts:

Like many early songs by The Who, “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” captures the band enjoying the unfettered freedom of youth: they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. Pete Townshend, who wrote the lyric, described it as “anti-middle age, anti-boss class, and anti-young marrieds.”

This was The Who’s second single, following “I Can’t Explain.” Their producer at the time was Shel Talmy, who could wrangle a lot of noise into something coherent. After “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” was released, the group made their first album with Talmy: My Generation. The title track to that one was another feat of controlled chaos and a defining hit for the band, but The Who had their manager, Kit Lambert, produce their next one, breaking their contract with Talmy and setting off a legal battle that ended up giving Talmy royalties on every Who recording into 1971.

This contains one of the first uses of feedback on a record. The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey recalled to Uncut magazine October 2001: “We were doing this feedback stuff, even before that. We’d be doing blues songs and they’d turn into this freeform, feedbacky, jazzy noise. Pete was getting all these funny noises, banging his guitar against the speakers. Basically, the act that Hendrix is famous for came from Townshend, pre-‘I Can’t Explain.'”

“‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’ was the first song when we attempted to get that noise onto a record and that was a good deal of time before Hendrix had even come to England,” Daltrey continued. “The American pressing plant sent it back thinking it was a mistake. We said, ‘No, this is the f—ing noise we want. CUT IT LOUD!'”

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube