A Quick One by The Who

A Quick One, the Who's second album, came out on 9 December 1966 with Kit Lambert producing, and it finds the mod wrecking crew spreading the songwriting around for once. Pete Townshend usually carried the pen alone, but here Roger Daltrey chips in a song and John Entwistle and Keith Moon two apiece, which gives the record a lopsided, rough-and-tumble charm, the sound of four very different heads in one very loud room. They even take a swing at the Holland-Dozier-Holland number "Heat Wave".

The payoff comes at the end, where "A Quick One, While He's Away" stretches out into a full musical suite and points straight at the rock operas the Who would soon be famous for. American buyers had to wait until April 1967, when it turned up retitled Happy Jack, after the single that had cracked the top 40 there, with the running order shuffled.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.