The Who: Blue Red and Grey

SONG Blue Red and Grey

WRITTEN BY Pete Townshend

PERFORMED BY The Who

APPEARS ON The Who By Numbers (1975), Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (1994)

Fueled by Pete Townshend's high octane power chords and ambitious operatic album structures, The Who by 1975 were the most important and most artistically successful extant rock band. The Beatles had broken up five years earlier. The Stones were lost in a creative wilderness. Southern rock, led by the Allman Brothers, had introduced a new element of virtuosity to rock, but it never tackled grand themes with the force of The Who. So, it came as somewhat of a surprise when Townshend retrenched and delivered The Who By Numbers, a brief set of personal, nearly confessional songs that left critics scratching their heads.

Today, By Numbers stands as respected part of The Who's canon. It by no means reaches the heights of Who's Next and most of its predecessors, but it's also superior to anything that came after. One of its most enduring songs is "Blue Red and Grey," a simple, life-affirming number sung by Townshend and supported by an unlikely (for The Who) ukulele and haunting, muted trumpet. The rest of the band -- and, indeed, Townsend's electric guitar -- sits out while Pete sings this simple paean to love and how it can infuse every second of life with delight. There's no other Who song quite like "Blue Red and Grey," and I suppose that it's arguably a Pete Townsend solo tune inserted into a Who album.

And yet. Pete had already embarked on his solo career. Who Came First was three years old, and the brilliant Rough Mix was two-years imminent. There were other outlets for the song, so I prefer to think that he wanted it on a Who album for a reason. Maybe he wanted his listeners to look past the usual Townshend themes of angst, anger, and the fraught relationship between star and audience. Maybe he wanted to remind us of the simpler joys of living in a context that guaranteed a larger listenership than a solo album. Or maybe "Blue Red and Grey" is a simple leavening of the confessional tone that dominates so much of By Numbers. No matter, it's a terrific and sensitive song, an anomaly in The Who catalogue, perhaps, but also perhaps all the more likable for that.

LYRICS

Some people seem so obsessed with the morning

Get up early just to watch the sun rise

Some people like it more when there's fire in the sky

Worship the sun when it's high

Some people go for those sultry evenings

Sipping cocktails in the blue, red and grey

But I like every minute of the day

I like every second, so long as you are on my mind

Every moment has its special charm

It's all right when you're around, rain or shine

I know a crowd who only live after midnight

Their faces always seem so pale

And then there's friends of mine who must have sunlight

They say a suntan never fails

I know a man who works the night shift

He's lucky to get a job and some pay

And I like every minute of the day

I dig every second

I can laugh in the snow and rain

I get a buzz from being cold and wet

The pleasure seems to balance out the pain

And so you see that I'm completely crazy

I even shun the south of France

The people on the hill, they say I'm lazy

But when they sing, I sleep and dance

Some people have to have the sultry evenings

Cocktails in the blue, red and grey

But I like every minute of the day

I like every minute of the day

Here are four renditions of "Blue Red and Grey," beginning with the original album version and followed by solo performances from Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, then closed out by Eddie Vedder's cover. Note that all three live performers use a ukulele. I guess when you strike a perfect note, people are reluctant to change it.