by Gus Sanchez

Created on: February 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

I have to, first off, admit a bias for the Who. For many there's that one band or musician that, when they heard them for the first time, the world opened up for them and their lives changed. That moment occured for me when I first heard Who's Next when I was twelve years old. Having been weaned on crap Top 40 and the limpness of ELO, Who's Next was a swift kick in the ass. The Kids Are Alright is a repeated, blessed swift kick in the ass from one of Pete Townshend's Doc Marten boots. Opening with their notorious appearance on the Smothers Brothers variety show, where the band lip-synchs My Generation, building up to an anarchic finale where Keith Moon blows up his drumkit, this documentary profiles the volatile nature of the Who and makes the affirmation that the Who were the greatest live act ever. The Beatles may have been the best band ever, and the Rolling Stones may have suggested they were the world's greatest rock and roll band (and for a long while they were right), but the Who easily blew both bands and many others before and after off the stage. The Kids Are Alright shows the band in their finest element, in a collection of concert footage, from their earliest days to their triumphant appearance at Woodstock, and on stage, the band's insistent, willful personality (fueled by four different, willful personalities) mesmerizes; Townshend's frenetic, balletic leaps and furious windmilling, Roger Daltrey's gravel-throated shrieks and microphone swinging, Moon's machine gun-like drumming and on-stage debauchery, and John Entwistle's stoic, muscular bass lines may have nearly doomed the band but when as a whole, together they were a marauding army laying waste to audiences and PA systems all over. The band's wicked sense of humor is much on display throughout the documentary. What starts out as an interview of the band on the Russell Harty Show, a UK interview program turns into a hysterical turn of the tables - Townshend and Moon quickly turn into a riotous comedic act and do what many other interviewees have dreamt of doing, and that is making the interviewer seem uncomfortable. "Can't touch the interviewer, can we?" menaces Moon near the end of the interview. Two scenes filmed primarily for this documentary, filmed at Shepperton Studios in London, are the centerpieces of this film. The filmed concert footage of Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again - where after the organ solo and Moon's frantic drum solo segways into Daltrey's earth-shattering scream, you will always remember the image of Townshend leaping from one end of the stage to the other, in slo-mo, landing on his knees - has the band firing on all cylinders, but, sadly, it was the last time they'd share the stage with Keith Moon. The Kids Are Alright is one of the great rock and roll films, showing us that rock and roll, in the hands of the Who, was ugly and volatile and horrible and life-affirming, all at the same time.

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