A Quick One (studio album)
by The Who

From HoldenM 08/01/2025 15:00 | #310373

The Who stretch themselves as a band to comparably mixed results next to their scrappy and assured debut. They still write catchy, brash rock songs, while also attempting more sprawling ideas. It's a sophomore slump, but hardly a ruinous one.

A Quick One While He's Away" was the Who's second album released in 1966. Compared to their first album it's very obvious that Pete Townshend and the band had matured during 1965-66. There is a wider variety in their song-writing, and technically the album are miles ahead of "My Generation".
All members wrote songs to the album, and though both John Enthwistle and Keith Moon contribute strong material like "Boris the Spider", "Whiskey Man" and "I Need You", Pete Townsend is clearly the prolific song-writer in the band.

Townshend's mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away" may not be his most succesful piece of work, but it's quite entertaining and it gives a good hint of what was to come from his pen in near future.

Pete Best songs on the album must be "So Sad About Us" and "Don't Look Away". Even stronger is the psychedelic "Disguises", which oddly enough was not included on the British version of the album. Along with the single-version of "I'm a Boy" and "In the City", "Disguises was included on the European version, which was simple just called "The Who". "A Quick One While He's Away" was exchange with these great songs, and in my opinion this exchanged made the European album a much better buy. Unfortunately the single-version of "I'm a Boy" is not added here, which would have been a logical inclusion. Note that the version found on "Meaty Beaty . . " is an alternate, less powerful version.

"Man With Money", written by the Everly Brothers is a great addition; and the acoustic version of "Happy Jack" is quite charming.

https://www.angelfire.com/nv/Badfinger/BANDwho.html

From Jboy56 07/19/2022 18:58 | #287606

Who Made This?

From VictorVale 10/09/2021 13:04 | #274802

Matem-sem divertidos e cada vez experimentando mais, incluindo umas distorções. Destaque para a bateria!

A real mish-mash. They clearly haven't found their sound yet. Some good stuff- Boris, So Sad About Us. But Cobwebs and Strange is awful even as a joke. Heat Wave is lame. Imagine what the early 70s version of the Who could've done with it. A quick one (the song) has it's moments but in the end it's uneven and slightly boring.

From spigelwii 11/26/2020 13:50 | #261435

A Quick One features The Who playing at their peak, but perhaps not yet writing songs at their peak. Still, the record is filled with brash energy and should be considered essential listening for any Who fan, perhaps just for Keith Moon's drumming on Cobwebs and Strange!

A decent follow-up to My Generation, though the highs aren't as high, and there aren't as many highs (mainly just the last two tracks). It's solid power pop, but it's clear that the best was yet to come.

From teague 07/01/2020 05:05 | #254873

The Who's most underrated release.

I absolutely love this album. I think it's just fantastic. I'm surprised many don't feel the same way. Big change from their last, but still melodic and rocky as hell.

From mdbaxter 12/17/2019 15:50 | #245762

This album is alright. There is a lot of room for improvement. There are some nice riffs and the crazy drums are cool too. The closer is the only song that I liked that much. The last track is clearly influential on a lot of music after it for the simple fact that it put a bunch of different little songs together to make one composition. It preceded The Beatles attempt to do this a few months later on "A Day in the Life". "Help, I'm a Rock" by The Mothers is similar in style and came before it but I'm hard-pressed to think of any other predecessors.