Although The Who released their first album “My Generation” in 1965, a few years after bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, they were part of the “British Invasion”, when bands from the United Kingdom conquered the North American market and the rest of the world with their songs. Formed by Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and John Entwistle, the band maintained the same line-up for 14 years until the tragic death of the drummer Keith Moon in 1978 at the age of 32.
After that the band decided to continue and invited the former Small Faces and Faces drummer Kenney Jones to occupy Moon’s post. Although that era of the band, which resulted in two studio albums, isn’t loved by many fans, Roger Daltrey once revealed that one song composed in the early 80s is one of his favorite ones from The Who.
The Who song that Roger Daltrey said is one of his favorites
The drummer Kenney Jones joined The Who in the same year Moon passed away. But their first album with the new member only was released in 1981. Called “Face Dances”, the album had the track “You Better You Bet”, which Roger Daltrey told Uncut magazine in 2001 that is one of his favorite songs from the group.
“A wonderful, wonderful song. The way the vocal bounces, it always reminds me of Elvis. But it was a difficult time, yeah. The Moon carry-on was much harder than carrying on after John, because we’re more mature now.”
“I hate going over this but, in retrospect, we did make the wrong choice of drummers. Kenney Jones – don’t get me wrong, a fantastic drummer – but he completely threw the chemistry of the band. It just didn’t work; the spark plug was missing from the engine.”
He continued:
“The first tour Kenney did with us, though, he was absolutely fucking brilliant. But after that he settled into what he knew, which was his Faces-type drumming, which doesn’t work with The Who. In some ways I’d like to go back and re-record a lot of the songs on Face Dances. But ‘You Better, You Bet’ is still one of my favorite songs of all,” Roger Daltrey said.
Written by Pete Townshend, the band’s main songwriter, the song was also released as a single at the time. It reached number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, being the last single by the band to appear among the Top 20. Also was their last single to appear among the Top 10 of the United Kingdom Singles chart. Besides DEminencealtrey, Entwistle, Townshend and Kenney Jones, the song also had the keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick.
Besides “Face Dances”, The Who recorded one more album with Jones. Called “It’s Hard” (1982), it was the last album the British band released in 20th century. That album had the hit “EminenceFront”, which had Pete Townshend as the lead vocalist.
The Who would only release a new studio album in 2006. Called “Endless Wire”, it was the first one without the bassist John Entwistle who passed away in 2002 at the age of 57. Their most recent record is “Who”, released in 2019.
According to the setlist database website Setlist FM, “You Better You Bet” occupies the position number 14 on the list of the songs that The Who performed the most in their career. The track was played more than 400 times live. It’s a 100 times more than songs like “The Seeker”, “Join Together” and ‘Bargain”, for example.