The Who have dropped “Imagine A Man,” the latest teaser from their new live set, The Who With Orchestra Live At Wembley. The collection will be issued as a two-CD/Blu-ray or three-LP set on March 31st.
The fan favorite, deep cut is but one of the band’s emotional highlights from 1975’s The Who By Numbers — and one in which the Who had never performed live until their recent live dates.
In 1977, Pete Townshend explained that the personal nature of songs like “Imagine A Man” and the rest of The Who By Numbers kept the band’s arrangements far more basic and bare-bones than Quadrophenia and Who’s Next: “I felt very doubtful about what I was doing when we were doin’ Who By Numbers. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing as a musician and a composer was right for the Who and I thought the only way to really find me feet again was to go back to basics in a way. And the songs on Who By Numbers were written with me stoned out of me brain in me living room, I’m afraid to say, y’know, cryin’ me eyes out, y’know? Keeping well away from things like synthesizers.”
A while back, Roger Daltrey maintained that he and Pete Townshend have an open mind about performing lesser-known fan favorites: “We are going to revisit all the stuff and see if we can re-approach things that we passed over years and years ago. We’ve done it with a few tracks, we intend to go on with more. But the reasons that things are usually really obscure is that they are really unworkable on stage. But we’ll see. We’re trying.”
