The Who: I Can't Explain, live and kicking 60 years later

Ian Tasker

On Thursday, February 25, 1965, a new band debuted on Top Of The Pops, featuring in the show’s Tip For The Top slot. Watching television in our flat above Bewlay’s tobacconist shop in Streatham High Road, I was an excitable eight-year-old bouncing up and down alongside my father, who rather bemusedly had been trying to see what all this fuss about ‘pop music’ was about.

My recall of that moment is incredibly vivid and is one of the strongest memories I have of my father, who was to fall victim to cancer, aged just 42, a few months later.

The band was West London’s The Who, and the song – their first single – was I Can’t Explain. I was hooked from the first power chords (E D A E, although I didn’t know anything about guitars then).

Got a feeling inside (Can’t explain)

It's a certain kind (Can’t explain)

I feel hot and cold (Can’t explain)

Yeah, down in my soul, yeah (Can’t explain)

I said (Can’t explain)

I'm feeling good now, yeah, but (Can’t explain)

Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling blue

The things you’ve said, well, maybe they’re true

I'm gettin’ funny dreams again and again

I know what it means, but

Can’t explain

I think it’s love

Try to say it to you

When I feel blue

But I can’t explain (Can’t explain)

Forgive me one more time, now (Can’t explain)

I said I can’t explain, yeah

You drive me out of my mind

Yeah, I’m the worrying kind, babe

I said I can’t explain

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t The Who’s first single – that was Zoot Suit, released under their short-lived Mod-inspired moniker The High Numbers in July, 1964 (they had originally been called The Detours).

I Can’t Explain is typical of the 1960s, a love song but, written by guitarist and songwriter supreme Pete Townshend, it has a definite edge. The man himself describes it as about a guy ‘who can’t tell his girlfriend that he loves her because he’s taken too many Dexedrine tablets’ – so not exactly Cliff Richard singing Summer Holiday.

Although it became one of The Who’s most enduring songs – often the opening number of their live shows – it is very much influenced by another legendary Sixties band, The Kinks. It came hot on the heels of that band’s single You Really Got Me, and Ray Davies, on hearing The Who’s release, allegedly referred to them as ‘cheeky buggers’.

In a later interview with Q Magazine, The Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey could explain: ‘We already knew Pete could write songs, but it never seemed a necessity in those days to have your own stuff because there was this wealth of untapped music that we could get hold of from America. But then bands like The Kinks started to make it, and they were probably the biggest influence on us – they were a huge influence on Pete, and he wrote I Can’t Explain, not as a direct copy, but certainly, it’s very derivative of The Kinks’ music.’

Townshend was even more candid: ‘It can’t be beat for straightforward Kink copying. There is little to say about how I wrote this. It came out of the top of my head when I was 18 and a half.’

I Can’t Explain does, however, capture the raw energy of The Who – Townshend’s powerful rhythm guitar, John Entwistle’s mesmerising up-front bass, Keith Moon’s electrifyingly energetic drumming and Daltrey’s distinctive vocals. It even features Jimmy Page on second guitar, although speaking years later to Uncut magazine he said: ‘You can hardly hear me because his [Townshend’s] playing was so powerful.’

I Can’t Explain peaked at No8 in the UK charts and was quickly followed by Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere (No10), the anthemic My Generation (No2) and, in early 1966, Substitute (No5). The Who were well on their way to rock immortality.

Townshend’s lyrics, all poetic off-the-wall storytelling, often complex, sometimes controversial, always engaging, attracted the ‘art crowd’ of the mid-1960s with one, the French film-maker Alain de Sédouy, describing them in the New Musical Express, the same week they made their TOTP debut, as ‘a logical musical expression of the bewilderment and anarchy of London’s teenagers’. So not quite The Seekers’ I’ll Never Find Another You, which was No1 in the charts that week.

The Who went from strength to strength – with Townshend going on to stretch his songwriting credentials with the rock opera Tommy – and the band arguably reached their zenith with the release in August 1971 of their fifth album, Who’s Next.

My first live experience of the band was a few weeks later, on Saturday, September 18, 1971, at the Goodbye Summer extravaganza at The Oval cricket ground in London, a benefit concert for Bangladesh. I was by now 15 and also among the 40,000 packed into the outfield at the famous old ground was my future wife Jenny (nine years before we actually met). If I remember correctly, I was positioned roughly at square leg.

Topping a bill that also included, among others, Rod Stewart And The Faces, America, Mott The Hoople and Lindisfarne, The Who soon had the ground rocking. Moon closed the innings by battering his drums with a cricket bat during Magic Bus, and the band ended a glorious set with their trademark mass demolition of instruments.

‘As you can see an encore is impossible,’ said compere Rikki Farr as the band exited the debris-strewn stage. An unforgettable night.

The Who at The Oval in 1971. Wearing cricket gear in the background is the co-compere Jeff Dexter whose bat drummer Keith Moon used to batter his drum kit

I Can’t Explain was played – although it was not the opener that night – and the set heavily featured songs from Who’s Next, including a memorable rendition of Won’t Get Fooled Again. The synthesiser opening stunned me, hearing it for the first time.

That Oval set was recorded by the celebrated producer Glyn Johns and has been around as a low-quality bootleg for years but last month, now digitally remastered from the original eight-track tapes, it has been released as an official CD, Live At The Oval. Despite not being of the highest sound quality, it still captures the band at their magical peak.

My brother Jeremy was also at the gig, although having to man a mobile cigarette and refreshment kiosk at the back of the stands for the entire day meant he didn’t really enjoy the full musical experience. I do recall my friends and me piling into his van at the end of the day for a crowded and bumpy lift home to Richmond.

Sixty years after its launch I Can’t Explain nicely bookended the history of The Who when just last week, on October 1, 2025, that first single from 1965 featured as the opening number for what is probably The Who’s last ever performance – at the Acrisure Arena in Thousand Pines, California.

Historically, Townshend and Daltry have not always seen eye to eye over the future of The Who so, fingers crossed, it may not be the absolute end. A final UK gig would surely be a more fitting finale for one of the greatest ever bands.

Who knows?

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