The Who had started of when there was optimism among working-class youth, who grasped the fact that they had the opportunity to change and develope. 'You never had it so good' said Prime Minister Harold Macmillan back in 1957 when I was twelve, and it just kept on getting better. For the first time in history a whole generation had the economic and educational opportunity to turn their backs to the dead-end factory jobs their parents, who, traumatised by two world wars, had responded by creating a safety blanket of conformity.

In 1964, when the Who had first started moving, we know soon enough who we were working for, and why. Now our audience of working-class young men had dispersed. Many of them were as lost as we were ...
... 'My Generation' was comfertably moving towards their forties, living in middel-class affluence or - disturbingly - in cardboard boxes around the Waterloo area, only half a mile away from London's wealthy West End.