Self-Deprecation of the Aging Horndog
Ed Park + The Who: 'You Better You Bet' + Taping pop from Buffalo AM radio in 1981 + MindMeld 2052
Recent Pulitzer finalist Ed Park goes on the BBC’s ‘Desert Island Discs,’ circa 2052, to obsess — and obsess and obsess, over his hosts objections — about a neglected Who song from 1981.
I depend on income from writing and editing to pay my bills. Paid subscriptions — $5 (the cost of a beer or pastry!) per month, $50 per year — are what keep Tracks going. Consider upgrading. If you already have: thank you!
From Desert Island Discs (BBC), August 2052
Desert Island Discs: …and of the seven songs you’ve selected to take with you to the desert island — the seven pivotal songs from your life — which is the one you would run to save when the tide comes in to wash them all away?
Ed Park: I can’t remember — what were they again? Forgive me.
DID: It’s quite an eclectic list, Mr. Park. “And Your Bird Can Sing,” Brahms’ first piano trio, “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” “Jukebox Hero,” “Mama Said Knock You Out,” the theme from Three’s Company, and “You Better You Bet.”
EP: I better what?
DID: That’s the title — the 1981 song by the Who.
EP: Who?
DID: Yes, exactly. A song by the Who, written by Pete Townshend, the guitarist.
EP: Of course, of course. Well, I had better go with that one, then.
DID: [pause] Are you sure? You don’t have to.
EP: Positive. I was not yet 11 when that song came out, in the spring of ’81. Is that fifth grade? I’d only just started listening to pop music. I knew nothing — my parents didn’t listen to anything besides classical, I had no older sibling to guide me. I would tune into AM stations at first, heard songs like “Morning Train,” “Angel of the Morning,” “Bette Davis Eyes.” I didn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t even really know what these musicians looked like. No internet, of course.
DID: Inter…?
EP: It was like this global electronic delivery system that was banned in… well, before your time.
DID: This was the predecessor to MindMeld?
EP: Yes, much earlier than MindMeld… In any case, dig if you will the picture of young Ed, hungry for visuals. Videos weren’t a thing yet. I’d watch that show Solid Gold. MTV was right around the corner, but our house wouldn’t get cable for a while — in fact I remember watching it for the very first time at a friend’s house around Christmas of ’81. All I had at home was the sound coming out of this small radio, about the size of a tissue box. The cube kind, not the brick kind. I started keeping a tape recorder nearby—
DID: You already told us about the radio earlier in the show.
EP: Right! I didn’t know the Who from the Guess Who, but once “You Better You Bet” started I knew I was a goner. It was full of lyrics and references I wouldn’t get for years — indeed decades. Your dog keeps licking my nose, and chewing up all those letters. What letters? I showed up late one night with a neon light for a visa. A visa — huh? I love to hear you say my name especially when you say yes. Saucy! You welcome me with open arms —and open legs. Sauci-er, am I right? I had no idea what any of it meant. But I felt the magic and the mystery, the grand gestures and the cheeky humor in Roger Daltrey’s delivery.
DID: And now we’d like to offer you the choice of one luxury item to bring along with you to the desert Isla—
EP: My favourite line, which has popped into my head with disturbing regularity over the ages, is I know I’ve been wearing crazy clothes — and I look pretty crappy sometimes! The self-deprecation of this aging horndog! Daltrey was around 37 then.
DID: I’m afraid we’re—
EP: But my body feels so good / And I still see the rays of light. It’s like the sunroof opens and all this light pours in. Never mind that I just looked up the lyrics and it’s actually And I still sing a razor line. What does that mean? The singer boasting of his vocal prowess, which is of course a stand-in for his virility!
DID: We really must wrap—
EP: I really must get across how dynamic the song is. It’s not just verse-chorus with a bridge, it’s got like eight distinct parts, in under four minutes. Not a wasted second. Hooks piled on hooks. The percolating ethereal intro, with just Townshend singing a high “You better you better you bet,” comes back later later as the backdrop to the true chorus. It’s kind of like how The Beatles’ “She Loves You” actually begins with that crashing “She loves you” chorus before the first verse, its biggest hook right up front. Ballsy move. In fact, you could say this is the Who’s “She Loves You.”
DID: What… the hell are you talking about.
EP: Energy, man! Pure nitro, as Dr. Reo Symes says in The Dog of the South. I can’t overstate how new pop music was to me.
DID: Ah, that reminds me: You’ve suggested, in your 2023 novel Same Bed Different Dreams, that it was your way of “becoming American.”
EP: [Pause] I don’t think I wrote that.
DID: My mistake — those are from the enhanced-notes function in the MindMeld edition that I consumed intracranially 22 minutes before this interview.
EP: The enhanced notes…
DID: Written by [bleep-bloop noises] the foremost Parkian scholar, Trey Habanero, of the Sorbonne.
EP: In that case — sure, yes — oui. The Who are British, but… I take Trey’s point.
DID: Your parents came from Korea in the ’60s, settling in Buffalo. You were the firstborn, navigating school and so on like any child would. But few kids looked like you. You didn’t have that specifically American cultural grammar, perhaps, that other kids might have had by osmosis. [Pause] I’m quoting Professor Habanero.
EP: Right. He’s certainly done his homework. Turning on the radio was an adventure. It felt faintly forbidden, even though my parents gave me free rein. Later I’d listen to stations like 97 Rock and WPHD 103.3, and then in high school I’d mostly listen to CFNY out of Toronto, a new wave station, 102.1, or the local college channel, WBNY. But going back to those AM pop station days — I miss how malleable I was. I can see him now, the Ed of yore, tuning in, holding the tape recorder up to this small speaker shaped like the top of a salt shaker. The Little River Band! "Rapture"! Gary U.S. Bonds! The theme from Endless Love! There was so much I didn’t know. Pop changed my life.
DID: How so?
EP: It made me dumber! Anyway, after the first chorus outro, we go to the bridge! The thudding staccato “You better love me! All the time now!” Then there’s a measure of arpeggio which I would argue is part seven — a nourishing wordless breather before we plunge back in. We get a verse, chorus number two, then a key-change chorus, and then a sudden slow down for what I would call a distinct chorus outro — distinct, that is, from the previous chorus outro. It’s as if Daltrey’s frothing, hilarious, unstoppable id has to finally come to a rest.
DID: Are you done? Have we come to a rest?
EP: [Pause] One more thing.
DID: Oh God.
EP: In the first verse, he sings, I got your body right now on my mind / but I drunk myself blind to the sound of old T. Rex. Cool, right? Middle-school me eventually pieced together that he was alluding to the band T. Rex, not the iconic dinosaur. This, then, was a shoutout from the start of the ’80s, when the Who’s originality is on the wane, to a group that had vanished with the death of its driving force, Marc Bolan, in ’77. But guess what I didn’t realize till I was in my fifties?
DID: Tell me.
EP: He — Roger Daltrey — who of course is singing Pete Townshend’s words — is drinking himself blind to the sound of Bolan’s T. Rex — and ‘Who’s Next’! That’s the lyric! To the sound of old T. Rex and ‘Who’s Next’!
DID: Woah.
EP: It’s not just referential but self-referential. The Who is — are? — talking about their own album from a decade before, when they were at the undisputed height of their powers. This is akin to the Beatles referring to “I Am the Walrus” in the lyrics to “Glass Onion,” except more casual and therefore cooler.
DID: You’re saying this song is superior to “Glass Onion”?
EP: It’s better — you bet! ✹
A hilarious riff on The Who’s final shellacked turd - better than anything Pete wrote in his later days of recherche