Roger Daltrey Vocals 
John Entwistle Bass Guitar and Vocals 
Kenney Jones Drums 
Pete Townshend Guitar, Keyboards and Vocals

Bill Jacklin

Rostrum camera photography by Paul Hutchings 
Canvases made by Jim Moyes Compendium of Working Possibilities 
Paint Box by Clive Barker [NOT the author of Hellraiser. This Clive Barker was a sculptor in the British pop art movement of the 1960's as were many of the other contributors to this album's cover.  An odd coincidence as Pete claimed in 1965 that The Who were part of that art movement.] 
Peter Blake would like to thank Chrissy, June Andrews and Chris Chappel.

Pete would like to thank Chris Ludwinski at Eel Pie, Soho, Ken Deane at Warner Bros. Studios, Los Angeles, Atlantic Studios, New York, John Walls at Air London for help with the demos, Billy Nicholls for help with the backing vocals and also thanks to Rabbit [John Bundrick] for help and inspiration on 'Another Tricky Day'. Thanks Mo - it's great to be home.

Tom Phillips

Colin Self of Norwich

Face Dances was originally released as Polydor 2302 106 (WHOD 5073) on March 6, 1981. It reached #2 in the U.K. It was beaten at the top of the charts by Adam And The Ants' Kings Of The Wild Frontier which, according to Richard Barnes, sold nine more copies! 
Entered the Billboard charts in the U.S. as Warner Bros. WB HS 3516 on April 4, 1981; it reached #4. The chart topper at the time was Styx's Paradise Theater. 
Face Dances was awarded platinum status (1 million sold) on September 18, 1981.

The original vinyl pressings of Face Dances included a full color poster of the cover art.

The album's original title was simply The Who. Face Dances was a last minute substitution. Pete Townshend: "There was a girl that I knew and she was sitting looking in the mirror and she had a match between her teeth [which she was moving to a beat] while she was doing her eyes. I said to her 'face dances' and she just laughed. It was only later that someone pointed out to me that in the Dune trilogy there are a group of characters called 'face dancers,' sort of like chameleons; they can change completely for special purposes. That must have stuck in my head because I really loved the first one." "Face Dances, Part Two," which appears on Pete's All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, was written after the Face Dances album was recorded and was never offered to The Who.

Richard Hamilton

Michael Andrews

Face Dances began with an auspicious $12 million contract by The Who to record three albums with a new label, Warner Bros., signed in December 1979 or January 1980. Shortly before, Pete had also signed a handsome contract with Atlantic Records to record as a solo artist. Never the most prolific of writers, Pete now found himself having to supply songs for both his band and himself. In addition Pete was itching to take the band in a different musical direction. Pete Townshend: "Empty Glass wasn't particularly avant-garde, but it was interesting to me because I was able to do the kind of variety of material that The Who used to do. On our first two albums we did stuff that ranged from comedy songs through tender love ballads to just general insanity. Having enjoyed it as a solo performer I thought why can't the band do it?"

Pete was not the only one with troubles at home. Both John's and Kenney's marriages were coming to an end around the time of the recording of Face Dances and both were putting away a lot of booze. Kenney had had a successful run in 1979 as Keith Moon's replacement being widely praised by critics and Who fans alike (a fact often forgotten now) but, except for some unbilled tracks on the Quadrophenia Soundtrack, he had yet to record new songs in the studio with the band. Of the four only Roger was then on the ascendancy, having just completed his personal film McVicar which promised to give him an alternative to being The Who's front man.

Allen Jones

David Inshaw

The recording of the album, which was listed in The Who's fan club newsletter as beginning on February 18, 1980 (this may have been the date when the first batch of demos was played for the band) was helmed by American producer Bill Szymczyk at Odyssey Studios, London. Szymczyk was then known primarily as the producer of The Eagles, a very successful band commercially but one with a very different sound from The Who. He was probably recommended to Pete by his friend and then Eagles' guitarist Joe Walsh. John Entwistle: "He recorded everything in groups of three. I don't like playing a backing track too many times. We'd get a really good one and he'd say 'Give me three more exactly the same'. I lost a lot of confidence worrying about being brainwashed by the song, so I didn't play as loosely as I might have." If there was any recording in February or March it was soon interrupted by a Spring tour of Europe and North America (March 26-May 7) followed by another Summer tour of North America (June 18-July 16).

Although the album sold well, The Who agreed that Face Dances was their least successful studio effort. Pete Townshend: "It was ineffective; it didn't work. I think the songs weren't right for the band. I can probably get more introspective and examine myself more on [my solo] records than anybody else I know and get away with it. I can get all curled up in myself and people don't mind too much. Can't do that with The Who." Roger Daltrey: "I quite like the material on Face Dances -- I think Pete did a great job on the material -- but the band failed him for the first time." John Entwistle: "Pete didn't write the guitar solos into his songs and keyboards took a much stronger part than guitar. We tended to use keyboards whether or not the song needed it. The guitar was the instrument that suffered. When we looked back at the end the only two strong guitar songs were my two."

David Hockney

You Better You Bet 5'36 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI

Recorded November 4, 1980.

Pete Townshend: "'You Better You Bet' was a very spontaneous lyric. A fairly spontaneous, peppy song; it's a pop song, really, it's just a pop song."

T-Rex, the group headed by Marc Bolan, started out as John's Children which was one of the first groups signed to The Who's Track Records. They often opened for The Who in the mid-late 1960's. The arpeggio synth track is performed on a Yamaha E70 home organ. Released as a single in the U.K. February 27, 1981 backed with "The Quiet One". It reached #9. In the U.S., the single hit the Billboard charts on March 21, 1981 reaching #18 (#15 in Cash Box). This version, edited to 3'58, was The Who's last Top Twenty single. Pete recorded the original demo of the song in March 1980. It later appeared on his solo album Another Scoop.

Don't Let Go The Coat 3'43 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI

Pete Townshend: "I wrote this one in London. I was thinking about all the things you cling onto, and that the most important thing for me at that particular time was to cling to some semblance of a spiritual equipoise. The verses of the song talk about 'things might change' and 'things might explode,' but just as long as you hang onto that thread, that apron string of a real affection and love for the people around you, and for whatever else you're into, God, whatever it is...Mum and Dad!"

Cache Cache 3'57 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI 

Pete Townshend: "A weird kind of song which I wrote to celebrate a wonderful two days I spent living as a tramp in Switzerland. I decided I was going to give up the music business forever, and I got my wallet and passport, and a bottle of brandy, and went off in a town called Berne. Berne is famous for its big brown bears in these cages up in the hills. I spent about sixteen hours walking around, sleeping under trees and all that, and I was thinking 'I don't know if I want to be a tramp now,' but I was drunk enough to decide it would be worthwhile just going and visiting the bears. I don't know whether or not I really wanted to get torn to pieces or not, but I think I was in that frame of mind when I really just did not give a damn.

Clive Barker

R. B. Kitaj

The Quiet One 3'09 
(John Entwistle) © 1981 Hot Red Music, BMI

John Entwistle: "It's me trying to explain that I'm not really quiet. I started off being quiet and that's the pigeon hole I've been stuck in all these years. It started when I heard Kenney playing a drum riff and I thought 'that would be really great for a song and give Kenney a chance to play that on stage.' So I got Kenney to put down about three minutes of that and I worked along with it and came up with the chorus of 'A Quiet One.'  I wrote 'Quiet One' especially to replace 'My Wife' onstage.  I had gotten tired of singing that and 'Boris The Spider.'"

"A Quiet One" also appeared on the b-side of "You Better You Bet". A live version from 1982 appears on the 1997 Face Dances CD bonus tracks (see below). Another 1982 performance is on the 1983 Who Rocks America video.

How Can You Do It Alone 5'26 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI 
Pete Townshend: "I was actually going up Holland Park Road and I wanted a cigarette, I didn't have a light and it was about two in the morning, and this guy came out of the station and I asked him for a light and he looked very afraid and he stepped back and I said 'listen, all I want is a light from your cigarette' and he said 'Oh, all right'. He opened his coat up and got a lighter out and before he'd known what he'd done, he was completely naked underneath, with the trousers and the string, he was a flasher! He'd obviously just come off the tube doing a bit of flashing. He saw that I saw that he was naked and that I knew what he was up to. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine and the shame in his face!

Howard Hodgkin

Patrick Caulfield

Daily Records 3'27 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI

Pete Townshend: "It was basically about the music drug. The fact that music does becomes like a drug and I can't get enough of it. It's not a testament to spending endless hours in smoky recording studios, it's about the business of making records. When I say music I mean songwriting." 
One the album's best tracks with some of Kenney's best drumming and a searing self-indictment by Pete buried under a song about the joys of demo-ing. Pete's unimpressed little girls, Emma and Aminta, were 11 and 9 at the time this song was written. This track is 3'23 on the 1997 remix CD.

You 4'30 
(John Entwistle) © 1981 Hot Red Music, BMI

Kenney Jones: "When I first joined, John and I used to go down to Shepperton and just work out and have a play. He was working on this song and trying to arrange it, we both sort of arranged it together. I just loved it so much, he was going to put it on his solo album, and I said 'I think that's a definite Who song. You can't do that.' I made him sit on it for a year until we actually started recording. I'm so pleased I did it is definitely one of those exciting songs."

Also released on the B-side of the "Don't Let Go The Coat" single. Not performed live by The Who but it has been played by John's solo bands. This track is 4'40 on the 1997 remix CD.

Peter Blake

Joe Tilson

I Like Nightmares 3'09 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI

 
From the 1997 CD liner notes: "This previously unreleased song was worked on during the sessions for Face Dances but was left off the final recording."

Somebody Saved Me 5'31 
(Pete Townshend) © 1981 Towser Tunes, Inc., administered by Longitude Music Co., BMI

Pete Townshend: "I used to get suicidal about broken relationships with people I didn't even like. I always kind of thought, well, 'This is God's grace'. He fixed it up so I told this girl [with whom Pete was in love with in art school] so many lies that I couldn't get close to her. She went off with another guy and a couple of weeks later she dropped him and went back with her boyfriend. If she'd dropped me the way she dropped him, I would have killed myself. I often used to survive things simply by virtue of the fact that I badly mishandled them."

Patrick Procktor

David Tindle

The Quiet One (Live) 4'28 
(John Entwistle) © 1981 Hot Red Music, BMI

Recorded live at Shea Stadium in New York City October 13, 1982. This show was also filmed and "Love Reign O'er Me" from that night appears on the 30 Years Of Maximum R&B video.