'The best book on The Who. Stanfield understands that they were built entirely around opposition - they didn't want to be The Beatles or The Stones; they didn't even want to be The Who most of the time. He smartly states the case for peak Who as transgressive . . . the closest thing to Pop art British music has ever produced.' Bob Stanley, author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop
'With impressive eloquence, A Band with Built-In Hate situates '60s Britain's most volatile and incendiary group at the heart of pop's wild vortex . . . Stanfield digs brilliantly into The Who's transgressions, their up-ending of pop music into art-rock and proto-punk. He can see for miles.' Barney Hoskyns, author of Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion and creator of Rock's Backpages
'Ours is music with built-in hatred.' Pete Townshend
A Band with Built-In Hate pictures The Who from their inception as the Detours in the mid-sixties to the late seventies, post-Quadrophenia. It is a story of ambition and anger, glamour and grime, viewed through the prism of Pop art and the radical levelling of high and low culture that it brought about - a drama that was aggressively performed by the band.
Peter Stanfield lays down a path through the British pop revolution, its attitude and style, as it was uniquely embodied by The Who: first, under the mentorship of arch-mod Peter Meaden, as they learnt their trade in the pubs and halls of suburban London; and then with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two aspiring filmmakers, at the very centre of things in Soho. Guided by contemporary commentators - among them George Melly, Lawrence Alloway and most conspicuously Nik Cohn - Stanfield describes a band driven by belligerence, and of what happened when Townshend, Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle moved from back-room stages to international arenas, from explosive 45s to expansive concept albums. Above all, he tells of how The Who confronted their lost youth as it was echoed in punk.