I love listening to The Who. Heavy metal band, definitely not. The Who was an excellent rock and roll back with quite a few hit songs. I put them with The Birds, The Kinks, etc.
But Heavy Metal? I’ll leave that to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and a few others.
The Yardbirds and Cream................
I agree. The who is a second tier rock band on the list of all-time rock bands. They had some good hits, they are enduring, but I never thought they were great. However, music is subjective.
Yeah agree with that.
Townsend was foremost a great song writer. He was also a showman if you like that sort of thing. Guitar solos was really not his thing.
Townsend was an underrated singer. He handed the band a demo of Quadrophenia where he played and sang it all. Stunning.
Ozzie and Dio were heavy metal among others. The Who weren’t.