"The Seeker" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by The Who | ||||
B-side | "Here for More" | |||
Released | 21 March 1970 | |||
Format | 7-inch single | |||
Recorded |
|
|||
Genre | ||||
Length | 3:10 | |||
Label | Track | |||
Writer(s) | Pete Townshend | |||
Producer(s) | ||||
The Who singles chronology | ||||
|
"The Seeker" is a song written by Pete Townshend and performed by English rock band The Who, and featured on their 1971 compilation album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.
Around the time of song's release, Townshend explained its meaning in an interview with Rolling Stone:
Quite loosely, "The Seeker" was just a thing about what I call Divine Desperation, or just Desperation. And what it does to people. It just kind of covers a whole area where the guy's being fantastically tough and ruthlessly nasty and he's being incredibly selfish and he's hurting people, wrecking people's homes, abusing his heroes, he's accusing everyone of doing nothing for him and yet at the same time he's making a fairly valid statement, he's getting nowhere, he's doing nothing and the only thing he really can't be sure of is his death, and that at least dead, he's going to get what he wants. He thinks!
"I suppose I like this least of all the stuff", wrote Townshend the following year. "It suffered from being the first thing we did after Tommy, and also from being recorded a few too many times. We did it once at my home studio, then at IBC where we normally worked then with Kit Lambert producing. Then Kit had a tooth pulled, breaking his jaw, and we did it ourselves. The results are impressive. It sounded great in the mosquito-ridden swamp I made it up in, Florida at three in the morning drunk out of my brain with Tom Wright and John Wolff. But that's always where the trouble starts, in the swamp. The alligator turned into an elephant and finally stampeded itself to death on stages around England. I don't think we even got to play it in the States."
This is not entirely true, as the band did perform it for about two weeks on their 1970 American tour. The Who revived the song briefly in 2000 and then extensively starting on the 2006–2007 tour for Endless Wire.