Our Kind of Spirituals, No. 62: The Who, “I’m One”

In the Who show at the Barclays Center the other night, “I’m One” stood out as fresher than anything else Pete and Roger played, and at the same time as more permanent – more than “My Generation” or “Pinball Wizard” or “Baba O'Riley” or “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

I’ve had it in the mind’s ear since then, hearing it, for the first time, as a country song – akin to the country songs the Who’s London counterparts the Kinks were doing on Muswell Hillbillies and other records in those years.

Hearing it as the answer to the question “Why did people find Quadrophenia so confusing?”  Here’s why: it was confusing because it was supposedly about a kid who was double-schizophrenic, inwardly divided four ways – quadrophenic — but its strongest song is about a young man’s strong sense of himself and his inner unity.      

Hearing it as a kind of explanation of why so many artists’ personal lives are such a mess.   (Pete Townshend’s certainly was at the time.)  Here’s why: they’re finding, or maintaining, an inner unity through their art (“I’m One”) and this crowds out the quest for unity and order in their lives.

Hearing it as a spiritual.  More than Townshend’s avowedly spiritual songs – the ones inspired by Meher Baba and directed at God, or a god – this one touches the poles of confusion and order, vulnerability and strength, that are the basis for so much that we call spiritual.