Anyway Anyhow Anywhere - Matt kent and Andy Neill

Anyway Anyhow Anywhere - The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958 - 1978, Matt Kent / Andy Neill


2002, Freidman Fairfax
ISBN 1-58663-591-3

Probably the definitive book on the Who up to 1978, great photos and interesting text, renders most other general biographies about The Who obsolete. Version shown is the US version which had a better cover than the UK version.

This has since been reissued twice, First as a 12x12 paperback with updated text, then as a smaller paperback. For me the larger format is certainly the better option.

For my money, if you only want one book on The Who this is the one, especially one of the larger editions.

I will where I can include reviews of the books rather than just my opinions.


Nigel Williamson, Uncut, 4 star.

Maximum detail with a Daltrey foreword admitting even he never knew half this stuff.
Books that trace a band’s history through a day-by-day chronology are really for rock anthropologists only. But hidden within the tedious listings of provincial gigs, release dates and chart peaks can lie an instructive story.

Neill and Kent’s research finds The Who on 23/01/66 playing the Adelphi Ballroom, West Bromich, followed 3 hours later by a gig at Smethwick Baths. We’re still firmly in the era of beat groups slopping up and down the M1 playing crappy halls twice a night. Yet by the end of 66 The Who are sharing an all-nighter at the Roundhouse with Pink Floyd called ‘Psychedelicmania. Somewhere in-between rock music had changed forever.

At the same time nothing had changed at all. Into 1967 and the diary reveals three weeks after playing the Monterey Rock Festival they’re supporting middle America as support for Herman’s Hermits. Even their Woodstock performance was sandwiched by gigs in Worthing and Shrewsbury the same week.

Reading between the datelines makes for a fascinating social and cultural history. Add many previously unpublished pictures and items of rare memorabilia and the book becomes indispensable.



Mark Blake, Q, 4 stars
(Reviewed with Maximum Who and Maximum RnB)

No John Entwistle jokes please, but spare a thought for The Who widows tackling bailiffs and unfed children after the fan in their life splashes out for all these books. Maximum Who alone will break the bank, but all three have much to recommend them.

Firstly the diary style approach of Anyway Anyhow Anywhere with forewords from Who frontman Roger Daltrey and former co manager Chris Stamp delivers a fascinating day by day account of the bands history up until drummer Keith Moon’s death in 1978. Want to know what date they supported freddie and The Dreamers at the Grand Ballroom in Broadstairs? Its all here.



Jon Hotten Classic Rock 5 star
(reviewed jointly with Keith Moon: A Personal Portrait)

Neill and Kent’s hefty Anyway Anyhow anywhere is a luxurious chronicle of the years 1958 - 1978 and weaves history with some superb photography.

In his foreword Roger Daltrey writes ‘It never ceases to amaze me how four young prats with such divers personalities ever came to be in the same band’. But thank the lord they did.



Record Collector, Chris Charlesworth

Perhaps because of Pete townshend’s own literary aspirations, The Who have been unusually well served by biographers and chroniclers. From the first Gary Herman’s The Who (Studio Vista 1971) to the latest Andy Neill and Matt Kent’s Anyway Anyhow Anywhere; The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958 - 1978 (Barnes and Noble 2002) the standards has been generally high and occasionally awesome.

Into this rarefied category which includes classics like Dave Marsh’s Hope I Die Before I Get Old, and Tony Fletchers Dear Boy, we must know welcom Neill and Kent’s chronicle which renders all other Who chronicles redundant at a stroke. It is to The Who what Mark Lewisohns Complete Beatles Chronicle was to the fab four, with the added attraction of scores of colour photographs and a creatively superior design.

Like all the best rock chronologies Anyway Anyhow Anywhere is clearly a labour of love. Neill and Kent might have glanced at previous Who diaries but trusting nothing and no one, they started from scratch, spending somee 5 years researching and confirming everything for themselves to build up a massive and relentlessly accurate 304 page dossier that recounts everything of note in The Whos career, from the initial stirrings as the Detours to the death of Keith Moon. Along the way they’ve unearthed a wealth of previously unrecorded trivia, like details of the Detours 1963 demo session, Keith’s first serious band (Mark Twain and the Strangers) and information gleaned from their original booking agent Bob Druce’s personal diaries.

As I point out elsewhere in this issue, The Who worked their butts off in the 60s, clocking up anywhere between 250 and 300 gigs per year in 1965 and 1966 alone. They did this because they needed the money, not least to fund their notoriously casual attitude towards instrument maintenance, and it turned them into a well drilled fighting machine capable of taking on the world. Chronicle leads the reader through all this, year by year, day by day, and many of the precisely captioned photographs are either here for the first time or are so rare it feels like that.

Opening with prefaces by both Roger Daltrey and The Whos early co manager Chris Stamp, each year in Chronicle is introduced by an overview of The Who’s career and place I the scheme of all things rock and pop. There is much to be learned for the first time, especially within the year 1964, when the band not only changed their name from the detours to The Who, then The High Numbers and back to The Who again, but also gained and lost an acting manager (Helmut Gorden), a publicist (Pete Meaden) a drummer 9Doug Sandem replaced by the irrepressible Keith Moon), released a record (Zoot Suit) unsuccessfully auditioned for Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham appeared on TV for the first time (as The High Numbers) gained proper management (the unlikely team of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp) and a diasterous recording deal (with independent producer Shel Talmy).

In some respects there is a replication of information particularly from the bands later years, previously documented in The Who Concert File by Joe McMichael and Jack Lyons, though many of the mistakes or omissions in that particular book have been rectified here. The only quibble I have is that in placing text over artwork, the designers have occasionally rendered background news clippings somewhat difficult to read.

But these are minor complaints in what will doubtless stand for all time as the definitive record of Shepherd’s Bush finest.