You Better You Bet Don't Let Go The Coat Another Tricky Day The Who

The Who Album: Face Dances (1981)

Face Dances was originally released in the UK on 16 March 1981 (Polydor 2302 106 WHOD 5037) and as a remastered CD in 1997 (Polydor 537 695-2). It was reissued on heavyweight vinyl in 2012 (Polydor 3715712).

It was released simultaneously in the US by Warner Bros (WB HS 3516) and as a CD (WB 3516-2), later reissued by MCA (MCAD 25-25987, MFSL 1-115). It is currently available as a remixed and remastered CD (MCA MCAD-11634) issued in 1997.

After the death of Keith Moon, The Who re-grouped with Kenney Jones on drums and, initially, concentrated on live work. The new look Who launched themselves in a barrage of publicity, playing their first concert at London’s Rainbow Theatre on 2 May 1979. It wasn’t until over a year later that work began on Face Dances. Aside from the arrival of Kenney Jones, there were other changes in the traditional Who modus operandi: John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick played keyboards on stage and on some of the newer numbers Roger played guitar on stage for the first time since the days of The Detours in 1962.

The album was originally to be titled The Who, but the name Face Dances replaced it just before release. The phrase was inspired by a friend of Pete Townshend's who was rhythmically moving a match between her teeth, an action that Townshend jokingly termed "face dances". This incident is described in the first verse of Townshend's song "Face Dances, Pt. 2". He later realised that he had been inspired by the Face Dancers in Frank Herbert's Dune series: "It was only later that someone pointed out to me that in the Dune trilogy there are a group of characters called 'face dancers,' sort of like chameleons; they can change completely for special purposes. That must have stuck in my head because I really loved the first one."

"You Better You Bet" was the first single released from the album; its music video was one of the first music videos aired on MTV in 1981, and was the first to be repeated on the channel. "Don't Let Go the Coat" was the second single to be released from the album, and it also had its own music video. While a video was shot for "Another Tricky Day", the song was not released as a single commercially but it was a US Album Rock Top 10 track.

You Better You Bet is a love song written from the perspective of a guy who drinks and smokes too much. He and his girl have a clever rapport: when he tells her he loves her, she says, "You better."

Pete Townshend wrote it "over several weeks of clubbing and partying" while the still-married guitarist was dating a younger woman. He said: "I wanted it to be a great song, because the girl I wrote it for is one of the best people on the planet."

This was also the first Who single recorded with drummer Kenney Jones, who had replaced Keith Moon after his death three years earlier. Speaking to Uncut magazine in 2001, lead singer Roger Daltrey commented: "A wonderful, wonderful song. The way the vocal bounces, it always reminds me of Elvis. But it was a difficult time, yeah. The Moon carry-on was much harder than carrying on after John, because we're more mature now. I hate going over this but, in retrospect, we did make the wrong choice of drummers. Kenney Jones – don't get me wrong, a fantastic drummer – but he completely threw the chemistry of the band. It just didn't work; the spark plug was missing from the engine."

"The first tour Kenney did with us, though, he was absolutely f--king brilliant," Daltrey added. "But after that he settled into what he knew, which was his Faces-type drumming, which doesn't work with The Who. In some ways I'd like to go back and re-record a lot of the songs on Face Dances, but 'You Better, You Bet' is still one of my favorite songs of all."

The lyric, "I drunk my self blind to the sound of old T-Rex," refers to the '60s/'70s British glam rock band T-Rex, fronted by Marc Bolan.

The lead single from The Who's Face Dances album, this was the last single by the band that reached the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Top 10 in the UK.

The keyboard line came from a Yamaha E70 organ Pete Townshend played using the Auto Arpeggio setting. He used the same setup to create the keyboard riff in "Eminence Front."