Who's Best Top Ten: Slip Kid (#5)

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Monday means the beginning of a new work week. This Monday means it's only 16 days until JJ returns to normal! Nothing can pick you up like a good song, and for me that's what I'm looking at right now: my favorite songs by The Who. Here's the next song on the list. #5: Slip Kid I mentioned earlier that I don't think Pete Townshend gets enough credit as a songwriter. He's primarily seen as a rock guitar god, but remember, he's also the main songwriter for the band. Here you have "Slip Kid," a song about -- according to Pete -- the not-so-pleasant side of life as a musician ("I'm a soldier at 13....I'm a soldier at 63"). He refers to life in the music business as "the civil war" and promises to "run till my feet are raw." I have no reason to doubt what Townshend says the song is about. In fact, we have a lot of people out there who think they know more about what a song's about than the person who wrote the song (cough-cough the fundamentalist preachers and "Hotel California"). Having said that, though, this is a pretty easy song to take literally instead of metaphorically. I read someone's interpretation of it as referring to "The Troubles" (that "cheerful" euphemism the horrors in Northern Ireland have been given) with soldiers being anywhere from 13 to 63. Personally, I thought about it as a kid going off to college and adulthood ("I've got my clipboard, textbooks, lead me to the station") and the "war" of being a grown-up. Interpretations aside, it's a great song. Slip Kid Written by Pete Townshend From The Who By Numbers, 1975 No easy way to be free: