The story behind The Who's I Can't Explain: who and what inspired the single?

15 January 2026, 17:39 | Updated: 15 January 2026, 18:18

The Who pose for a group portrait in London in 1965. Picture: The Visualeyes Archive/Redferns/Getty

By Jenny Mensah

The Who's I Can't Explain single was released in the UK on 15th January 1965, but how much do you know about the band's classic track?

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This year marks a whopping 61 years since The Who's I Can't Explain was released.

Spawned in the UK on 15th January 1965, the song was the first track to be released under the band's name, kick-starting their career and preceding a string of hits, including My Generation, Substitute and I Can See For Miles.

The song has stood the test of time, but how much do you know about I Can't Explain and what inspired the track?

Here's I Can't Explain explained with trivia below...

The Who - I Can't Explain

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I Can't Explain wasn't the The Who's first single, but it was the first under their band name

Written by Pete Townshend, the song was technically the band's second single release, but it was their first under The Who name.
It was preceded by the double A side Zoot Suit/I'm the Face - which was released in 1964 under the name the High Numbers.

The High Numbers - Zoot Suit
It came out in the US before the UK.. but it charted better here

I Can't Explain was released first in the US on 19th December 1964 by Decca, before it was given an outing on 15th January 1965 via Brunswick. Despite its earlier release in the States, it only reached number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100, but spent a total of 13 weeks in the UK charts, peaking at number 8.
I Can't Explain is inspired by The Kinks' All Day and All of the Night

The Kinks - All Day And All Of The Night (Official Audio)

Both Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have talked about the similarities between I Can't Explain and The Kinks hit All Day and All of the Night. The songs even had the same producer working on them; Shel Talmy- who was known for encouraging a more prominent, raw guitar sound.
Townshend himself described the song as inspired by their contemporaries, noting in the liner notes: "It can't be beat for straightforward Kink copying."
Speaking to Q Magazine in 1994, Daltry said: "We already knew Pete could write songs, but it never seemed a necessity in those days to have your own stuff because there was this wealth of untapped music that we could get hold of from America. But then bands like the Kinks started to make it, and they were probably the biggest influence on us – they were certainly a huge influence on Pete, and he wrote 'I Can't Explain', not as a direct copy, but certainly it's very derivative of Kinks music".
And they weren't the only ones who realised there were similarities either. Ray Davies of The Kinks - who had also released You Really Got Me in the summer of 1964 - allegedly remarked: "cheeky buggers" when hearing the single.
I Can't Explain is about love, drugs and music...

Townshend described the hit as "a song, written by some 18-year-old kid, about the fact that he can't tell his girlfriend he loves her because he's taken too many Dexedrine tablets." The amphetamines, which were commonly known as Dexys, were misused at the time by those in the counterculture and feature heavily in the film Quadrophenia.
Despite it sounding like a love song, both Townshend and Daltrey have also discussed I Can't Explain being about the indescribable feeling brought about by music or indeed songwriting itself.
In his autobiography Who I Am, Townshend recalls coming up with the song after locking himself in his bedroom and listening to the likes of Bob Dylan, Charles Mingus, John Lee Hooker and Booker T. & the M.G.'s for inspiration. When he tried to summarise the feelings caused by the music, the phase "I can't explain" came to mind...
Daltrey affirmed in a conversation with Uncut that the song was more of a love letter to rock 'n' roll: "Well, it’s that thing – ‘I got a feeling inside, I can’t explain’ – it’s rock n’ roll. The more we try to explain it, the more we crawl up our own arses and disappear!
"I was very proud of that record. That was us, y’know – it was an original song by Pete and it captured that energy and that testosterone that we had in those days."
A young Jimmy Page contributed guitar on sessions for the single

Young guitarist Jimmy Page at a London recording studio in 1965. Picture: Alamy

As the story goes, when the band turned up to the studio to record the track, their producer Shel Talmy was sitting with a young, pre-Led Zep, Jimmy Page, "whose job it was to play something behind Pete's riff".
"You can hardly hear me, to be honest, because his playing was so powerful, he reminisced to Uncut magazine. "I also played a bit on the B-side, Bald Headed Woman. That session really impressed on me the part of a well-drilled rock band.”
He gushed: "I’d seen them at the Marquee. To be a kid, in the room, right there in the middle of the sound Pete, John and Keith created, was phenomenal."
Though there's some back and forth over whether page ended up contributing lead or rhythm guitar on the single, his version is said to have not ended up on the final cut of the track. However, he is certainly noted by the band as being part of the folklore of the single.
Its title lost (and found) its 'I' in 1968...

The song fell foul of a misprinted re-release in 1968, meaning a series of singles were simply called Can't Explain. However, these were soon recalled with the song returning to its correct title for future releases.

The Who's I Can't Explain single. Picture: Neil Baylis/Alamy
I Can't Explain has pretty famous covers

I Can't Explain (2015 Remaster)

The song has been given the cover treatment by the likes of the Scorpions in 1989, The Sweet in 1971 and David Bowie for his 1973 covers album, Pin Ups.