The Who: Who Are You Meaning

Song Released: 1978

Who Are You Lyrics

Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?

I woke up in a Soho doorway
A policeman knew my name
He said "You can go sleep at home tonight
If you...

1. anonymous

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   Jun 24th 2023 !⃝

   This song is most certainly about corporate personhood. We have all been changed into legal fictions with our legal Identities.
   
   It was enabled by a court case way back in 1868 - Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. It gave corporations limited rights of people.
   
   Later through the birth certificate they were able to turn us into corporate persons. They inverted the "equal protection" onto people and they now had the limited human rights of corporations. So when the cop that knew his NAME said, “You can go sleep at home tonight
   If you can get up and walk away”, he meant, if you are smart enough to know who you are, you are free to go. If however you accept the fraudulent legal fiction identity, then you are under my control and must follow corporate policy that applies to persons (corporations, as defined by Blacks Law Dictionary). So who the fuck are you?
   
2. anonymous

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   Jul 16th 2019 !⃝

   To me, it's someone encountering Jesus' love. He saves the sinner and loves this person no matter what. It's a personal interpretation, I understand, as I can really relate to the addict in the song. "I spit out like a sewer hole, yet still receive your kiss..."

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
3. anonymous

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   Sep 24th 2016 !⃝

   "Who Are You" was written about meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols after an awful 13-hour encounter with Allan Klein who, in my personal opinion, is the awesome rock leech-godfather. In one sense the song is more about the demands of new friendship than blood-letting challenge. Roger's aggressive reading of my nihilistic lyric redirected its function by the simple act of singing "Who the fuck are you..." when I had written "Who, who, who are you..." Steve and Paul became real 'mates' of mine in the English sense. We socialized a few times. Got drunk (well, I did) and I have to say to their credit, for a couple of figurehead anarchists, they seemed sincerely concerned about my decaying condition at the time.
   — Pete Townshend
4. anonymous

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   Apr 1st 2015 !⃝

   Inspired and agree by the 1st above interpretation about this gutsy song of Pete Townshend of The Who in seeking a answer in ''Who are you'' by the personal experience he had, with the words sometimes used by down and out Wino's,Alcoholic's,Drug addict's and like The Homeless Man that passed out in sleep on a Soho doorway to be awaken by a Policeman [a God figure] that said to him ''you can go to sleep at home tonight[instead of jail] if you can get up and walk away''. He was empowered to get up staggering away from The Tin Pan alley telling the Policeman[a God figure] who the f--k are you? while going into the underground subway tunnel to find a train to go home. When he gets out looking up and then puking his brains out like a dirty sewer spews it's guts out and asking himself in God this time, who are you,who are you--thinking why He can still receive this drunkin of a man by His Love to straighten up and find out who is he when worlds collide in his mind.
   
   Now after you get saved and sober and still wanna know more about who are you 'cause sometimes we never learn with the loneliness that feels we don't even even exist, until we are ''Born Again in God'' to get to know ourselves better by going back to try to learn something from Sabbath's song in Ozzy being the protagonist imagining being in the mindset of God now asking the question, who are you?, after exposing and revealing the individual [sometimes ourselves as big brother in government] to the death of it's false ego and pride in the loss that it was not so smart after all when it hit the bottom of it's hell to see ourselves for who we are in now, while begging and asking ourselves within our minds as a individual or as a whole going through the transformation in knowing the secret of our soul[s] now in asking again. Who are you now? are you still with Satan, or are you now one with God?
5. oracle

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   Jul 23rd 2012 !⃝

   very possibly a song referencing THE RESURRECTION....
   imagine the policeman as GOD, in this metaphor HE knows Jesus' name and
   raises Him up saying "you can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away"

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