#77 The Who, 'Who's Next' (1971)
Previously #28
Following their epic Rock Opera, ‘Tommy’ (#190), The Who found their audience was starting to move on. The Mod Movement was all but gone, their original followers had grown up, gotten jobs and started families. The younger crowd that was coming to see them wanted them to play ‘My Generation’ and smash guitars. Pete Townshend had started work on the follow up, ‘Lifehouse,’ another Rock Opera based in a near-future society where music is banned and the population is forced to live indoors in Government-controlled suits. Wait a second… does this sound eerily familiar? A rebel manages to illegally broadcast music into the suits, slowing people to free themselves. Townshend started finding himself disillusioned with the project and eventually abandoned it, putting him on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The stress caused in-fighting within The Who and according to Roger Daltrey, they “were never nearer to breaking up.” Townshend would gather 8 of the best songs from ‘Lifehouse,’ add one more, John Entwistle’s ‘My Wife’ and that became ‘Who’s Next.’
Starting with the sounds of a futuristic new instrument, the synthesizer, ‘Baba O’Riley,’ a song about a teenage wasteland and a duet between Daltrey and Townshend, would go on to become one of the band’s signature songs. The record, unlike their previous, does not feature a cohesive storyline and it just a group of vaguely unconnected songs together. Into ‘Bargain,’ which has one of my favourite choruses by The Who. ‘The Song Is Over’ is a bit of a mini opera in itself featuring multiple elements. ‘Behind Blue Eyes,’ a song completely different to anything they’d done before, is one of The Who’s best and most enduring songs, later introduced to Gen X by Limp Bizkit, who had a hit with it in the early 2000s. But it’s the last track on the album that really brings it altogether and reminds us how great this band really is. Arguably their most popular song, or at least amongst their most popular is ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ Often played as the last song in their set, this was the last song Keith Moon would play live with them before his death. The song was also later used as the theme song for ‘CSI Miami’ in the early 2000s (there seemed to be a renaissance for The Who at the turn of the century). For me, ‘Who’s Next’ is The Who’s most “pop” and most accessible. It’s a refreshing change of format from their usual Rock Operas.
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