Who's Next
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Who's Next is an album by The Who. It was released on July 31, 1971 in the United States and August 25, 1971 in the United Kingdom.
Considered by many to be The Who's greatest effort, Who's Next has also been named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (#13) and Rolling Stone (#28).
After Lifehouse
The album had its roots in the flotsam of the disastrous Lifehouse project, which Who bandleader Pete Townshend has variously described as intended to be a futuristic rock opera, a live-recorded concept album and as the music for as a scripted film project. The project proved to be intractable on several levels and caused stress within the band as well as a major falling out between Townshend and The Who's producer Kit Lambert. Years later, in the liner notes to the remastered Who's Next CD, Townshend wrote that the failure of the project led him to the verge of a suicidal nervous breakdown.After giving up on the recording some of the Lifehouse tracks in New York, The Who went back into the studio with new producer Glyn Johns and started over. Although the Lifehouse concept was abandoned, scraps of the project remained present in the final album. The introductory line to "Pure and Easy" — which Townshend has described as "the central pivot of Lifehouse" — shows up in the closing bars of "The Song is Over". An early concept for Lifehouse -- feeding personal data from audience members into the controller of an early analog synthesizer to create musical tracks -- was recycled as Townshend used the vital statistics of Meher Baba as random input to generate a backing track on "Baba O'Riley". A primary result of the abandonment of the original project, however, was a newfound freedom: the very absence of an overriding musical theme or storyline (which had been the basis of previous Who projects) allowed the band to concentrate on maximizing the impact of individual tracks.
Arrangement and songs
The album was immediately recognized for its dynamic and unique sound. The album fortuitously fell at a time when great advances had been made in sound engineering over the previous decade, and also shortly after the widespread availability of music synthesizers. The result was a sound that was absolutely stunning at the time, and rather unprecedented in rock music (although disliked by some traditional Who fans of the time). However, as full and brash as the sound is on most of the album there are contrasts with finger-picked acoustic guitar, and Roger Daltrey's swaggering vocals alternate with quieter introspective moments.Townshend used the early synthesizers and modified keyboard sounds in several modes: as a drone effect on several songs, notably "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", and, elsewhere, in a more delicate role as in the introductory notes to "Bargain", or as a playful noisemaker, sounding almost like a boiling teapot on "The Song is Over". Townshend also used an envelope follower to modulate the spectrum of his guitar on "Going Mobile", giving it a distinctive squawking sound that degenerates into a bubbling noise at the end of the song.
The album opened with the innovative "Baba O'Riley", featuring piano by Nicky Hopkins and a violin solo by Dave Arbus. Titled in honor of Townshend's guru Meher Baba and influential minimalist composer Terry Riley (and informally known by its chorus line "Teenage Wasteland"), the track brought together Townshend's experimental synthesizer work and exotic textures with the Who's traditional hard-rock sound. Other signature tracks include the hard-edged ballad "Behind Blue Eyes" and the album's closing song, the epic rock juggernaut "Won't Get Fooled Again".
Cover
The album cover shows a photograph of the band having just urinated on a large concrete piling protruding from a heap of mining refuse; the photo is often seen to be a reference to the monolith discovered on the moon in the film , which had been released only about three years earlier. The featured structure was actually at the Easington District Colliery in County Durham. In 2003, the United States cable television channel VH1 named Who's Next's front cover the 2nd greatest album cover of all time.An earlier cover design had featured photos of grotesquely obese nude females and has been published elsewhere, but never actually appeared on the album. An alternate cover featured drummer Keith Moon dressed in black lingerie, holding a leather whip, and wearing a blonde wig (this image can be found behind the CD tray in the remastered version).
Recognition
Soon after its release, Who's Next was hailed as a commercial and critical success. "With its acoustic guitars and drumless bits, this triumph of hard rock is no more a pure hard rock album than Tommy," wrote Robert Christgau in his Consumer Guide column. "It's got more juice than Live at Leeds. And...it uses the synthesizer to vary the power trio format, not to art things up. Given Peter Townshend's sharpness and compassion, even his out-front political disengagement - 'I don't need to fight' - seems positive. The real theme, I think, is 'getting in tune to the straight and narrow,' and comes naturally to someone who's devoted a whole LP to the strictures of hit radio. Another sign of growth: the love songs." Christgau gave the album an 'A' rating.When the first-ever Pazz & Jop Critics Poll was held at the end of 1971, Who's Next easily won first place, outdistancing its nearest rival by 208 points, a lead of 65 percent. In an essay analyzing the results, Christgau wrote, "Everyone calls Who's Next a great hard rock album, even though it contains several ballads and some arty-type violin and synthesizer stuff. Whatever else, it was clearly the only popular masterpiece of the year."
Track listing
(All songs by Pete Townshend except as noted)
Who's Next (original 1971 release)
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Bonus tracks (1995 remastered CD)
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Who's Next - Deluxe Edition (2004)
Disc one
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Disc two
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Trivia
- "Baba O'Riley" is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Teenage Wasteland", which is, however, the title of Townshend's original demo, as included in The Lifehouse Chronicles box set.
- "My Wife", composed and sung by bassist John Entwistle, became a concert standard. Entwistle wrote the song in his head while taking a walk in the woods with his dog after getting into an argument with his wife. She found the lyrics quite humorous, and at one point even suggested she come onstage during a Who concert performance with a rolling pin and chase the band members around the stage.
- The repeated titles of the remastered tracks are from the earlier New York session with Kit Lambert.
- "Baby Don't You Do It" was first made popular by Marvin Gaye, who was a favorite of The Who from the beginning of their career.
- Further remasters (such as the Deluxe Edition) have contained the entire live concert at the Young Vic Theatre, and the original album (without the extra tracks) has been mastered at half speed and released on 250g virgin (unrecycled) vinyl.
- Recently, "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley" have been used as the theme songs for and , respectively.
- Baba O'Riley appeared in episode 14, season 1 ('Control') of House
- "Won't Get Fooled Again" also formed part of The Who's July 2, 2005 Live8 line-up; they performed in Hyde Park, London to over two hundred thousand cheering onlookers.
- Blue Man Group covered "Baba O'Riley" on their 2003 Complex Rock Tour with Tracy Bonham singing lead & playing violin.
- Until the advent of democracy in South Korea in the early 1990s, "Won't Get Fooled Again" was banned and pressings of Who's Next omitted the song.
Charts
Album - Billboard (North America)| Year | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Pop Albums | 4 |
Singles - Billboard (North America)
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | "Behind Blue Eyes" | Pop Singles | 34 |
| 1971 | "Won't Get Fooled Again" | Pop Singles | 15 |
External links
| The Who |
|---|
| Roger Daltrey | Pete Townshend | John Entwistle | Keith Moon |
| Kenny Jones - John "Rabbit" Bundrick - Pino Palladino - Zak Starkey Simon Townshend - Jon Carin - Simon Phillips - Doug Sandom - Colin Dawson |
| Listings |
| Discography - Filmography |
| Other related people |
| Peter Meaden - Kit Lambert - Chris Stamp |
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