Released in the summer of 1971, the album Who’s Next unleashed some of The Who’s most iconic material on the listening public. The track Won’t Get Fooled Again closed the album, while the beloved opening track, which is the subject of our attention here, began life as something of a strange hybrid…
The Who’s seminal Baba O’Riley was, in fact, sparked by an entirely different project. Following the extraordinary success of the 1969 rock opera Tommy, Pete Townshend pursued another idea, with the working title of Lifehouse.
Much like Tommy, he envisaged that the project would span an album and a film, although the futuristic and dystopian concept proved difficult for both Townshend and the band to fully embrace, so the project was scaled-back, with the prepared musical output being redeployed to the album Who’s Next.
Around this period, Townshend was completely absorbed by Meher Baba, his Indian spiritual guru who had taken a vow of silence from 1925 and maintained it until his death in 1969. Pete found himself resonating completely with his guru’s philosophy that life is merely an illusion. This concept was a central theme of his Lifehouse work, and while the project was postponed, one concept remained. A concept that would heavily influence the trajectory of a Who classic, originally intended as Lifehouse's opening track.
Townshend had been planning on trying to input biographical data about an individual, such as height, weight and hair colour, into a computer. In turn, this raw data could then trigger an instrument such as a synthesizer to generate music.
As he described it, it would be akin to ‘translating a person into music.’
Experimenting with this idea, he processed the biographical data of Meher Baba and noted that the results seemed to be very minimalistic. They reminded him of the work of American composer Terry Riley, who was also a big influence on Townshend at the time.
Minimalism was pioneered by Riley, alongside other notable composers, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. As well as employing tape loop technology, minimalist compositions would often require the playing of small musical phrases or fragments repeatedly, often for very extended performances.
Riley’s own composition ‘In C’ consists of 53 musical phrases, with musicians directed to start with the first phrase, and move through the different phrases in turn, at their own pace, and at their own discretion. As a consequence, performances could last from 45 minutes, up to many hours. As this author can confirm, the results can be very hypnotic indeed for both performer and audience.
Underlining the track's creative journey, Townshend included the names Baba and Riley in the name of this audacious idea.
We’ll come to the ‘O’ element later…
Townshend was well known for his interest in synth technology, and the opening of the track is often cited as being an example of such. However, you may be alarmed to discover that the opening riff is actually not sequenced, it is not a loop, and it is NOT played on a synthesizer.
The Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ is the instrument behind the opening riff. Centred around the key of F major, we hear an open 5th chord, consisting of the notes F and C. The repetitive nature of the sound is created using the Lowrey’s Marimba Repeat setting, which provides the mallet-esque accent to the sound that we hear.
Townshend recorded this live, on a reel-to-reel tape, adding little interjections from the notes D and E. This live performance also explains why these subtle interjections seem to cut across the time, sometimes not synchronising perfectly. Despite the machine-like nature of the repeat, this adds an overall humanistic quality to the performance.
Producer Glyn Johns came on board with the project at the point where the band moved to Olympic Studios, in Barnes, South London. One of his first tasks was to transfer the mesmerising organ part to a multitrack tape. The band then had the unenviable task of playing along, perfectly in time, with the organ recording, which they did as a live take in the studio.
The first instrument to join the organ on the track is the piano. Adopting conventional straight chords with no extensions, we hear a chord of F major for three beats, a single chord of C for one beat and then we land on a chord of Bb, for a whole four beats.
These voicings are very triadic, and organised in such a way that we hear a sense of voice leading, where one note leads quite closely to the next, in an often lyrical manner.
The first F chord features the note A at the top. This then falls to a G for the chord of C major, and F for the chord of Bb. It provides us with a satisfying feeling of falling in line.
The piano is later joined by the drums and bass, with the latter sporting a heavy amount of compression in an attempt to almost sound synthetic. This creates an enormous foundation for the harmony.
It's not until nearly two minutes into the track that we eventually hear Townshend accentuate the piano part with his own guitar. The guitar very much follows the piano’s lead, with occasional pre-empting of each first beat of the bar, through typical guitar embellishment.
Roger Daltrey’s fantastic vocal does, however, rely upon shades of the previous dystopian lyrical content explored by Townshend. The opening line ‘Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals’ is suitably bleak.
As we come to rest on a chord of C major, the arrangement of the song adopts a moment of calmness, with mention of the refrain of ‘teenage wasteland.’ This repeated refrain, appearing throughout the song, was so memorable it was frequently taken to be the song's title.
After a switch back to the opening verse structure, and a further moment of calmness, we hear a very radical drop in the tempo, which is accompanied by power chords. It’s here that we hear an Eb major chord for the first time, among the usual cohort of F, C and Bb.
Once we reach the final section, we are treated to a violin solo, played by Dave Arbus, who was booked quite by accident, as he just happened to be recording in the studio next door!
Despite the slower tempo, things escalate into a double-time feel, provided by Keith Moon. This musical garnish supplies the song with a feel that is reminiscent of traditional Irish music. It was this Celtic flavour that brought forth the idea for the ‘O’ of O’Riley, even though the spelling isn't quite as it would be on the Emerald Isle.
According to sources from the session, the end of the song was certainly deemed to be quite tricky to record, as Keith Moon introduced an accelerando, with his hurtle towards the conclusion.
In actual fact, the original recording of the track lasted for a full 30 minutes, so the version that we know today is very much the edited highlights.
Reflecting on his lyric, as part of the Classic Albums series, Pete Townshend provided some clues about his initial lyrical intent. “It’s not about getting wasted, it’s about wasted life, wasted opportunity, wasted years, and I take full responsibility for the fact that my generation complained about the state of the planet, and did nothing.”
