I had just finished 9th grade at Haverford Junior High a week or so earlier in June of 1971. My Phillies, despite the promise of surprising rookie centerfielder Willie Montanez, were headed for yet another last place finish in the NL East. But one sultry afternoon, out of my tinny transistor radio on Philadelphia's WIBG AM came the strains of a new song by the Who called "Won't Get Fooled Again" that immediately caught my attention. I had just studied the Who's rock opera "Tommy" in music class at school―along with Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar," to which I believed then, as I believe now, "Tommy" is in every way superior―and bought the album as a result. But this was something else entirely: more immediate, more visceral. In a word, better. By a large margin. And this was just the 3:35 single edit! When, two months later, the album on which it serves as the closer hit the stores, I immediately went out and bought it. They were some of the best 4 dollars I ever spent in my life.
That album, Who's Next, turns 50 years old today. To this day, I consider that record to be Pete Townshend's masterpiece, one of the absolute greatest albums ever recorded in the rock era. On some days, I even rank it second behind only Bruce Springsteen's unmatchable Born to Run. As I reflect on the music of my youth from this autumnal stage of my life, I am struck by the lightning-quick evolution of a music that began, in the mid-1950's, at the intersection of (black) blues/R&B and (white/hillbilly) country, perhaps exemplified best by the hybrid music of its two greatest early artists, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. This was music, and an ethos, diametrically opposite to the insipid popular music of the white middle America of the day. And, as has been rehearsed ad nauseum over the decades, while the "fad" seemed to fade here in America, the banner was taken up and championed across the pond in the British Isles, whose artists, most notably the Beatles and Rolling Stones, subsequently "invaded" America to win over America's youth with American sounds Americans had ignored and, in many cases, were unaware even existed.
In the years following the British Invasion of 1963-64, there were lots of bands who tried imitating the Beatles' Merseyside sound or the Stones' blues stylings. And it was more of the same when the Beatles experimented with psychedelia in 1966-67. But. to me, the really significant bands were the ones who didn't seem to care about making hits, the ones for whom commercial concerns were decidedly secondary. For example, there were plenty of blues bands in that era, but Cream was sui generis because of the jazz sensibilities of drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce, which made their lengthy improvisational passages with Eric Clapton more than tiresome noodling, show-off exercises. Likewise, there were plenty of hard blues-rock bands with great guitar players, but only one Led Zeppelin, not simply because of the band's instrumental virtuosity and Robert Plant's preternatural vocal abilities, but because of Jimmy Page's subtle use of, as he puts it, "light and shade," and deft incorporation of English folk and world music into his blues and rock foundation.
The evolution of the Who fits here as well. They hit the scene in 1964 as a decidedly "Mod" English band with the garage rock/power pop single "I Can't Explain" in December of 1964. The following November they released one of their most famous songs, the minimalist, almost proto-punk "My Generation," with Roger Daltrey stuttering his lines and famously singing Townshend's lyric, "Hope I die before I get old" (Thankfully, both Roger and Pete didn't didn't get their wish; would that the same could be said for Keith and the Ox.) Over the next few years, the band put out a number of great singles ("Substitute," "Pictures of Lily," "I'm a Boy, " "Magic Bus") and albums (especially The Who Sell Out, which includes the excellent "I Can See for Miles"), that display both exquisite British humor and a growing pop sensibility. But then, in 1969, the band released the aforementioned Tommy, the first rock opera. In the hindsight of more than a half century, the artistic pretensions and ludicrous, puerile story line are blindingly obvious. Nevertheless, there are more than a few musical moments of lasting value (The Overture, where the Ox gets to show off his chops on the horn, "Pinball Wizard," "I'm Free," "We're Not Gonna Take It"). But the best was yet to come.
As is well known, Townshend wanted to follow up his Tommy triumph with yet another, more ambitious project. Entitled Lifehouse, it was to be a multi-media, audience-interactive rock opera based on the teachings of his spiritual leader, Meher Baba. Ultimately, however, after none of his mates "got" the Lifehouse concept and he subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown, Townshend aborted the project, hired Glyn Johns as a new associate producer, and decided to put together a "regular" long player, incorporating what elements of the abandoned project as he could, none more significant than his (then) cutting edge use of synthesizers. The results, to put it mildly, were stunning.
Tommy, for all its historical significance, sounds terribly dated today. Who's Next, by contrast, remains as fresh today as it did when it first hit the shelves 50 years ago. Each and every song is a winner. There is no filler. All of Townshend and the Who's trademarks are here in spades: intelligent lyrics, instrumental prowess, humor, introspection, hard rockers and beautiful ballads, crushing power chords, heartbreakingly beautiful melodies, rhythmic foundation laid down by Townshend's guitar, letting the Ox and Keith Moon roam where they may. But the biggest revelation: Roger Daltrey's voice. Daltrey was always a fine vocalist, but here he discovers a depth and power matched by few others in the history of rock and roll. I almost fell off my chair the first time I heard him wail, "Out here in the fields," at the beginning of the classic opener, "Baba O'Riley" (known to viewers of CSI:NY). Rock and roll doesn't get any better than that … until you hear the next song, "Bargain," which proves a love song doesn't have to be pathetically sappy (of course, Townshend claims the song was written about God, via his late spiritual mentor Meher Baba, but that wouldn't make it much different, lyrically, from many CCM songs):
But, of course, Townshend saves the best for last, the aforementioned "Won't Get Fooled Again," in my view not only the Who's best song but one of the 10 or so greatest rock songs ever recorded. This song's power and, yes, majesty, is matched by a wisdom―attributed by Townshend to his being a "cynical English a**ehole"―rarely found in the work of a 26 year old musician, taking on the naïve, revolutionary, youthful idealism of the time:
Musically, what always struck me were the power chords, the extended synthesizer passage near the end (signifying the change of regimes), and Daltrey's sublime scream prior to the triumphant final lines. But last night, listening to the song for the thousandth (?) time, I picked up on a hint that Pete understood the significance of the song he was recording. The staccato power chords that close the song are strikingly reminiscent of the endings of many of Beethoven's odd-numbered symphonies (obviously not the same, but the family resemblance is there despite being stripped down, as it were). This is not mere "pop" music written for your "entertainment," he seems to be telling us. Indeed, it is not. And I pity those whose musical exposure only extends to such ephemera.
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