Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Fueled by a nervous breakdown and primitive synthesizer technology, the Who created a 1971 album so great even classic-rock radio couldn't kill it.
Feb 19, 2002 | In 1982, I was 12 years old and in the seventh grade. I played trombone in the Indian Trail Junior High Band, so I could read music and could reasonably discern what was a "good" band song (lots of drums, lots of blaring loud trombone parts) and what was a "bad" band song (heavy on clarinets, lots of pianissimo trombone parts or -- worse yet -- lots of rests).
By that order of deduction, I reasoned that most of the music on the radio in 1982 -- at least the music that my 9-volt, battery-powered radio could pick up from the faraway radio signals of Chicago -- sucked. For every decent "Jack and Diane" there were many "Up Where We Belongs," for every OK "Tainted Love" there were 10 maudlin "Open Arms," for every J. Geils Band there were 15 Quarterflashes.
But hold that top-30 ditty. I was about to discover the bloody Who, a band whose members fought constantly, it seemed, onstage and offstage, and whose music vacillated between banal teenage angst and sophisticated adult angst. And the album I was on the verge of discovering, by way of public library checkouts and worn, borrowed eight-tracks, was "Who's Next," released more than a decade earlier, in 1971. It's an album that should have been a failure on many levels. On song after song, it blatantly mutes, deletes or ignores the Who's most combustible musical qualities and replaces them with elements that seem superfluous, or even grievously mistaken. Yet because of this album-long, stereotype-defying, musical running of red lights, "Who's Next" has remained a brain-blowing masterpiece of sonic joy.
One afternoon following an after-school band practice, the radio in my parents' sky-blue Ford LTD picked up that haunting synthesizer break toward the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again." Suddenly that synth pulse was broken up by a furious drum break that hiccuped to a halt and started right back up again. Then a scream that sounded like Satan on the rack, followed by menacing guitar chords and an epigram -- "Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss" -- that I would hear repeated in some manner every day the rest of my life. Finally, six heavy downbeats signaled the end of the song -- no pussified fade-outs here.
It lasted less than two minutes, but the end of this song hooked me on the horrible Who, a band that would break up in December of that fateful year of 1982. I read books and articles about them, checked out their records from the public library, saved up allowance money to buy my very own copies. The more I learned about them the more I loved them. They ended concerts by smashing all their equipment, then went back to the hotel and smashed that up too. They wrote smart songs that soared and rocked and begged to be played loud. They were even on the cover of Time magazine, a periodical I read at my grandparents' house. That Time article didn't condescend to the band and in fact took it seriously, the way Time magazine took Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger and sometimes Ronald Reagan seriously. Rick Springfield certainly didn't get taken seriously by Time magazine.
Twenty years later I am still unable to look at any of the band's work objectively, particularly the record that contains "Won't Get Fooled Again." That record is of course "Who's Next," which, at least on paper, looks like it should have been a total dud.
Before the final copy had even been pressed, the album had nearly destroyed its creator. Initially, the songs on "Who's Next" were part of a grandiose science-fiction film/concert concept called "Lifehouse" that even Who guitarist/songwriter/idea man Pete Townshend could barely grasp (although he has since resurrected it). After that bigger, ambitious project fell apart, Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown and a regular old album was patched together so the band could salvage whatever it could from the "Lifehouse" failure.
In fact, the tracks that were left off the album -- "Pure and Easy," "Naked Eye," "Join Together," "Water" and others that have surfaced on compilations and CD reissues since -- could have made up a great, completely different Who album on their own. As it stands, however, the nine songs that make up the initial "Who's Next" present the same contradictions and masterly ensemble work that made the Who so fucking great to begin with.
From beginning to end, "Who's Next" showcases Townshend's fascination with the synthesizer, an instrument that really had no business being embraced by the Who. Months earlier the band had released "Live at Leeds," a roaring, soaring, daredevil guide to improvisational ensemble playing if ever there was one. The 13-minute rendition of "My Generation" the Who pulls off on "Leeds" is so wild it needs a traffic cop. A synthesizer on "Leeds" would sound like Britney Spears auditioning for Metallica.
Yet Townshend's mastery of the primitive ARP synth -- at the time more complicated than a NASA launch and bigger than most London neighborhoods -- added a spectral presence to the band, and on this album it really became a fifth member. On "The Song Is Over," the synth adds a lush, orchestral-yet-funky feel to the stew. On "Bargain," it brings a deified presence to a song that's really a prayer. And on "Won't Get Fooled Again," the synth's meter brings a precise rhythm track that allows the rest of the band -- especially bassist John Entwistle, who was usually the group's de facto percussionist behind Keith Moon's maniacal drumwork -- to play wildly around it without fear of getting lost.
