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Who's Next

Produced by The Who.
Associate producer: Glyn Johns
Violin on 'Baba O'Riley' produced by Keith Moon
Executive producers: Kit Lambert, Chris Stamp & Pete Kameron.
Liner notes by Chris Charlesworth [with additions in brackets by Brian Cady]

Released in the U.S. on Decca 79182 on August 14, 1971.

  [Original Review 9-2-71]
 

  Who's Next, regardless of what you may have been led to believe to the

contrary, is neither the soundtrack of the realization of Pete Townshend's

apparently-aborted Hollywood dream, the greatest live album in the history

of the universe, nor a, shudder, rock opera, but rather an old-fashioned

long-player containing intelligently-conceived, superbly-performed,

brilliantly-produced, and sometimes even exciting rock and roll.

  The musicianship is undisputably excellent, with Keith Moon thrashing

and bashing more precisely than ever before on record, Entwisle dreaming

up all manner of scrumptious melodic and rhythmic flourishes (listen

especially to what he plays beneath the chorus of "Won't Get Fooled

Again"), and Townshend, be it chunky acoustic rhythm, resounding monster

chords of the classic sort, or cogent and lyrical soloes, playing with

exemplary efficiency and taste.

  As for the album's production, Townshend has, with the able assistance

of Glyn Johns in the dual role of engineer and co-producer, come up with

one of the most masterfully-recorded rock records in recent memory.

Whether so precise a sound as this record's becomes the Who is, at this

point, less relevant than the consideration that they've now satisfied

their curiosity about whether or not they could be recorded as crisply as,

say, Thunderclap Newman.

  And with the long LP version of "Won't Get Foold Again", an

ingeniously-constructed panoramic view of methods of attack they've grown

fondest of over the years, they've succeeded in committing to vinyl a

comprehensive primer of basic Whostyle.

  Such dynamics! The beautiful quietly lyrical moments of such selections

as "The Song Is Over", "Gettin' In Tune", and "Behind Blue Eyes" are

juxtaposed with the thundering rock that is the marrow of those songs so

that each is rendered even more poignant.

  To further frost the confection, Townshend wrings more than his money's

worth out of his lb.14,000-worth of synthesizers, making, I daresay,

shrewder -- at once more adventurous and better-integrated -- use of them

than any rock experimenter before him.

  In "Baba O'Riley", for instance, he sets the stage for the band's

dramatic entrance with a pre-recorded VCS3 part he obtained by programming

certain of his vital statistics into a computer hooked up to the

synthesizer, then treats the part as a drone while the song's two major

chords are transposed over it, and later has the band playing against it

(that is, piling a few gigantic chords on it while it keeps going

"Meep-meep-meep-meep-meep...") to lead into a solo by guest fiddler Dave

Arbus.

  Next, on "Bargain", he uses his ARP both as a solo instrument and as a

backdrop to his own beautiful guitar solo.

  There's just so much to be astonished and delighted by on this album

once you get used to its kinda chilly perfection...

  There's Roger Daltrey singing, "And I'm gonna 'chune' right in on you",

during "Gettin' In Tune", which is so wonderous that it's enough to keep

the listener's mind off the possibly unpleasant implications of "the

straight and narrow" being what's been gotten in tune to.

  There's Daltrey bestowing an excellent dramatic reading (note especially

his intonation of the word "vengeance") on interesting lyrics in front of

the prettiest Who harmonies in ever so long in "Behind Blue Eyes".

  There's Imbecile's stupendously catchy and stupid "My Wife", which deals

with the danger of being both married and fond of lazing about in the

boozer until all hours. (What a pity that The Ox's pleasantly adenoidal

voice is all but lost beneath the instruments -- "Can this be a result of

jealousy on Townshend's part?" you'll long to know for sure).

  And, ultimately, there is "The Song Is Over", one of a few survivors on

Next from the recently-aborted  Bobby  project, an un-utterably beautiful

song in which Townshend sings exquisitely over a gentle piano background

before and in between Daltrey charging in exhilaratingly over a hard part

while breathtaking chord changes in the manner of the "Listening to you I

hear the music..." refrain from  Tommy . Definitely up there with "Rael"

and "Pinball Wizard" and "I'm The Face" among their very best work is this

one.

  And, just to make it clear to any cretins out there in Radioland that

this is just a plain old-fashioned long-player, there are a couple of

throwaways: The faintly pretty but negligible "Love Ain't For Keeping"

(which most certainly does not deserve to succeed "Heaven And Hell" as the

group's stage-opener, unless they play it live about ten trillion times

harder than they do on record), and the faintly inane "Goin' Mobile",

which celebrates the joys of, ho hum, being free to roam the highways and

byways in one's trailer.

  And there you have it, chums, an album that, despite a degree of sober

calculatedness that would prove fatal to a lesser group, ranks right up

there with David Bowie's and Black Oak Arkansas's and Crazy Horse's and

Procol Harum's and Alice Cooper's and Christopher Milk's as among the most

wondrous of 1971. In view of the fact that Pete's resumed smashing shit

out of his guitar at the end of performances and that they've hopefully

now resolved all their anxieties about technique, it's eminently

reasonable to assume that subsequent Who albums won't be no shrinking

violets either.

-- John Mendolsohn, Rolling Stone, 9-2-71.