Album #9: The Who, "Who's Next" (1971)

There are albums everyone knows.  Times when you can ask someone "Hey, have you heard this album?", and they will shake their heads.  And then you put the album on the stereo, and you catch those very same people singing along.  In short, there are albums that have been burned into the collective consciousness. 

Everybody knows Pink Floyd's Money.  Or Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile.  Or Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Or at least a dozen Beatles' songs. 

And I think pretty much every North American has a pretty big familiarity with the Who.  I blame Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer being the TV producer who started using Who songs for the opening credits on his ridiculously popular CSI series.  The original CSI plays "Who Are You?", off the album of the same name. But later CSI series mine from an earlier source, 1971's Who's Next.  We hear a chopped and mangled version of "Baba O'Riley" for CSI: New York, and a slightly less chopped up (but still barely recognizable) version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" for CSI: Miami (which, personally, I think should be a song referring to David Caruso's career.  If you ever want to see a good David Caruso parody, watch William Baldwin's performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). 

The point of all this is, the second you put Who's Next into your stereo these days, you might be tempted to think of it in reference to shade-wearing ginger fucks making stupid one-liners.  Or... whatever the hell goes on in CSI New York.  I've never seen it.  But try not to think of the album in reference to what came after it;  look at it on its own merits. 

Who's Next is a rock album in a way that we rarely see rock albums.  We get Keith Moon's frenetic drumming, mixed with the fairly simple guitar lines of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey's raw vocals, and John Entwistle's amazing bass lines.  But let's focus on the first two - the drums, and the guitar.

Keith Moon never does anything simple.  Listen to the starting track, the previously mentioned "Baba O'Riley" - we get a crazy, computerized set of tones, followed up by simple piano tones and then Moon's amazing ability to find the perfect drum counterbalance.  And when the guitars finally kick in (at 1:39), they are fairly simplified - Townshend is a master at basic guitar lines that just added to the overall tone of the song, letting his bandmates really come forward.  (As a side note, I think Baba O'Riley is one of those songs that has been "creatively borrowed from" since its release.  For example, compare the piano chords from the original to the guitar chords in this little number). 

Every song on this album is golden, with a wide range of sounds.  It's not one of those albums where you get the same song, played slightly differently, thirteen times.  Instead, you get everything from ballads ("The Song is Over"), to songs I'd call Seventies Grunge ("Behind Blue Eyes"), to acoustic rock pieces ("Going Mobile"), to lyrically pessimistic Arena Rock ("Won't Get Fooled Again"). 

What's funny about this album is that it was never supposed to exist at all.  Good ol' Mr. Townshend, in the hopes of making a rock opera in the same lines as Tommy, had this idea for something called Lifehouse.  The basic idea was, people would watch the show, and input in the creation of some sort of cosmic music experiment that would free the consciousness of those involved.  Basically, your usual early 70s combination of ego and drugs that plagued too many guitarists of the era.  I'm pretty sure if this sort of thing happened nowadays, there'd be magical kool-aid, matching nike runners and track pants.  Just sayin'.

Anyways, this project was understood by only Pete Townshend, which should give an idea just how messed up he was while putting it together.  Eventually, the concept was dropped, but some of the songs he wrote for Lifehouse made it onto this album (and later albums, such as "905" and "Who Are You?", both on Who Are You).  Pretty good, if you ask me, because I've seen some of the directions Lifehouse was heading.  Imagine an even more fucked up version of Tommy, and you get the basic gist.

So.  Why does this album need to be on your shelf?

Well, first off, because it's pure rock and roll.  And that's always a good thing.  But more importantly, because it's an album that shows the purest form of The Who's songwriting.  Every track tells a story.  Every track is pure music-  there are no lengthy guitar or drum solos to show off an individual's musical proficiency.  This is an album where the band shows their strength as a whole. 

And, let's be frank here.  You've seen CSI how many times?  Every time you're sick from work, lying on the couch in the middle of the day, watching a marathon on TV.  Odds are you've accumulated more hours watching CSI than the waking lifespan of some animals.  And, well, CSI isn't really that good. 

This album is.  So listen to those songs CSI made famous, the way they were supposed to be heard.  Trust me, David Caruso had nothing to do with this album.  Thank God.