The cover of Who's Next features the four band members zipping up their pants after pissing on a monolith. The turbulent effort that became Who's Next was supposed to be a monolith - a new rock opera called Lifehouse - until the band members decided to piss on it and instead release that project's best songs as one of the best rock albums of all time.
Though Who's Next is mostly hard-hitting, driven rock 'n' roll, there's something a little different about each song, which gives every song on the album more power. The music and the lyrics combine to create an incredible musical effort. It opens with the fabulous single "Baba O'Riley," which starts with an unusual electronic intro before launching into Roger Daltrey's powerful vocals and ending with a long and fast violin run. This is immediately followed by "Bargain," which starts with ten seconds of ballad-sounding slow guitar before becoming pure rip-it-up rock. The inspirational "The Song is Over" features primary songwriter Pete Townshend singing half the song in ballad style and Daltrey completing it with power rock. "Behind Blue Eyes," quite possibly one of the best songs ever written, is melancholy in its opening before launching into some of the most uncompromising rock I've ever heard with Daltrey singing passionate lyrics like: "...if I swallow anything evil, put your finger down my throat." And, of course, Who's Next features one of the band's signature songs, "Won't Get Fooled Again," which remained their closing song for every show they subsequently played.
The 1995 MCA re-release of this album contains a number of bonus tracks, mostly music recorded for the Lifehouse project and released either as b-sides or in compilations, or exclusively performed live. All excellent songs that fit in just fine on this album, they are well worth a listen.
Every song on this album is a masterpiece of its own. Whether the concept of Lifehouse would have resulted in a whole that was even better, I don't know, but given the to-die-for result that is Who's Next, this listener is glad they pissed on that monolith.
If you like The Who, check out:
The Who Live At Leeds
The Who BBC Sessions
The Who Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy
Queen News of the World
The Kinks The Kinks
David Bowie The Man Who Sold the World
The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers
-- Vikki Otero
