![]() Roger Daltrey, left, is playing harmonica during the song's climactic outro. The Who performing "Baba O'Riley" live at Manchester Arena in 2014. The song, however, became one of the band's most popular songs, as well as a popular staple of AOR radio, and remains on the classic rock radio canon. However, in the United Kingdom and the United States, it was released only as part of the album Who's Next. "Baba O'Riley" was released in November 1971, as a single in several European countries. In most live performances, this part is played instead by Daltrey on harmonica. Dave Arbus, whose band East of Eden was recording in the same studio, was invited by Keith Moon to play the violin solo during the outro. The other parts of the song appeared on the third disc of Townshend's Lifehouse Chronicles as "Baba M1 (O'Riley 1st Movement 1971)" and "Baba M2 (2nd Movement Part 1 1971)". "Baba O'Riley" was initially 30 minutes in length, but was edited down to the "high points" of the track for Who's Next. The song was derived from a nine-minute demo, which the band reconstructed. This modal approach was inspired by the work of minimalist composer Terry Riley. When this idea fell through, Townshend instead recorded a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ using its marimba repeat feature to generate them. The repeating set of notes (known technically as ostinato) in "Baba O'Riley" that opens and underlies the song was derived from the Lifehouse concept, where Townshend wanted to input the vital signs and personality of Meher Baba into a synthesiser, which would then generate music based on that data. ![]() The irony was that some listeners took the song to be a teenage celebration: 'Teenage Wasteland, yes! We're all wasted!'" Recording and release In another interview, Townshend stated the song was also inspired by "the absolute desolation of teenagers at Woodstock, where audience members were strung out on acid and 20 people had brain damage. When Lifehouse was scrapped, eight of the songs were salvaged and recorded for the Who's 1971 album Who's Next, with "Baba O'Riley" as the lead-off track.Īccording to Townshend, at the end of the band's gig at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, the field was covered in rubbish left by fans, which inspired the line "teenage wasteland". In Lifehouse, a Scottish farmer named Ray would have sung the song at the beginning as he gathered his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. Townshend originally wrote "Baba O'Riley" for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera intended as the follow-up to the Who's 1969 opera, Tommy. The song's title refers to two of Townshend's major inspirations at the time: Meher Baba, and Terry Riley. A demo of "Teenage Wasteland" features in Lifehouse Chronicles, a six-disc set of music related to the Lifehouse project, and in several Townshend compilations and videos. "Teenage Wasteland" was in fact a working title for the song in its early incarnations as part of the Lifehouse project, but eventually became the title for a different but related song by Townshend, which is slower and features different lyrics. The song is often incorrectly referred to as "Teenage Wasteland", due to these oft-repeated words in the song's chorus refrain. The original recording's violin solo is played on harmonica by Daltrey when performed live. It also features on the live albums Who's Last, Live from Royal Albert Hall, Live from Toronto, and Greatest Hits Live. Widely regarded as one of the Who's finest songs and as one of the greatest rock songs of all time, "Baba O'Riley" appears in Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Songs" list, Rolling Stone 's list of " The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: "Don't cry/ don't raise your eye/ it's only teenage wasteland". It was issued in Europe as a single on 23 October 1971, coupled with " My Wife". " Baba O'Riley" is a song by the English rock band the Who, and the opening track to their fifth album Who's Next (1971). Original song written and composed by Pete Townshend first performed by The Who
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