"Who's Next" by the Who (August, 1971)

Dad's Take:

Listening to Who's Next, I can't help but wonder if this is the Who album that will finally sell The Boy on this great band. With roots in another rock opera, the unfinished Lifehouse, Who's Next is as solid as a greatest hits album.

When a record starts with "Baba O'Reilly" and ends with "Won't Get Fooled Again" (ten-year-old me's first big favorite Who song, and probably still at the top of my list), you have to wonder if everything in the middle will be able to live up to being bookended by two of the greatest Who songs--nay, two of the greatest rock songs--ever put on record. No worries here. The stuff in the middle is just as solid. "Bargain," "My Wife," "The Song is Over," "Gettin' In Tune," "Going Mobile," and "Behind Blue Eyes" are all among the band's best.

Brilliant Townshend guitar and songwriting, classic Daltrey vocals, all to a prominent Entwistle/Moon rhythm backing that shows both of these geniuses at their best, this is the Who at the peak of their game. Absolutely freakin' brilliant from beginning to end.

I feel like I'm not doing this one justice with a short review, but I have to turn this one up and listen without worrying about having to write about it. This record might have sprung from the ashes of a failed project, but it's anything but a failure. Seriously, one of the greatest rock albums ever. It's hard to think of one that beats it. When it's done, I think I'll listen again.

Brad's Take:

You know as soon as those big piano chords comes in that this is going to be an epic song. When you kick off an album with a song like "Baba O'Riley", you're setting the expectations for the rest of the album very high. That song is a classic rock staple. The random violin breakdown at the end makes me want to get up and do a jig though, but I can forgive those last few seconds because the rest of the song is just so good.

Track 2 ("Pure and Easy") didn't really compete with "Baba O'Riley", unfortunately. The non-stop frantic drumming and funky bass lines were cool, but the most of the song was pretty forgettable to me. The next song didn't really do much for me either.

"My Wife" was really great though. Kind of a silly song about a drunk guy coming home late and being scared his wife is going to unleash her wrath on him, suspecting that he was with another woman. Bassist, John Entwistle, takes over lead vocals, as well as much of the song's instrumentation. The second half of the song was especially awesome.

The next few songs kind of blended together because I was distracted by the drumming. You can't really talk about The Who without at least mentioning Keith Moon. Did that guy ever stop?! He's non-stop on this album. It's like he walked into the studio already flailing around, and then they sat him down at a drum kit, handed him some sticks, pushed record, and then just jumped out of the way and watched the man beat the hell out of some stuff. Dare I say, I think he overplays a bit sometimes. Kind of like there's two songs playing at the same time.

"Behind Blue Eyes" would have been a better song if I didn't have the Limp Bizkit version engraved in my brain. I think until now that was the only version of this song I'd ever heard. Sad, right? Needless to say, The Who's is by far the better of the two.

"Won't Get Fooled Again" is another classic. It has the same kind of epic-ness of "Baba O'Riley" which book-ends the album perfectly.

Compared to the other Who albums we've reviewed, this is by far my favorite. There isn't a bad song on it. Sure, some blend together in the middle, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. It just makes me want to go back to this again and familiarize myself with it a little more.