One of the most celebrated lyrics from The Who Teenage Wasteland is sung in an emotional, almost breaking voice by guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend during the bridge to the song ‘Baba O’Riley’ from the ‘Who’s Next’ album. Townshend had put together an instrumental synthesizer demo in 1971 which was over 9 minutes in length and consisted of a series of rising and falling arpeggios. He played it for the band after the rock opera he had previously been working on had collapsed and left him an emotional wreck. The Who took many bits and pieces of music from that project along with songs that other band members had been working on and combined them to form the new album. In some cases, songs were split up and sewn together, and this is how ‘Baba O’Riley’ came to be written. The synthesizer demo was combined with an entirely different track called ‘Teenage Wasteland’ and the end result was the extremely successful opening track off of ‘Who’s Next’. The ‘teenage wasteland’ lyric in the bridge and chorus was so popular that the song is often identified by this name.
The original song by this name was released in 1999 as a demo from the sessions that took place for the abandoned ‘Lifehouse’ rock opera. Some of the lyrics in the track can be attributed to the storyline of ‘Lifehouse’, as the song was intended to be sung by a farmer who was moving his family into the city of London, explaining the ‘Out here in the fields’ line. This lyric, however, has since found resonance as a metaphor for many who could identify with the feelings of the song’s protagonist, however removed from the original meaning their life might be. For The Who Teenage Wasteland represented a less literal concept, with Townshend explaining that he used it to rail against those unwilling to work to improve the world around them.
The song’s synthesizer parts weren’t the only unique musical aspect of the track. In the last section of the song the guitars fade away to reveal a violin playing a folk-inspired, whirling dervish of a rhythm. This was unusual for a rock band at the time, and instead of being rejected by fans it became one of the song’s most endearing qualities. On occasion The Who will employ a violinist in a live setting specifically for ‘Baba O’Riley’, but usually the solo is performed by Daltrey on the harmonica. The song is only 5 minutes long, although in concert it can range well past 10 minutes depending on how involved the band becomes in exploring the synthesizer lines.
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