Click here to play the podcastIn this epic episode, we embark on a sonic exploration of The Who‘s towering anthem “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” We explore the song that encapsulates the very essence of rock music– its intensity, grandeur, and unyielding spirit. We dive deep into the tumultuous history behind one of the most ambitious projects in rock history, The Who’s Lifehouse, and how it gave rise to an album that, despite its fraught genesis, stands as a masterpiece of the genre.
From Pete Townsend’s futuristic visions to the band’s quest for a universal musical connection, we unravel the tapestry of a song that has been both celebrated and misunderstood. With a careful ear, we dissect the iconic keyboard riff, Keith Moon’s explosive drumming, John Entwistle’s virtuosic bass lines, and Roger Daltrey’s soul-stirring vocals. This episode isn’t just a tribute to a classic track; it’s a deep dive into the heart of rock music and the relentless pursuit of artistic vision.
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” Pete Townshend Copyright 1971 Towser Tunes, Inc., Fabulous Music Ltd. and ABKCO Music Inc.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Time to sing your song to the wide-open spaces, and sing your heart out to the infinite sea– Because we’re back with another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, right here on the Pantheon Podcast network. My name is Brad Page, I’m the host of the show, and each episode I pick one of my favorite songs and we explore it together, uncovering all the elements, those little moments that make it a great song.
We’ve looked at a lot of great songs on this podcast, many of them all time classics. But if you had to pick one song that captures everything rock music has to offer– the intensity, the grandeur, the spirit, the power… one song to represent everything that’s great about rock and roll… If you had to explain to an alien what makes rock music great, what song would you pick? For me, it might just be this song: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who.
Today were exploring a song that’s about as iconic as a song gets. But to understand how this song came to be, we have quite a journey ahead of us. From big ideas to failed concepts, through ambition and frustration, and even suicidal thoughts, to a compromise that, in the end, produced one of the greatest albums ever made.
Our voyage begins sometime after 1969. The Who had struck gold with “Tommy”, one of the first rock operas, certainly the first one to capture the public’s attention.
So how do you follow that up? Pete Townsend, guitar player, principal songwriter, and the driving creative force behind The Who, had an idea to expand on the ideas and themes he explored in “Tommy”. “Tommy”, of course, was the story of a boy who, after a traumatic experience, psychologically made himself deaf, dumb, and blind, essentially shutting himself off from the outside world. And it’s the story of his spiritual awakening.
Well, Pete had this new vision; this science fiction tale of a future where a large percentage of the population would be shut off from the outside world. They would live their lives sealed in these experience suits, linked together by something he called “The Grid”, that would be run by autocrats. In order to maintain control over the population, music was outlawed. But some people rebelled; they created a secret place where they could create music and hack into the grid to reintroduce people to music. This secret clubhouse was called the “Lifehouse”. The goal of the Lifehouse was to bring everyone together, through music, to a universal consciousness, with everyone attaining enlightenment.
Now, let’s stop right here for a minute and think about this. Because today, you can probably wrap your head around most of that, even if the spiritual stuff isn’t your kind of thing. But remember, this was happening in 1972, decades before the internet was available to the public. There was no virtual reality. There was no network. Townsend was presenting a future where people were linked together through and controlled by a computer system and faceless corporations that controlled the population.
Now, can you imagine the blank stares Pete Townsend would get from people when he tried to explain this concept? Most people just didn’t understand it, and the few that did, it all just seemed like an improbable fantasy. But let’s give Pete Townsend some credit. In some ways, he envisioned the world that you and I are living in today.
OK, so that’s the story of “Lifehouse” in a very rough summation. I’m leaving out a lot of detail, but I think you get the gist of it. But theres a whole ‘nother aspect to this story. We talked about how the Lifehouse was a place where the music would be performed and then fed back into the grid, where it would be experienced by the population. Integrated into the grid. Well, Pete Townsend envisioned a real-life Lifehouse, a venue where The Who would play, and it would be what we would describe today as an “interactive experience” for the audience.
See, by this time, The Who had played in front of some massive crowds, like the Isle of Wight festival. And Pete was aware of the energy that could be generated between the artist and the audience. Townsend always believed in the power of rock music. He had felt it. He said, “The most precious moments of my life happened on stage” when he and the audience became one. If that energy could be channeled, what could be achieved? Maybe even enlightenment.
This tied into some spiritual ideas or concepts that Pete had been studying. The idea that at the core of everything is one vibration, one musical note. As philosopher and musicologist Inayat Kahn theorized, “Music creates a resonance which vibrates the whole being. And that sound is the force which groups all things, from atoms to worlds.”
This is what Townsend was after in the Lifehouse performances: some kind of spiritual link between the band and the audience that would attain something greater.
So, Pete would write the script and the songs; the songs would be recorded for an album; The Who would perform the songs in front of an audience, and the whole thing– the dystopian story and the concerts would be filmed and released as a movie.
The thing was that Townshend was having a hard time explaining the concepts to the band and to the other members of The Who’s organization. I don’t think the fault lies entirely with Pete or with the other band members. These were very esoteric ideas, not easy to grasp, especially in the world of 1970.
The other challenge was the live performances where The Who would conduct their experiments to find the vibrations that would unite the band and the audience and provide a key element of the film. Townsend knew that he had to find a better way to meld the band and the audience than the typical one-night-only concerts that they performed on tour. They needed a venue where they could take up residency and play to an audience over time.
They made an arrangement with a theater called the Young Vic in southeast London, where they could rehearse and perform. As the concerts and the film were described in the New Music Express magazine: “It was an experiment in relationship between the group and the audience. An attempt to create a portrait in music of The Who’s own audience. And with this in view, the cameras will follow the audience out of the theater and into their own lives.” Pretty ambitious goals.
They began rehearsing at the Young Vic in late 1970, and played their first public performance there in January 1971. At a press conference that same month, Pete explained, “We shall not be giving the usual kind of who rock show. The audience will be completely involved in the music which is designed to reflect people’s personalities. We shall try to induce mental and spiritual harmony through the medium of rock music.” That’s some vintage Townsend for you.
They announced a series of free shows at the theater. Pete hoped that pretty much the same audience would return each night and they would, over time, become more and more a part of the show. But it was never really clear exactly how the audience and the band and the overarching storyline of “Lifehouse” would all coalesce. Pete had expected that, somehow, characters would develop out of the crowd and become part of the film. But no one in the audience really understood what exactly they were expected to do. The new songs were unfamiliar to the audience, and the band weren’t quite 100% comfortable performing them yet. As a result, nobody was really happy with how the Young Vic shows turned out. After only a handful of shows, they closed up shop at the Young Vic.
Around the same time, they got the bad news that Universal pulled their funding; there would be no “Lifehouse” film.
The band did return to the Young Vic once more on April 26, 1971, for one more show, primarily to record it for posterity. Here’s a bit of a track from that show, an unreleased “Lifehouse” track called “I Don’t Even Know Myself”.
The band decided to salvage what they could, and regrouped in New York City at the Record Plant studios to record some of the new songs that they’d worked on for “Lifehouse”. But those sessions only lasted a week. Townsend was already suffering from overwork and exhaustion, putting so much time and effort and heart into “Lifehouse”, when he overheard one of his managers, Kit Lambert, being dismissive of Pete and his work. Well, that sent Townsend into an emotional tailspin. He ended up on the window ledge of his hotel room, considering whether he should jump.
The band returned to England, and in April, around the time of that final Young Vic performance, they convened with producer Glyn Johns. Glyn listened to the recordings made at the Record Plant and said that they were good, but he could do better.
Initially, they set up at Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s mansion that was often used as a place to record. They only stayed there two days, managing to record the basic tracks for only one song: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. They reconvened at Olympic Sound Studios in southwest London and, for the next two months, laid down the tracks that would become their next album, “Who’s Next”.
The album would include quite a few songs from “Lifehouse”, but not all of them. Originally envisioned as a double album like “Tommy”, Glynn, Johns pushed them to trim it down to a single, concise LP. As a result, even though many of the songs came directly from “Lifehouse”, there is no concept or story to the “Who’s Next” album. It’s just a collection of songs. But what a collection of songs. In my opinion, it’s one of the strongest albums ever made, by anybody. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is the last song on the album, bringing the album to an epic conclusion.
By this time, Townsend was spending tons of time recording demos in his home studio, a concept pretty standard these days. But back in the late sixties, very few people had anything you could legitimately call a “home studio”. But Pete had converted two rooms of his house in Twickenham, built in 1721, into a small but very functional home studio. He had a 3M M23 eight-track tape machine, a small Neve BCM10 console, and large Lakewood Tannoy speakers, along with studio gear like limiters and reverbs, plus an array of guitars, pianos and keyboards.
At the heart of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is that iconic keyboard part, played on a Lowry Berkshire organ and fed through an EMS VCS23 synthesizer to create the filtered, pulsating sound that drives the song. Here’s Pete’s original demo, recorded in that home studio. Pete is playing all of the instruments on this demo, including the drums.
The keyboard part on the demo was so good that they would reuse it for the final version rather than re-recording it. They lifted the keyboard part off of the demo and the band built the final version around it.
That final version features Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, Keith Moon on drums, and Pete Townsend on guitars and of course, that Lowery organ part. It was produced by The Who and Glyn Johns.
This was the first song laid down for the album, and as mentioned before, it was the only track recorded during the two-day attempt at recording at Stargroves. Johns set the band up in the Stargroves reception hallway. Let’s listen to the opening of the final version.
The keyboard part sounds exactly the same, right? Same as the demo version. Of course, when Keith Moon comes in on the drums, it has a very different feel than Pete’s basic drumming on the demo. Let’s listen to a little bit of those Keith Moon drums.
And there’s a tasty little guitar lick there, right before the first verse starts. Townsend throws in a lot of nice guitar fills throughout the song.
I think what Pete’s playing during the verses is pretty interesting, so let’s bring up his guitar part.
Let’s stop and talk about the lyrics, because this song has been misunderstood since the day it was released. Many people take it as a call to revolution; it’s as much a cautionary tale about revolutions as it is a call to arms. In the context of the “Lifehouse” story, the song is about the people on the front lines who are expendable to the leaders calling the shots. It’s a call to pacifism and passive resistance. It’s about the negative effects of revolt. As Townsend once said, “The revolution is only a revolution in the long run, and a lot of people are going to get hurt.” The song is essentially dubious of the forces that cause revolution. He’s not saying revolution is inherently bad, but that there is a serious cost. And you have to weigh that against the cause., or maybe more accurately, weighed against the leaders that call for revolution. Who’s to gain? To quote Townshend again, “I’m more of a fighter than a sleeper, but there are times one should think about which path to take very, very seriously.”
Let’s listen to Roger Daltrey’s vocals on this first verse.
OK. There’s so much going on in that chorus, so much to listen to. Where to begin? Let’s listen to the one thing we haven’t highlighted yet– the absolutely incredible bass playing by John Entwistle.
And not to be outdone, let’s hear Keith Moon’s drums.
Alright, we’ll look more at the chorus coming up, but for now, let’s move on to the next verse. And this time we’ll take it all one piece at a time. First, there’s a few instrumental bars before the verse begins. So, let’s hear that, starting with that keyboard part.
The sound of that part, to me, it’s like the audio equivalent of some amorphous shape, like an amoeba that keeps shifting as it moves forward. And yet, at the same time, it’s the foundation the song is built on.
Also, there’s an acoustic guitar that plays throughout the song. It’s pretty low in the mix to the point where it’s felt more than it’s heard. And that’s a production technique that’s often used quite effectively. But let’s bring that acoustic to the front so that we can hear it clearly.
And then, of course, there’s Keith Moon wailing away at the drums.
Now let’s put all of that together with the rest of the instrumentation. Notice how the keyboards are panned to the right channel, while the acoustic, if you can hear it, is on the left.
Now here’s the second verse. Let’s start by just hearing Pete Townsend’s electric guitar. I like these little guitar stabs here.
Next, how about Roger Daltreys vocal track?
And John Entwistle’s great bass part.
Now let’s hear all of that together for the second verse change.
As we get to the second chorus, let’s look at a couple of things we passed over the previous time. There are backing vocals on the chorus by Roger and Pete, and possibly Entwistle, too. In the right channel, along with the keyboard track is a backing vocal by Pete. Let’s bring those tracks to the center and hear that.
While in the left channel, there’s a backing vocal dominated by Roger, with Peter, maybe John in there too. And what strikes me about this is, listening to it with just the acoustic guitar, is how it stands up with just the guitar and vocal. There’s an old axiom that if you can strip a song down, no matter how complex, down to just an acoustic guitar and a vocal, and it still works, that’s how you know it’s a really good song. I think that’s true here.
Let’s hear that verse all together.
I really like Townsend’s guitar fills there. Let’s go back and hear some of that for a second.
I hate to keep interrupting the song, but there’s just so many great moments. How about that walk-down on the bass there? Let’s back it up and hear that again.
And that leads us into another instrumental section, this one featuring those old favorites, you can’t go wrong with hand claps. Pete is playing power chords in that unmistakable Townsend style. You can hear after the first pass that he’s doubled the guitar in stereo. There’s also an acoustic guitar, again, lower in the mix, that’s playing a more frenetic part. Let’s hear that all together.
Listen to how Pete changes up his guitar part here. And with that Keith Moon drum fill, that takes us to the bridge.
Now let’s break this down a bit. First, let’s hear the backing vocals and some guitar, including the acoustic, which is doing some riffing in the background here.
And let’s hear the bass and the drums together. The rhythm section of John Entwistle and Keith Moon is one of the most formidable in rock history.
Awesome. Let’s pick it up at the end of the bridge into the next section.
You can hear Pete interject “Do ya”. Let’s back it up again and hear that.
Townsend’s gonna play a guitar solo. You can hear that there’s two guitar leads there, playing on top of each other. Let’s see if we can pull them apart a bit. Here’s one; this is the one that’s a little bit lower in the mix compared to the other one, along with the acoustic guitar.
And here’s the other solo. This is the one that’s a little bit more forward in the mix.
Okay, let’s go back and hear all of that together.
Then there’s kind of a break with more of those huge Townsend chords. And there’s the first of Daltrey’s big screams.
Let’s play that again. This is actually the last verse, but there’s plenty more of the song to go. Let’s start this one with just Daltrey’s vocals.
Let’s listen to just Pete’s guitar fills here.
And now, let’s go back and hear those in context.
Once again, there’s more great Keith Moon drumming all through that part. So let’s go back and hear some of that.
Let’s pick it back up again. This is an extended section of the band just jamming. Maybe we’ll highlight some of the individual instruments as we go along.
Let’s hear just the guitars and now the bass. Let’s hear a little more of the guitar again. And finally, some of Keith’s drums.
And I really like Keith Moon’s drum fills here, leading into the break. Just love the sound of those floor toms.
And that brings us to the dramatic break, a tension-building section where the song is reduced to just the keyboard part. Over the course of about a minute, that keyboard part will build in intensity, until the band comes back in, in about the most dramatic way possible. So let’s listen through this section.
If you listen closely in the left channel, you can hear that the acoustic guitar actually keeps playing on a little bit longer after the rest of the band stops. Let’s hear just that.
OK, let’s go back to the beginning of that break and hear that again. This time, listen for that acoustic guitar on the left.
And the keyboard part remains primarily in the right channel. Remember that this is the same keyboard part from Pete’s original demo. It’s amazing to think that he got this sound and performance so right, back in his little home studio. But he could envision the band relying on this track, not just for the album, but for live performances, too, which they’ve done right up until this day.
Things start to build back up with the reentrance of Keith Moon’s drums.
OK, first, let’s just hear those drums.
Come on, is there any moment in rock as powerful, as iconic as that moment right there? The keyboards have reached a crescendo, Keith Moon’s pounding away, the band comes crashing in, and Roger Daltrey lets loose one of the greatest screams in rock history. This moment is cathartic, it’s orgasmic, it’s transcendent… If Pete Townsend was looking for music that reached a higher plane, well, it’s happening right here.
Let’s listen to Townsend’s electric guitar. He’s overdubbed a couple of parts here to create those massive guitar chords. Pete was known for playing Gibson SG’s around this time, but on most of the tracks for this album, including here, he’s playing a 1959 Gretsch 6120 hollow body known as the Chet Atkins model, that was given to him by Joe Walsh.
And then there’s that scream. Theres actually two screams overdubbed. Here’s one of them. It’s so throat-shreddingly loud that you can hear it overdriving the microphone, just driving the meters way into the red.
And here’s another one, along with the acoustic guitar track, no less intense.
Let’s back it up and hear all of that all together again.
“Meet the new boss same as the old boss” — says it all right there.
Notice how he doubles the vocal on the line, “same as the old boss”.
Listen to that bass part. It’s interesting what Entwistle is doing. He’s playing octaves here.
And let’s listen to just the guitars here, both the electric and the acoustic. You can hear Townsend playing some guitar fills there. They’re pretty low in the mix, in fact, you can barely hear them at all in the final mix.
Keith does some classic Keith Moon cymbal work there, and you can hear him let out a final exclamation at the end.
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who.
“Who’s Next” went on to become one of The Who’s best-selling and highest regarded albums. But I think Townsend couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a failure… because it wasn’t “Lifehouse”, not anywhere near how he envisioned it. Over the years, he’s revisited the “Lifehouse concept”, and tons of demos and reimaginings of the project have been released. I think he’ll always be at least a little disappointed that “Who’s Next” wasn’t the album that he wanted to make, and I can understand that from his perspective. But for me, that album is a masterpiece, and one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Out of the collapse of Townsend’s most ambitious project came one of the most essential albums in the rock canon. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Well, thanks for sticking with me for this one. This has been one of our longest episodes ever on a single song, but I think this one deserves it. Research for this episode came from a few sources, including the book “Won’t Get Fooled Again: From Lifehouse to Quadrophenia” by Richie Unterberger. That’s a great book. And especially from the “Who’s Next/Lifehouse” Super Deluxe Edition box set. That is really the ultimate story of this album and the “Lifehouse” project. It ain’t cheap, but I highly recommend it.
I’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode. If you’ve missed any of our previous shows, you can find them all on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or look for them in your favorite podcast app. Share your thoughts on this song on The Who, or any music-related subject on our Facebook page, just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on Facebook, or send an email to lovethatsongpodcastmail.com.
And speaking of music related subjects, there are plenty of other shows on the Pantheon Podcast network, just waiting for you to discover them, so go check those out.
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I’ll meet you back here again soon. Thanks for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who.
RESOURCES:
The Who
https://www.thewho.com/
Tommy
https://www.allmusic.com/album/tommy-mw0000192438
Pete Townsend
http://petetownshend.net/
Lifehouse project
https://www.thewho.com/music/lifehouse/
“Won’t Get Fooled Again: From Lifehouse to Quadrophenia” by Richie Unterberger
https://www.amazon.com/Wont-Get-Fooled-Again-Quadrophenia/dp/1900924950
Who’s Next (Lifehouse super deluxe edition box set)
https://www.thewho.com/music/whos-next-super-deluxe/