Baba O'Riley

In 1971 the Who were salvaging material from a failed rock opera. Pete Townshend had written "Baba O'Riley" for Lifehouse, a follow-up to Tommy that was scrapped before completion, and eight of its songs were rescued for the band's fifth studio album, Who's Next. In the opera's story, a Scottish farmer named Ray would have sung it at the beginning as he gathered his wife Sally and two children for a move to London. Instead it became the album's lead-off track.

The title honors two of Townshend's inspirations at the time: the Indian spiritual master Meher Baba and the American minimalist composer Terry Riley. The opening synthesiser pattern came from Townshend's plan to feed Meher Baba's vital signs and personality into a machine that would generate music from the data. When that fell through, he recorded a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ using its marimba repeat feature instead. The track grew from a nine-minute demo and originally ran thirty minutes before being cut to its high points.

Townshend drew the line "teenage wasteland" from the rubbish-strewn field after the band's 1969 Isle of Wight Festival gig, though he also cited the desolation of teenagers at Woodstock. He noted the irony that many listeners heard it as a celebration. In Europe the song appeared as a single in October 1971, backed with "My Wife", while in Britain and America it was available only on the album.