• Writer: Pete Townshend
• Producers: The Who and Glyn Johns
• Recorded: 1970 at Studio Six in London, England and May 1971 at Olympic Studios in London, England
• Released: July 1971
• Players:
  Roger Daltrey — vocals
  Pete Townshend — guitar, synthesizer, grand piano
  John Entwistle — bass
  Keith Moon — drums
  Dave Arbus — violin
• Album: Who’s Next (Decca, 1971)
• Also On:
  The Kids Are Alright (MCA, 1979)
  Hooligans (MCA, 1981)
  Who’s Last (MCA, 1984)
  Thirty Years Of Maximum R&B (MCA, 1994)
  The Blues To The Bush (Musicmaker.com, 2000)
  The Ultimate Collection (Universal, 2002)
  Live From Toronto (Immortal, 2006)
• With “Baba O’Riley” the Who became the first rock band to use synthesizers in a repetitive, sequenced fashion on an album. Despite their similarities, the intro to “Baba O’Riley” is in fact programmed as a loop, as opposed to the Who’s Next album closer “Won’t Get Fooled Again” which Townshend actually played by hand for the entirety of the song.
• The song is named after two people: Meher Baba, Pete Townshend‘s guru, and Terry Riley, an electronic pioneer whose piece “A Rainbow in Curved Air” inspired Townshend’s own interest in the synthesizer.
• The synthesizer parts on “Baba O’Riley” are from a longer piece that Townshend released privately on the 1972 Meher Baba tribute album called I Am. Other portions of that piece appeared on his 1993 solo album Psychoderelict.
• Townshend said the song “was a number I wrote while I was doing these experiments with tapes on the synthesizer. Among my plans was to take a person out of the audience and feed information — height, weight, autobiographical details — about the person into the synthesizer. The synthesizer would then select notes from the pattern of that person. It would be like translating a person into music.” Townshend has said that the notes used for “Baba O’Riley” utilized the statistics of Meher Baba.
• The song is sometimes known as “Teenage Wasteland” after the lyrics, because the words “Baba O’Riley” are not in the song.
• The Who began recording the Who’s Next album with longtime associate Kit Lambert but, dissatisfied, switched to Glyn Johns, who would continue to work with the band throughout the ’70s.
• Townshend plays a hollow body Gretsch electric guitar given to him by Joe Walsh, then of the James Gang.
• Who’s Next was the only Who album to ever hit Number One on the U.K. chart. In the U.S., it peaked at Number Four on the Billboard 200.
• Although “Baba O’Riley” has gone on to become one of the group’s most enduring radio hits and concert favorites, it was never released as a single.
• The song was also noteworthy for its use of a violin solo at the end, overlapping a guitar solo. In concert, the violin part was played by Roger Daltrey on a harmonica. The grand piano part, which follows the synthesizer introduction on the record, was replaced by John Entwistle on stage, who brought his bass line in several measures early.

FAST FORWARD:

• The Who decided to continue on after drummer Keith Moon‘s death in 1978. They brought in Kenney Jones from the Faces to take Moon’s place. He eventually left and was replaced by other drummers.
• The Who technically broke up with a farewell tour in 1982, but they’ve continued to perform over the years, including a 1989 reunion tour, and a road version of Quadrophenia in 1996 and 1997.
• Townshend oversaw productions of The Who’s Tommy on Broadway in New York City and in London, both of which were hugely successful.
• The Who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.