The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Who · produced by The Who, with Glyn Johns as associate producer · Track in Britain, Decca in the United States · about 43 minutes
Mode
Hard rock built on a sequenced synthesiser and treated organ pattern, with piano ballads, acoustic songs and a comic song between
Mythos
The wheel of revolution, the old order returned as the new; the seeker’s bargain with the divine; the villain’s lament made inward
Phase
Nine tracks on two sides, opening and closing on the machine pulse, passing from the seeker’s longing through music as grace to the hidden self and the disenchanted crowd
Presentation
Album; nine tracks, about forty-three minutes, released in August 1971; eight songs by Pete Townshend and one by John Entwistle, drawn from an abandoned larger project
Register
Guitars, synthesiser and organ, piano, bass and brass, drums against a fixed pulse, a violin reel; a voice from restraint to a scream
Scale
One seeker, a hidden man, a generation in its wasteland, and a crowd and the power it overthrows
Governing Proposition
A band whose larger project has failed keeps nine of its songs and drops the frame that joined them, then sets a four-piece at full weight against a repeating machine pattern at both ends of the record: a seeker’s longing for music as grace, met at the close by a crowd that learns its revolution brings back the old order, at a height few rock records reach, in a sequence that is a collection more than a form.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a machine. Baba O’Riley opens on a looped organ pattern rippling alone, in repeat, before the piano chords come in and then the drums, and a long time passes before a word is sung. It is one of the great arrivals of recorded rock, and it states the record’s method before the voice is ready: a band at full weight laid over a pattern that does not change for it. Keith Moon, the least metronomic drummer in rock, locks to that pulse, and the record’s sound is made in the meeting.
The Who released the album in August 1971, through Decca in the United States and Track in Britain: nine tracks on two sides, about forty-three minutes. The band were Roger Daltrey on voice, Pete Townshend on guitars, keyboards, synthesiser and voice, John Entwistle on bass, brass and voice, and Moon on drums. It was produced by the band with Glyn Johns as associate producer, recorded in the spring of 1971 chiefly at Olympic Studios in London and with the Rolling Stones’ mobile unit at Stargroves, after earlier sessions in New York that were largely set aside. Townshend wrote eight of the songs and Entwistle one. Nicky Hopkins plays piano on The Song Is Over and Getting in Tune; Dave Arbus plays the violin at the close of the first track.
The songs were drawn from Lifehouse, a film and stage work Townshend had planned and abandoned in the winter of 1970 to 1971, and the record is a salvage: it keeps nine songs and drops the frame that would have joined them. Baba O’Riley names what it opens on, a youth spent in a crowd that thought itself free, the “teenage wasteland”, and the long instrumental opening is that wasteland before the voice. Then the violin coda turns the song toward escape, a folk reel accelerating against the drums, and the record lifts a second time before its first track is over.
Movement II
Bargain states the seeker’s surrender, to lose oneself to find the other. The devotion behind it is the maker’s documented source: the holy man Meher Baba, whose name the first track also carries. The song rises at each of its choruses, power chords over a synthesiser bed, and in its acoustic middle it falls to a quiet height of its own, the seeker’s stillness before the last chorus. It is the record’s plainest statement of the search that governs it, and it gives more once its devotion is known.
Around it the first side loosens. Love Ain’t for Keeping is a short acoustic number whose loss would cost a breath between Bargain and the next track, and nothing more. My Wife is Entwistle’s song, a fine comic number about a husband fleeing a jealous wife, from another author and another world; nothing in the record needs it, and its brass overdubs are thick. Then The Song Is Over passes from a hushed piano ballad to a full band swell and back, music heard as grace and as ending at once.
The subtractive test bites three times on this record, twice on its first side and once on its second, and about a fifth of the running time is permitted rather than compelled. That is the cost of the salvage. The larger work would have required these songs; the record keeps them without it, so that each must be found necessary on its own. Most are. The frame’s absence is a fact of the record as released, and the joining law that the frame would have supplied has to be heard, where it can be, in the songs themselves.
Movement III
The middle of the record is given to music as grace. The Song Is Over closes the first side on it, and Getting in Tune opens the second, a song about music as harmony with others. The two are well made and conventional in arrangement. They render a mood more than they articulate a meaning: what they disclose is a longing, sung with conviction, for a note that joins people, and the record does not say what that note is. Lifehouse would have; the record keeps the longing without the account of it.
Going Mobile follows, a light pleasure of the road, its treated guitar solo more effect than construction. It stands outside the search the record otherwise pursues, as My Wife and Love Ain’t for Keeping do, and the law that holds the rest loosens on all three. Three of nine tracks obey something other than the search for transcendence through music: a comic world, a love song, the open road. The range they add is real, and it is range the law does not reach.
The sequence still has a shape. It opens on the machine pulse and will close on it, and between them the songs pass from the seeker’s longing through music as grace to the hidden self and the disenchanted crowd. That is a form, and it is counted. But it is the form of a collection cut from a larger one. Another order of these songs would change less than it would on a record built whole, and the three songs outside the law sit in the sequence by placement, not by form.
Movement IV
Behind Blue Eyes discloses the interior of the man cast as villain: the one who must hide his anger and his loneliness, a condition many recognise and few songs had shown from inside. It begins as a quiet confession, Daltrey’s voice in restraint, and the first half withholds the band. Then the band enters with a force that is the song’s argument: the anger the first half hides breaks out, and the form has said what the words only begin to. The figure is old, the villain’s lament, and here it is made inward.
The recording carries this, as it carries the whole record. Johns recorded the band with a clarity rare in hard rock of its time: Moon’s drums placed and huge without blur, Entwistle’s bass articulate under the guitar, Daltrey’s voice at its fullest. Townshend’s guitar and keyboard writing is exact, and the band playing against a fixed pulse on the record’s two longest songs is a feat of ensemble. The sound became a standard of the hard-rock album, and it is part of what the record means.
The inheritance the record turns from is the band’s own: the mod single, the auto-destructive stage show, the hard rock of Live at Leeds and the rock opera of Tommy. The turn has two parts. The synthesiser and treated organ become the ground of hard rock rather than a colour on it, and the band that had made the rock opera famous puts out a set of songs instead, its larger project having failed and its maker having paid for it. But the synthesiser was already in rock and in minimalism, Baba O’Riley’s title acknowledges the composer Terry Riley as a source, and the song collection is the inherited form. The turn was a retreat as much as a wager.
Movement V
Won’t Get Fooled Again closes the record and is its summit. It holds its height for eight minutes over the machine pulse, then falls away until the synthesiser plays alone, a long passage held without slack. Moon returns, the band returns, Daltrey screams, and the song comes back to the same verse it has already sung. The argument the record has withheld comes in four words: “meet the new boss”. Revolution, the hope of its generation, reproduces the power it overthrows. That is a meaning, stated, and it has proved true often enough to stand.
Here myth is built. The song is the wheel of revolution, the old order fallen and returned as the new, and its form repeats the cycle: a long build, a fall to the machine alone, and the return of the full band to the same place. The pattern is ancient and the particulars are concrete and of their moment. Elsewhere on the record myth is evoked, in the seeker’s bargain, in the wasteland that calls up Eliot, in the villain made inward, but in this song alone the archetype bears weight. The frame that would have built the rest is absent.
Fifty-five years have tested the record. It has stayed in print and been heard whole, and its two bookend songs have stayed in broadcast, in stadiums and in television themes for five decades; later arena rock, and later rock that took in the synthesiser, drew on it, and punk defined itself partly against its grandeur. Much of that presence is of two or three songs, not the whole. What it holds is one seeker, a hidden man, a generation and a crowd with the power it overthrows; labour, the family and the natural order are absent. Within that, the record reaches heights few rock records reach, and its last word is a warning against the hope it has sung.
Act III · The Twelve
The record is a salvage: the larger work it was drawn from had a frame that would have required its songs, and the record keeps nine and drops the frame, so necessity has to be found song by song. Baba O’Riley must open, the pulse on which everything after is laid. Won’t Get Fooled Again must close, the long argument the record has withheld. The Song Is Over, Getting in Tune and Behind Blue Eyes each carry what no other track carries. The subtractive test bites three times: Love Ain’t for Keeping would cost a breath, My Wife is a fine comic song from another author and another world, and Going Mobile is a light pleasure of the road. About a fifth of the record is permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and twice it holds firmly. Won’t Get Fooled Again says that revolution, the hope of its generation, reproduces the power it overthrows; that is a meaning, stated, and it has proved true often enough to stand. Behind Blue Eyes discloses the interior of the man cast as villain, who must hide his anger and his loneliness, a condition many recognise and few songs had shown from inside. Baba O’Riley names a youth spent in a crowd that thought itself free; Bargain states the seeker’s surrender, to lose oneself to find the other. Held below the bar: the meanings sit in four songs, two others render music as grace more than they articulate it, and two disclose little.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Elevation is the record’s strength, and it comes often. The opening of Baba O’Riley, a looped organ pattern rippling alone before the piano and drums come in, is one of the great arrivals of recorded rock, and its violin coda, accelerating against the drums into a reel, lifts again at the end of the same track. Bargain rises at each chorus and has a quiet height in its acoustic middle. The Song Is Over passes from a hushed ballad to a full swell and back. Behind Blue Eyes turns on the band’s entry. Won’t Get Fooled Again holds its height for eight minutes, falls to the machine alone, and releases it in the drums’ return and the scream. Three tracks stay level, and the heights are mostly of one kind, the exultant.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built in one song. Won’t Get Fooled Again builds the wheel of revolution: the old order falls and the new is the old, and the song’s form repeats the cycle, a long build, a fall to the machine alone, and the return of the full band to the same verse. The pattern is ancient, the particulars concrete and of their moment, and the archetype bears weight. Elsewhere myth is evoked. Bargain is the seeker’s bargain with the divine; Baba O’Riley’s title joins a holy man to a minimalist composer, and its wasteland calls up Eliot without building his structure; Behind Blue Eyes gives the old figure of the villain’s lament, made inward but not built into a pattern. One myth is built, and the frame that would have carried the rest is absent.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own: the mod single, the auto-destructive stage show, the hard rock of Live at Leeds and the rock opera of Tommy (1969). The turn has two parts. The synthesiser and treated organ are made the ground of hard rock, not a colour laid on the band but a repeating pattern it plays against, so that Keith Moon, the least metronomic drummer in rock, locks to a machine pulse. And the band turns from the rock opera it had made famous to a set of songs, its larger project having failed. The stake was real. What holds it: the synthesiser was already in rock and in minimalism, from which the repeating pattern was taken by acknowledgment in a title, and the song collection is the inherited form; the turn was a retreat as much as a wager.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The sequence is counted here, once. It has a shape: it opens on the machine pulse and closes on it, and between them the songs pass from the seeker’s longing in Bargain through music as grace in The Song Is Over and Getting in Tune to the hidden self of Behind Blue Eyes and the disenchanted crowd of the closing track. Within songs the form knows things. Baba O’Riley’s long instrumental opening is the wasteland before the voice; Won’t Get Fooled Again’s collapse to the machine alone enacts the revolution that brings back the old order; Behind Blue Eyes withholds the band until the anger it hides breaks out. But the record is a collection cut from a larger form, another order of the same songs would change less than it would on a record built whole, and My Wife and Love Ain’t for Keeping sit by placement, not by form.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Evidence over fifty-five years, more formal than semantic. Musicians still take apart the making: the organ pattern of Baba O’Riley and how it was produced, the synthesiser passage of Won’t Get Fooled Again, Moon’s playing against a fixed pulse, Entwistle’s bass, Johns’s drum sound. The record keeps returning as a question about itself, because it is the visible part of an abandoned larger work, and the expanded editions built around that work reopen what was cut. Semantically the yield is uneven. Won’t Get Fooled Again and Behind Blue Eyes deepen with each political season and each listener who has played the villain, and Bargain gives more once its devotion is known. Baba O’Riley’s words are few, and three songs are exhausted early. It stands under Low at 8.8 and well above Zooropa at 7.7.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is the rock album of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The intrinsic force is high: the record showed that the synthesiser could be a rhythmic engine inside hard rock rather than an effect, that a four-piece at full weight could be set against a sequenced pattern without losing either, and it set a model of the large, heavy, melodic rock album as an arena form, recorded with a clarity that became a standard of the hard-rock sound. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the arena rock of the decade and later rock that took in the synthesiser drew on it; the two bookend songs became fixtures of broadcast, stadiums and television; punk defined itself partly against the grandeur it stood for. The songs stayed songs, and much of the reach is a sound and two anthems rather than a method. It stands level with Sticky Fingers, of the same year, at 8.7: the force here is greater than that record claims for itself, and the reach narrower than its template riff, studio and repertoire. It stands below Led Zeppelin IV, at 9.4, whose reach as a primary source for the hard rock and heavy metal that followed is wider.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty-five years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, in print throughout, remastered and reissued, and is heard as an album as well as in its songs. Presence is continuous and among the widest of any rock record of its year: Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again have stayed in broadcast for five decades, in stadiums, films and television themes, and Behind Blue Eyes has been covered and returned to the charts in later decades. The fabric bears its year in the synthesiser timbres, though those timbres are now heard as the record’s identity rather than its date, and the closing song has outlived its occasion. Much of the presence is of two or three songs, not the whole. It stands under Kind of Blue at 9.0 and above Low and Remain in Light at 8.7.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, and the making is load-bearing. Johns recorded the band with a clarity rare in hard rock of the time: Moon’s drums placed and huge without blur, Entwistle’s bass articulate under the guitar, Roger Daltrey’s voice at its fullest, from the restraint of Behind Blue Eyes to the scream. Townshend’s guitar and keyboard writing is exact: the acoustic and power chords of Bargain, the layered arrangement of Baba O’Riley, the long synthesiser passage of Won’t Get Fooled Again held without slack. The band playing against a fixed pulse is a feat of ensemble. The faults: Going Mobile’s treated guitar solo is more effect than construction, My Wife’s brass overdubs are thick, Love Ain’t for Keeping is slight, and two of the ballads are well made but conventional in arrangement.
Score: 8.8 / 10
One law can be named: the search for transcendence through music, met by the disenchantment of the crowd and the self. Take the most distant elements. Getting in Tune, a song about music as harmony with others, and Won’t Get Fooled Again, a song about the crowd betrayed, obey the law as its two poles; Behind Blue Eyes and Bargain obey it as its inward side. The range is real: piano ballad, acoustic song, synthesiser-driven hard rock, a country-tinged road song. But the law loosens. My Wife obeys only its own comic world, Going Mobile the pleasure of the road outside the search, Love Ain’t for Keeping a love song outside the frame. Three of nine tracks stand outside the law, and the frame that would have joined them all is not on the record.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. The self is held fully, in the seeker of Bargain and the hidden man of Behind Blue Eyes. The sacred is held in Bargain’s devotion and the music as grace of the middle songs. The crowd and the state are held in Won’t Get Fooled Again, the revolution and the new boss; youth and its generation in Baba O’Riley. Marriage enters comically in My Wife, the road and the machine in Going Mobile, technology in the synthesiser itself. What holds it lowest: labour, the family beyond the couple, history beyond its year and the natural order are absent or glimpsed, and the orders arrive song by song, one seeker’s consciousness joining most of them but not the comic song or the road song.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime, The Imperishable and The Made at 8.8, then Pressure on Tradition at 8.7. Elevation on five or six of nine tracks, from the looped arrival of the first to the scream of the last; a record whole and present for fifty-five years, two of its songs in broadcast for five decades; a recorded sound of the first rank, a four-piece at full weight against a fixed pulse; and the synthesiser shown as a rhythmic engine inside hard rock.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: the self, the sacred, a generation and a crowd with its state are held, while labour, the family, history and the natural order are absent or glimpsed, and the orders arrive song by song. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7, one myth built and the rest evoked, and The Inevitable, The Living Form and The Inner Law at 7.9: a collection cut from a lost frame, with three songs permitted, placed rather than formed, and outside the law.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.9, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three axes: The Imperishable at 8.8 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.7, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, at 8.2, stands below it as well.
Basis · the album as first released in August 1971, by Decca in the United States and Track in Britain, nine tracks in their original order on two sides, about forty-three minutes, produced by The Who with Glyn Johns as associate producer; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words, its making in outline and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. Later reissues with added tracks and the expanded editions built around the abandoned Lifehouse project are evidence for return and survival, not the object; Lifehouse itself is not scored. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the session dates, the studio used for each track, which synthesiser is heard where, the exact take and session of each track, mix differences between the first British and American pressings, who plays every keyboard part, and Townshend’s later reconstruction of Lifehouse, are not given.