Because Universal probably won’t
appreciate me posting the notes to too many of The Who’s Track singles in their
forthcoming box set, here’s the last one for now, another song they’ll no doubt be playing in
Hyde Park and at Glastonbury.
A: Won’t Get
Fooled Again
Written by Pete
Townshend. © 1971 Fabulous Music Ltd.
Produced by The Who, associate producer Glyn Johns.
B: Don’t Know Myself
Written by Pete
Townshend. © 1971 Fabulous Music Ltd.
Produced by The Who, associate producer Glyn Johns.
Originally
released as Track 2094 009 on 25 June 1971, it reached Number 9 in the British
charts.
Now a cornerstone
of The Who’s repertoire, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ was the key song on Who’s
Next, a lengthy call to arms that became the traditional show closer at Who
concerts in 1975/76. This single version is a fairly drastic edit of the
eight-and-a-half-minute album track, losing the lengthy synthesiser break and
drum barrage which set up Roger’s blood-curdling scream before the apocalyptic
final verse about the new boss being the same as the old one. Recorded in April on the Rolling Stones’
16-track mobile studio at Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s Victorian country mansion
near Newbury in Berkshire, the song is based around a clattering synthesizer
riff that locks the group into a tight, rhythmic performance, classic mid-period
Who at their towering best; Roger singing his heart out, Pete’s block chords
firmly in place, John swooping up and down his bass and Keith an almighty
presence on drums, albeit slightly more disciplined than usual in view of the
song’s inflexible structure.
With lyrics that address the futility of revolution
when the conqueror is likely to become as corrupt as the conquered, the song
inspired many a clenched fist, especially when Roger came careering in at the
end of that lengthy instrumental passage, declaiming the ‘bosses’ and inciting
the kind of scenes that left the Bastille in ruins. That scream before the
final verse is one of the most volatile vocal eruptions ever recorded and, on
stage, triggered an Olympian leap from Pete that saw him slide across the stage
on his knees to end up in front of John.
Many of the songs on
Who’s Next, notably its opening
flourish ‘Baba O’Riley’, featured prominent synthesisers but unlike many of his
less imaginative peers Pete didn’t use this en
vogue contraption simply as a solo keyboard that could make funny noises.
In his hands it conjured up a rotating musical loop that underpinned melodies
and, in the case of ‘Fooled Again’, added a sharp bite to the rhythm track. It
is true to say that Pete and Stevie Wonder, on his trilogy of ground breaking
albums that commenced in 1972 with Music
Of My Mind, were the first musicians of their generation to make proper
creative use of this new and subsequently much abused electronic toy. In fact,
the synthesizer style on Who’s Next
is the first appearance on a rock record of the repetitive electronic
sequencing so beloved of Kraftwerk and which would dominate modern dance music
in the nineties.
Pete: “It’s really a
bit of a weird song. The first verse sounds like a revolution song and the
second like somebody getting tired of it. It’s an angry anti-establishment
song. It’s anti people who are negative. A song against the revolution because
the revolution is only a revolution and a revolution is not going to change
anything at all in the long run, and a lot of people are going to get hurt.”
‘Don’t Know Myself’ was recorded during the spring of
1970 at Pete’s home studio close
to Eel Pie Island on the Thames at the
south western tip of London. It was part of a planned EP project but appeared
instead as the flip of ‘Won’t
Get Fooled Again’. A Lifehouse
reject which wasn’t quite up to the standard of the other songs Pete was
writing in 1970, the song blends a fierce verse and chorus with a strange,
country and western style middle eight that features Keith tapping a wooden
block. Often played live in 1970/71, it was dropped when Who’s Next
provided the band with better stage material.
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