Pete Townshend In The Studio For Who's Next Anniversary

Pete Townshend is featured in the latest episode of syndicated radio show In The Studio: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands which celebrates the anniversary The Who's Who's Next. The show sent over the following details:

Few rock fans realize that immediately prior to the album Tommy's 1969 release, the British quartet The Who were on the brink of breaking up. They were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and had yet to score a Top 10 hit in America. The album Tommy changed all that for The Who, and they spent the remainder of 1969 and most of 1970 touring the world while critics lauded composer Pete Townshend as a genius.

As 1970 waned, Townshend found himself no doubt encouraged by the universal acclaim he received for his rock opera Tommy. Townshend decided to do home demos for another audio/visual high concept piece in late 1970 entitled Lifehouse. Townshend shares with In The Studio host Redbeard the dilemma Tommy had put The Who in.

Pete Townshend says, " Tommy was incredibly difficult to follow. It was huge, it kind of existed outside of The Who. It challenged The Who, it challenged what we were. It changed us, but didn't tell us what to do next."

What eventually came next was Who's Next , an album produced by Glyn Johns that rose out of the ashes of the abandoned Lifehouse project while managing to deliver some of the most iconic Who songs of all time including, "Behind Blue Eyes", "Bargain", "Baba O'Riley" and the anthem for the ages, "Won't Get Fooled Again". Stream the episode here.

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