A synthesizer riff built on a Lowrey organ loop opens one of the most recognizable rock records ever pressed. That pulsing, almost hypnotic sequence belongs to Baba O'Riley, and it carried The Who to a milestone the band never repeated. On 18 September 1971, Who's Next climbed to number one on the British chart, the only album by the London quartet to ever reach that position. The record had arrived in stores in August, but its path to the top had been anything but straightforward.
The Who formed in London in 1964, and by the early seventies they had already reshaped what a rock band could do on stage and in the studio. Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon had built a reputation on volume, feedback, and destruction. Townshend's power-chord attack and controlled guitar noise became a template for hard rock, while the group's early singles, from I Can't Explain to My Generation, had turned mod culture into a national soundtrack.
The abandoned Lifehouse project
Before Who's Next, the band had chased a much stranger idea. Townshend envisioned Lifehouse, a multimedia rock opera meant to follow Tommy, the 1969 concept album that had made The Who critical darlings and commercial heavyweights. Lifehouse was supposed to blur the line between audience and performer, a sprawling project involving film, live improvisation, and interactive technology. The pressure to top Tommy eventually crushed the concept, and Townshend abandoned it.
What remained were songs too strong to discard. Won't Get Fooled Again, Behind Blue Eyes, and Baba O'Riley had all been written for Lifehouse, but they found new life when the band regrouped with producer Glyn Johns. The sessions stripped away the opera's narrative scaffolding and focused on direct, visceral rock. The result was an album that sounded like a band at the peak of its collective power, with Moon's drumming and Entwistle's bass lines pushing every track forward.
Chart-topping success and cover art
Who's Next arrived with a cover photograph that looked like a monument to masculine cool: the band standing against a concrete monolith, apparently having just urinated on it. The image matched the music's swagger. Critics responded immediately, praising the album as a high point in The Who's catalog. The public agreed, sending it to the top of the UK chart in September 1971, a position the group would never hold again.
The album's success cemented The Who's place among the most influential rock bands of the twentieth century. Their contribution to the development of the Marshall stack and large-scale sound systems had already changed how live rock was experienced. The synthesizer textures on Who's Next, particularly the arpeggiated lines Townshend programmed, pushed electronic elements into mainstream rock without losing the band's raw edge.
Influence across rock genres
The Who's influence spread across hard rock, punk, power pop, and mod revival scenes. Bands that came later borrowed the aggression, the stage destruction, and the ambition. The group had already played Monterey Pop in 1967 and released I Can See for Miles, their only American top ten single. Live at Leeds in 1970 had documented their ferocity on stage, and Tommy had turned rock opera into a viable commercial format.
After Who's Next, The Who continued to evolve. Quadrophenia in 1973 returned to the mod themes that had defined their early identity, and the 1975 film adaptation of Tommy brought the earlier work to a wider audience. The Who by Numbers followed in 1975, but by late 1976 the band had nearly stopped touring. The release of Who Are You in 1978 was overshadowed by Keith Moon's death that same year.
Kenney Jones from Small Faces and Faces took over on drums, and the band released Face Dances in 1981 and It's Hard in 1982 before officially disbanding in 1983. Reunions followed, including Live Aid in 1985 and a 25th anniversary tour in 1989. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted The Who in 1990. A more permanent reunion began in 1999, though Entwistle's death in 2002 delayed new material until Endless Wire in 2006.
Since 2002, Daltrey and Townshend have carried the name with additional musicians, releasing the album Who in 2019 and launching The Song Is Over North American Farewell Tour in 2025. Fifty-five years after Who's Next topped the chart, the record still functions as a snapshot of a band that nearly self-destructed creatively and instead produced its most enduring work.