HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Who's Next'' is the fifth studio album by the English rock band
the Who The Who are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup (1964–1978) consisted of lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon. Considered one of th ...
, released on 2 August 1971, by Track Records in the United Kingdom and by
Decca Records Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which bec ...
in the United States. It developed from the aborted '' Lifehouse'' project, a multi-media rock opera conceived by the group's guitarist
Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is the co-founder, guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist, principal songwriter and leader of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s an ...
as a follow-up to the band's 1969 album '' Tommy''. The project was cancelled owing to its complexity and to conflicts with Kit Lambert, the band's manager, but the group salvaged some of the songs, without the connecting story elements, to release as their next album. Eight of the nine songs on ''Who's Next'' were from ''Lifehouse'', with the lone exception being the John Entwistle–penned " My Wife". Ultimately, the remaining ''Lifehouse'' tracks would all be released on other albums throughout the next decade. The Who recorded ''Who's Next'' with assistance from recording engineer Glyn Johns. After producing the song " Won't Get Fooled Again" in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they relocated to
Olympic Studios Olympic Studios was a British independent recording studio based on Church Road, Barnes, Church Road, Barnes, London, Barnes, London. It is best known for its recordings of many artists throughout the late 1960s to the first decade of the 21st ...
to record and mix most of the album's remaining songs. They made prominent use of
synthesizers A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
on the album, particularly on "Won't Get Fooled Again" and " Baba O'Riley", which were both released as singles. The cover photo was shot by Ethan Russell; it made reference to the monolith in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', as it featured the band standing by a concrete piling protruding from a slag heap in South Yorkshire, apparently having urinated against it. The album was an immediate critical and commercial success and has since been viewed by many critics as the Who's best album, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time. It has been reissued on CD several times, often with additional songs originally intended for ''Lifehouse'' included as bonus tracks. In 2020, ''Who's Next'' was ranked number 77 on ''
Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...
''s list of the " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".


Background

By 1970, the Who had obtained significant critical and commercial success, but they had started to become detached from their original audience. The mod movement had vanished, and the original followers from
Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a suburb of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character, its ...
had grown up and acquired jobs and families. The group had started to drift apart from manager Kit Lambert, owing to his preoccupation with his label, Track Records. They had been touring since the release of '' Tommy'' the previous May, with a set that contained most of that album, but realised that millions had now seen their live performances, and
Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is the co-founder, guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist, principal songwriter and leader of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s an ...
in particular recognised that they needed to do something new. A single, " The Seeker", and a live album, ''
Live at Leeds ''Live at Leeds'' is the first live album by the English rock music, rock band the Who, recorded at the University of Leeds Refectory on 14 February 1970 and released on 11 May 1970, by Decca Records, Decca and MCA Records, MCA in the United St ...
'', were released in 1970, and an EP of new material ("Water", "Naked Eye", "I Don't Even Know Myself", "Postcard", and "Now I'm a Farmer") was recorded, but not released, as the band felt it would not be a satisfactory follow-up to ''Tommy''. Instead, the group tackled a project called '' Lifehouse''. This evolved from a series of columns Townshend wrote for ''
Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publicatio ...
'' in August 1970, in which he discussed the importance of rock music, and in particular what the audience could do. Of all the group, he was the most keen to use music as a communication device, and wanted to branch out into other media, including film, to get away from the traditional album/tour cycle. Townshend has variously described ''Lifehouse'' as a futuristic rock opera, a live-recorded
concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...
and as the music for a scripted film project. The basic plot was outlined in an interview Townshend gave to ''Disc and Music Echo'' on 24 October 1970. ''Lifehouse'' is set in the near future in a society in which music is banned and most of the population live indoors in government-controlled "experience suits". A rebel, Bobby, broadcasts rock music into the suits, allowing people to remove them and become more enlightened. Some elements accurately describe future technology; for example, The Grid resembles the internet and "grid sleep" resembles
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...
. The group held a press conference on 13 January 1971, explaining that they would be giving a series of concerts at the Young Vic theatre, where they would develop the fictional elements of the proposed film along with the audience. After Keith Moon had completed his work on the film '' 200 Motels'', the group performed their first Young Vic concert on 15 February. The show included a new quadrophonic public address system which cost £30,000; the audience was mainly invited from various organisations, such as youth clubs, with only a few tickets on sale to the general public. After the initial concerts, at Lambert's suggestion the group flew to New York to make studio recordings at Record Plant Studios. They were joined by guests Al Kooper on
Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created ...
, Ken Ascher on piano, and Leslie West on guitar. Townshend used a 1957 Gretsch guitar, given to him by Joe Walsh, during the session; it went on to become his main guitar for studio recording. Lambert's participation in the recording was minimal, and he proved to be unable to mix the final recordings. He had started taking hard drugs, while Townshend was drinking brandy regularly. After returning to Britain, engineer Glyn Johns made safety copies of the Record Plant material, but decided it would be better to re-record the album from scratch at Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes. The group gave two more concerts at the Young Vic on 25 and 26 April, which were recorded on the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio by Andy Johns, but Townshend grew disillusioned with ''Lifehouse'' and further shows were cancelled. Audiences at the Young Vic gigs were not interested in interacting with the group to create new material, but simply wanted the Who to play " My Generation" and smash a guitar. The project proved to be intractable on several levels, and caused stress within the band, as well as a major falling-out between Townshend and Lambert. Years later, in the liner notes to the remastered CD, Townshend wrote that the failure of the project led him to the verge of a
nervous breakdown A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
. At the time, Roger Daltrey said the Who "were never nearer to breaking up". Although the ''Lifehouse'' concept was abandoned, scraps of the project remained in the final album, including the use of synthesizers and computers. An early concept for ''Lifehouse'' featured the feeding of personal data from audience members into the controller of an early analogue synthesizer to create a "universal chord" that would have ended the proposed film. Abandoning ''Lifehouse'' gave the group extra freedom, owing to the absence of an overriding musical theme or storyline (which had been present in ''Tommy''). This allowed the band to concentrate on maximising the impact of individual tracks and providing a unifying sound for them. Townshend continued to develop the concepts of the ''Lifehouse'' project, revisiting them in later albums, including a 6-CD set, '' The Lifehouse Chronicles'', in 1999. In 2007, he launched a (now defunct) website called The Lifehouse Method to accept personal input from applicants that would be turned into musical portraits.


Recording and production

The first session for what became ''Who's Next'' was at
Mick Jagger Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English musician. He is known as the lead singer and one of the founder members of The Rolling Stones. Jagger has co-written most of the band's songs with lead guitarist Keith Richards; Jagge ...
's house, Stargroves, at the start of April 1971, using the Rolling Stones Mobile. The backing track of " Won't Get Fooled Again" was recorded there before the band decided to relocate recording to Olympic at Johns' suggestion; the first session there was on 9 April, attempting a basic take of " Bargain". The bulk of the sessions occurred during May, when the group recorded "Time Is Passing", " Pure and Easy", " Love Ain't for Keeping" (which had been reworked from a rock track into an acoustic arrangement), " Behind Blue Eyes", " The Song Is Over", " Let's See Action" and " Baba O'Riley". Nicky Hopkins guested on piano, while Dave Arbus was invited by Moon to play violin on "Baba O'Riley". John Entwistle's "My Wife" was added to the album very late in the sessions, having been originally intended for a solo album. In contrast to the Record Plant and Young Vic sessions, recording with Johns went well, as he was primarily concerned with creating a good sound, whereas Lambert had always been more preoccupied with the group's image; Townshend recalled: "we were just getting astounded at the sounds Glyn was producing". Townshend used early synthesizers and modified keyboard sounds in several modes, including as a drone effect on several songs, notably "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", but also "Bargain", " Going Mobile", and "The Song Is Over". The synthesizer was used as an integral part of the sound, as opposed to providing gloss, as was the case on other artists' albums up to that point. Moon's drumming has a distinctly different style from earlier albums, being more formal and less reliant on long drum fills—partly owing to the synthesizer backing, but also due to the no-nonsense production techniques of Johns, who insisted on a good recording performance that used flamboyance only when truly necessary. Johns was instrumental in convincing the Who that they should simply put a single-disc studio album out, believing the songs to be excellent. The group gave him free rein to assemble an album of whatever songs he wanted, in any order. Despite Johns' key contributions, he only received an "associate producer" credit on the finished album, though he maintained he acted mainly in an engineering capacity and based most of the arrangements on Townshend's original demos. The album opened with "Baba O'Riley", featuring piano and synthesizer-processed Lowrey organ by Townshend. The song's title pays homage to Townshend's guru, Meher Baba, and minimalist composer
Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...
, and it is informally known as "Teenage Wasteland", in reference to a line in the lyrics. The organ track came from a longer demo by Townshend, portions of which were later included on a Baba tribute album ''I Am'', that was edited down for the final recording. Townshend later said this part had "two or three thousand edits to it". The opening lyrics to the next track, "Bargain" ("I'd gladly lose me to find you") came from a phrase used by Baba. Entwistle wrote "My Wife" after having an argument with his wife, exaggerating the conflict in the lyrics. The track features several overdubbed brass instruments recorded in a single half-hour session. "Pure and Easy", a key track from ''Lifehouse'', did not make the final track selection, but the opening line was included as a coda to "The Song Is Over". "Behind Blue Eyes" featured three-part harmony by Daltrey, Townshend, and Entwistle and was written for the main antagonist in ''Lifehouse'', Jumbo. Moon, uncharacteristically, did not appear on the first half of the track, which was later described by Who biographer Dave Marsh as "the longest time Keith Moon was still in his entire life." The closing track, "Won't Get Fooled Again", was critical of revolutions. Townshend explained: "a revolution is only a revolution in the long run and a lot of people are going to get hurt". The song features the Lowrey organ fed through an ARP synthesizer, which came from Townshend's original demo and was re-used for the finished track.


Cover art

The front cover of the album is a photograph, taken on 4 July 1971 on the way from Sheffield to Leicester, of the band apparently having just collectively urinated on a large concrete piling protruding from a slag heap. The idea to shoot the picture came from Entwistle and Moon discussing
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...
and the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. According to photographer Ethan Russell, only Townshend actually urinated against the piling, so rainwater was tipped from an empty film canister to achieve the desired effect. The sky in the background was added later by John Kosh, who was the art director, to give the image what Russell called "this other worldly quality." The rear cover shows the band backstage at De Montfort Hall,
Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area, and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest city in the East Midlands with a popula ...
, amid a cluttered mess of furniture. In 2003, the television channel VH1 named the cover of ''Who's Next'' one of the greatest album covers of all time. Other suggestions for the cover included the group urinating against a Marshall Stack and an overweight nude woman with the Who's faces in place of her genitalia. An alternative cover featuring Moon dressed in black
lingerie Lingerie (, , ) is a category of primarily women's clothing including undergarments (mainly brassieres), sleepwear, and lightweight robes. The choice of the word is often motivated by an intention to imply that the garments are alluring, fashio ...
and a brown wig and holding a whip was later used as part of the inside art of the 1995 and 2003 CD releases of the album. Some of the photographs taken during these sessions were also used as part of Decca's United States promotion of the album.


Release and promotion

The lead single from the album, "Won't Get Fooled Again" (edited down to three and a half minutes), was released ahead of the album on 25 June 1971 in the UK and in July in the US; it reached #9 and #15 in the charts of the respective countries. The album was released on 2 August in the US and on 27 August in the UK. It became the only album by the Who to top the UK charts. The Who started touring the US just before the album was released. They used the ''Lifehouse'' PA, though soundman Bob Pridden found the technical requirements of the equipment to be over-complicated. The set list was revamped, and, while it included a smaller selection of numbers from ''Tommy'', several songs from the new album, such as "My Wife", "Baba O'Riley", and "Won't Get Fooled Again", became live favourites. The latter two songs involved the band playing to a
backing track A backing track is an audio recording on audiotape, CD or a digital recording medium or a MIDI recording of synthesized instruments, sometimes of purely rhythmic accompaniment, often of a rhythm section or other accompaniment parts that live m ...
containing the synthesizer parts. The tour moved to the UK in September, including a show at The Oval in Kennington in front of 35,000 fans and the opening gig at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, before going back to the US, ending in
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
on 15 December. The group then took eight months off touring, the longest break of their career at that point. Several songs recorded at the ''Who's Next'' sessions, but not included on the album, were later released as singles or on compilations. "Let's See Action" was released as a single in 1971, while "Pure and Easy" and "Too Much of Anything" were released on '' Odds & Sods'', and "Time is Passing" was added to the 1998 CD version of that album. The longest version of the cover " Baby Don't You Do It" from the sessions that is currently available is on the 2003 deluxe edition of ''Who's Next''. The album has been re-issued and remastered several times using tapes from different sessions. The master tapes for the Olympic sessions are believed to be lost, as
Virgin Records Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...
threw out a substantial number of old recordings when they purchased the studio in the 1980s. Video game publisher
Harmonix Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., doing business as Harmonix, is an American video game developer company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was established in May 1995 by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. Harmonix is perhaps best known as bein ...
wanted to release ''Who's Next'' as downloadable, playable content for the music video game series ''
Rock Band ''Rock Band'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero, ''Guitar Hero'' series, the main ''Rock Band'' games have players use game controllers mod ...
'', but were unable to do so due to their inability to find the original
multitrack recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...
s. Instead, a compilation of Who songs dubbed ''The Best of The Who'', which includes three of the album's songs ("Behind Blue Eyes", "Baba O'Riley", and "Going Mobile") was released as downloadable content. The 16-track tapes for "Won't Get Fooled Again" and the 8-track tapes for the other material, except for "Bargain" and " Getting in Tune", have since been discovered.


Critical reception and legacy

Reviewing for ''
The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...
'' in 1971, music critic
Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...
called ''Who's Next'' "the best hard rock album in years" and said that, while their previous recordings were marred by a thin sound, the group now "achieves the same resonant immediacy in the studio that it does live". Billy Walker from '' Sounds'' highlighted the songs "Baba O'Riley", "My Wife", and "The Song Is Over", and wrote: "After the unique brilliance of ''Tommy'' something special had to be thought out and the fact that they settled for a straight-forward album rather than an extension of their rock opera, says much for their courage and inventiveness." ''
Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...
'' magazine's John Mendelsohn felt that, despite some amount of seriousness and artificiality, the album's brand of rock and roll is "intelligently-conceived, superbly-performed, brilliantly-produced, and sometimes even exciting". At the end of 1971, the record was voted the best album of the year in the
Pazz & Jop Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...
, an annual poll of American critics published by ''The Village Voice''. Retrospectively, ''Who's Next'' has often been viewed as the Who's best album. In a review for
AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
,
Stephen Thomas Erlewine Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and former senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of multiple artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance ...
said its music was more genuine than ''Tommy'' or the aborted ''Lifehouse'' project because "those were art – 'Who's Next'' even with its pretensions, is rock & roll."
BBC Music BBC Music is the arm of the BBC responsible for the music played across its services. The current director of music is Lorna Clarke. Officially it is a part of the BBC's Radio operational division; however, its remit also includes music used i ...
's Chris Roberts cited it as the band's best record and "one of those carved-in-stone landmarks that the rock canon doesn't allow you to bad-mouth." '' Mojo'' claimed its sophisticated music and
hook A hook is a tool consisting of a length of material, typically metal, that contains a portion that is curved/bent back or has a deeply grooved indentation, which serves to grab, latch or in any way attach itself onto another object. The hook's d ...
-laden songs featured innovative use of rock synthesizers that did not weaken the Who's characteristic "power-quartet attack". In ''
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music ''The Encyclopedia of Popular Music'' is an encyclopedia created in 1989 by Colin Larkin. It is the "modern man's" equivalent of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music'', which Larkin describes in less than flattering terms.''The Times'', ''The Kno ...
'' (1998), Colin Larkin said the album raised the standards for both hard rock and the Who, whose "sense of dynamics" was highlighted by the contrast between their powerful playing and a counterpoint produced at times by acoustic guitars and synthesizer
obbligato In Western classical music, ''obbligato'' (, also spelled ''obligato'') usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance. Its opposite is the marking '' ad libitum''. It can also be used, more specifically, to ind ...
s. Christgau, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic about the record during the 1980s, when the Who became what he felt was "the worst kind of art-rock band", writing that ''Who's Next'' revealed itself to be less tasteful in retrospect because of Daltrey's histrionic singing and "all that synth noodling". In 2003, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked it 28th on its list of
the 500 greatest albums of all time "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is a recurring opinion survey and music ranking of the finest albums in history, compiled by the American magazine ''Rolling Stone''. It is based on weighted votes from selected musicians, critics, and indu ...
; it maintained this rank on the 2012 edition of the list, and was ranked 77th on the 2020 edition. It appeared at number 15 on
Pitchfork Media ''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music magazine founded in 1996 by Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis. It originally covered Alternative rock, alternative and independent music, and expanded to cover genres includin ...
's 2004 list of the 100 best records from the 1970s, and was included in the book '' 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' (2005). The ''Classic Albums''
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
documentary series aired an episode on ''Who's Next'', initially on radio in 1989, and then on television in 1998, which was released in 2006 on DVD as '' Classic Albums: The Who – Who's Next''. That year, it was chosen by ''
Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' as one of the 100 best albums of all time. In 2007, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "lasting qualitative or historical significance". It was voted number 48 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's '' All Time Top 1000 Albums''.


Track listing


Personnel

The Who * Roger Daltrey – lead vocals (1–3, 5–6, 8–9) *
Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is the co-founder, guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist, principal songwriter and leader of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s an ...
 – electric guitar (all but 3), acoustic guitar (2–3, 5, 7–9), lead vocals (1–2, 5, 7), backing vocals (3, 6, 8–9), VCS 3 (5, 7, 9), Lowrey organ (1, 9), ARP synthesizer (2, 5, 7), piano (1) * John Entwistle – bass guitar, lead vocals (4), backing vocals (6, 8), brass (4), piano (4) * Keith Moon – drums, percussion Additional musicians * Dave Arbus – violin (1) * Nicky Hopkins – piano (5–6) * Al Kooper –
Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created ...
on alternate version of "Behind Blue Eyes" * Leslie West – lead guitar on Record Plant sessions on "deluxe edition" including "Baby, Don't You Do It" and "Love Ain't for Keeping" (electric version) Production *
The Who The Who are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup (1964–1978) consisted of lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon. Considered one of th ...
 – production * Glyn Johns – associate production, recording, mixing * Doug Sax – mastering * Kit Lambert – executive production * Chris Stamp – executive production * Pete Kameron – executive production * John Kosh – album design * Ethan Russell – photography * Steven Wilson – multichannel mixes for the 2023 ''Who's Next / Life House'' deluxe set


Charts


Certifications


References


Citations


Sources

* * * * * *


Further reading

* * * '' Classic Albums: The Who - Who's Next'', DVD, Eagle Vision (Classic albums series).


External links

*
Who's Next liner notes – Song-by-song liner notes for the album
()

{{DEFAULTSORT:Who's Next 1971 albums Albums produced by Glyn Johns Albums produced by Pete Townshend Albums recorded at Olympic Sound Studios Decca Records albums MCA Records albums Polydor Records albums Track Records albums The Who albums