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}} ''Who's Next'' is the fifth studio album by English rock band The Who. It developed from band member Pete Townshend's aborted ''Lifehouse'' project, a multi-media rock opera he wrote as a follow-up to the band's 1969 album ''Tommy''. The project was cancelled due to its complexity and conflicts with Kit Lambert, the band's manager, but Townshend was persuaded to record the songs as a straightforward studio album. 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 to record and mix most of the album's remaining songs. They made prominent use of the synthesizer 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 and made reference to the monolith in the 1968 film ''2001: A Space Odyssey'', as it featured group members having urinated against a concrete piling protruding from a slag heap. ''Who's Next'' was an immediate success when it was released on 14 August 1971. It has since been viewed by critics as the Who's best record and one of the greatest albums of all time. It was reissued on CD several times with additional songs originally intended for ''Lifehouse''. ==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 had grown up and acquired jobs and families. The group had started to drift apart from manager Kit Lambert due to his preoccupation with their 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 realized that millions had now seen their live performances, and Pete Townshend in particular recognized that they needed to do something new. A single, "The Seeker", and a live album, ''Live at Leeds'' 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''. The album had its roots in a project called ''Lifehouse''. This evolved from a series of columns Townshend wrote for ''Melody Maker'' 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 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" virtual reality. 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 and 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, the group flew to New York's Record Plant Studios at Lambert's suggestion, for studio recordings. The group were joined by guests Al Kooper on Hammond organ, Ken Ascher on piano and Leslie West on guitar. Townshend used a 1957 Gretsch guitar, given to him by Joe Walsh, during the session and 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 that it would be better to re-record it from scratch at Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes. The group gave a further series of 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. 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. 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. 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 due to the absence of an overriding musical theme or storyline (which had been the basis of ''Tommy''). This allowed the band to concentrate on maximising the impact of individual tracks, and providing a unifying sound for them. Although he gave up his original intentions for the ''Lifehouse'' project, Townshend continued to develop the concepts, revisiting them in later albums, including a 6-CD set, ''The Lifehouse Chronicles'' in 1999. In 2007 he opened a website called The Lifehouse Method to accept personal input from applicants that would be turned into musical portraits.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Lifehouse Method (official website) )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Who's Next」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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