Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Those are famous closing lines from today’s classic song of the day, the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Released as a single in June of 1971, this classic tune went all the way to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, #9 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #9 on the UK Singles chart.
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” was written by Who guitarist Peter Townshend as part of his aborted Lifehouse rock opera. Like another Lifehouse track, “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was deemed worth saving when the rock opera collapsed, and was included on the band’s 1971 Who’s Next album.
The song is all about disillusionment with the new generation. The idea came to him at the Woodstock festival, when activist Abbie Hoffman commandeered the mic during a short break in the Who’s set and Townshend had to chase him off stage. As Townshend later explained, the song reflected his thinking that the era’s counterculture leaders might be no better than the elders they sought to replace:
“I wrote ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ as a reaction to all that—’Leave me out of it: I don’t think your lot would be any better than the other lot!’ All those hippies wandering about thinking the world was going to be different from that day. As a cynical English arsehole, I walked through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them, and shaking them and trying to make them realize that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change.”
Turns out, Pete was right. Yesterday’s hippies have turned into today’s aging Boomers who have, arguably, ruined the world in their own special way. The new boss really did turn out to be the same as the old boss.
The distinctive organ-like pulsing background on “Won’t Be Fooled Again” came from Townshend’s trying to turn people’s brainwaves and heartbeats into music. He captured this data from a number of individuals and converted it into a series of audio pulses that he then fed first into a Lowrey organ and then into an ARP 2500 synthesizer. The Who then played the song over this repeating audio track, recording at Mick Jagger’s house using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Glyn Jones, of Beatles fame, co-produced along with the group.
The album version of “Won’t Be Fooled Again” ran more than eight minutes long. Their record label whittled it town to a concise three-and-a-half minutes for the single release. It ended up being the last song drummer Keith Moon played in front of a paying audience, in a concert on October 21, 1976, at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. It was also his last recorded performance, in a closed-door concert the band gave at Shepperton Studios in London on May 25, 1978, for the documentary The Kids Are Alright. (Moon passed away on September 7, 1978; he was just 32 years old.)
In any case, none of us are teenagers anymore and we’re all as disillusioned as we can be. So click play on the video and sing along with a much younger Roger Daltry:
A change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I’ll tip my hat to the new Constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
