“Won't Get Fooled Again” by The Who

Who's Next ends with "Won't Get Fooled Again", all eight and a half minutes of it, and the Who sent a shortened version out as a single ahead of the album in 1971. Pete Townshend wrote it as the grand finale of Lifehouse, the ambitious project that fell apart and left a plainer, tougher record in its place; the song kept its job as the closer anyway.

It opens on that pulsing, clipped keyboard pattern, which sounds like a synthesizer but came from a humble home organ with a built-in rhythm setting, the same instrument Townshend had used on his demo. A first attempt in New York in March 1971 didn't cut it, so the band tried again at Stargroves a month later and got the keeper, with Glyn Johns recording and mixing. Then the machine hands over to the wrecking crew: Townshend's guitars come crashing in, John Entwistle's bass rumbles underneath, Keith Moon goes off like a string of firecrackers, and Roger Daltrey sings it like a man who has heard every promise before. The words take a cold, skeptical look at revolution and at power itself.

From 1971 on it became a fixture of the band's live shows, often the last thing they played, and it was the last song Moon ever played on stage with them. Rolling Stone later put it among The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.