The song Pete Townshend used to insult his audience: “I’m not going to be your tool”
The beauty of The Who always came from having a dialogue between the band and the audience. Whereas most groups from around that time could have easily just gotten by making catchy songs that people loved turning up the radio for, Pete Townshend knew that to truly reach the people he wanted. He would have to use songs to take the audience with him. Sometimes, the audience doesn’t know what they want, and when Townshend sat down to write ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, he admitted that he wanted to write a song against the crowd.
After the release of ‘My Generation’, The Who already had the world eating out of their hand. There had been Mod groups like them before, but none of them had the power to create as much noise as they did, including the central riff that became a precursor to punk rock in the years that followed.
The single was a decent slice of disgruntled rock and roll, but Townshend aimed to dream bigger when putting together his other tunes. Rock and roll needed to mean something more, and when he started putting together Tommy, Townshend envisioned a character piece that would make fans appreciate rock music in the same way that they appreciate genres like opera.
But Townshend probably hadn’t thought about the kind of impact that it would have. Outside of giving birth to the rock opera, the entire world was now waiting with bated breath to see what he would do next, and Townshend wasn’t in love with the idea of just recycling the same old formula over again.
Although the vision for the next album, Lifehouse, was supposed to be another operatic piece, what turned up on Who’s Next were the scraps of what that project was intended to be. There were still quality pieces scattered throughout the album, but ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ was intended as the massive climax, when the new character, Bobby, would go against dystopian leaders trying to feed everyone artificial life.
Even though Townshend loved the idea of starting a revolution, he wanted to make something that put the audience in their place, telling The New York Times, “I wrote ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, which was essentially saying to the audience: ‘Just [expletive] off. I’m not going to be your tool’. It led to the question, If you’re going to say ‘[expletive] off’ to revolutionary thinking, then what it is that you are going to do?”
It’s not like Townshend didn’t know what he was talking about. Social change was already on the rise in the 1960s, but after the Summer of Love ideals faded, Townshend knew that he wanted something better than just what the Woodstock generation had to offer to the world.
Outside of being one of the finest songs he ever wrote, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ sounds like Townshend’s version of what Bob Dylan had done on ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. After turning into one of the biggest stars in the world, Townshend reminded everyone that nothing would change. He was the new boss, but if you listen to the lyrics, is that really a revolutionary thing?
