The Who song inspired by Bob Dylan and the Isle of Wight Festival
Whilst Woodstock 1969 might be the definitive moment of the counterculture, only a couple of weeks later, another significant celebration took place, The Isle of Wight Festival. The British answer to the event held in upstate New York also featured an all-star lineup, including Bob Dylan and The Who. According to guitarist Pete Townshend, this experience would influence one of their most well-known hits.
Townshend was significantly impacted by what he witnessed on the Isle of Wight. It wasn’t positive, though; he was shocked at the extent of the rubbish and waste strung across the festival site. In tandem with the recent artistic turns of Bob Dylan and The Moody Blues, it would give rise to one of The Who’s most iconic moments.
The song in question is ‘Baba O’ Riley’, taken from their 1971 masterpiece Who’s Next, the record that originated with Townshend’s aborted rock opera, Life House. During a new interview with The Independent, the Londoner revealed that what he saw at Woodstock influenced him to write the timeless line, “teenage wasteland”, which is central to the impact of ‘Baba O’ Riley’.
Townshend recalled that a couple of weeks after Woodstock, The Who appeared on the bill with Dylan and The Moody Blues at The Isle of Wight Festival. Here, he perceived an intense spiritual longing from the audience but a desire from the artists to stop it. “There was this moment when Dylan was bringing his folk-oriented political and sociological stuff, The Moody Blues were talking overtly about the spiritual path, and The Who had just released Tommy,” said.
Things soon changed for The Who man, as he continued to explain: “I stayed there until it was finished, and by the time I left there was a sea of garbage,” Townshend remembers. “Somebody with me, a photographer, said: ‘F***ing hell, it’s a teenage wasteland!’ so I wrote that down for a song! Our road crew went out and cleared the mess up. I remember being deeply disturbed by it all. Here we are, with an audience looking for uplift and inspiration and solace, because the world was not a particularly pretty place then either, and then they behave like scumbags!”
Nevertheless, Townshend was compelled to discuss the “scumbags” in a series of essays in Melody Maker, imploring artists to give the audience what they wanted; a spiritual connection with them.
“I wrote several essays for Melody Maker talking about the necessity for musicians to listen to what it was that the audience was really hoping for, and what the connections really were between audiences and performers,” he added. “In other words, the normal idea of performance was that the performers are like gurus. I twisted it on its head, and made the audience the gurus. A lot of that sifted down into the Life House thesis.”
Listen to ‘Baba O’Riley’ below.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.