The Who 2000s
 Lifehouse & Who's Next
Also in 1970, The Who began work on a studio album that was never released. At the Isle of Wight Festival in August, Daltrey introduced I Don't Even Know Myself as off the new album, which we're sort of half-way through. But within a few weeks of that concert Townshend wrote Pure and Easy, a song which he later described as the central pivot of what became an ambitious concept album/performance art project called Lifehouse, distracting him and the band from work on the album in progress. Lifehouse was never completed in its intended form. Some Lifehouse songs were released as non-album-track singles, b-sides and on various albums over the years, such as 1974's outtakes compilation Odds & Sods and Townshend's 1972 solo album Who Came First. Townshend would later reconstruct it as a radio play for the BBC in 2000, and most of the material was released on a 6-CD album from Pete Townshend's website shortly after.
Meanwhile, in March of 1971, the band began recording the available Lifehouse material with Kit Lambert in New York, and then restarted the sessions with Glyn Johns in April. Selections from the material, along with one unrelated song by Entwistle, were released as a traditional studio album, Who's Next, which became their most successful album among both critics and fans, but which effectively terminated the Lifehouse project. Who's Next reached #4 in the USA pop charts and #1 in the UK. Two tracks from the album, Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again, are often cited as pioneering examples of synthesizer use in rock music; ironically, both tracks' distinctive keyboard sounds were actually generated in real time by a Lowrey organ (though in the case of Won't Get Fooled Again, the organ's output was processed through the filters of a VCS3 synthesizer). However, synthesizers can be found elsewhere on the album, playing a prominent role in Bargain, Going Mobile, and The Song is Over.
Quadrophenia & By Numbers
Who's Next was followed by Quadrophenia (1973), a work in the rock opera vein, but which can also be seen as something of an autobiographical or social history piece about early 1960s adolescent life and conflict in London. The story is about a youth named Jimmy, his struggle for self-esteem, his conflicts with his family and others, and his mental illness. His personal story is set against a backdrop of the clashes between Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s in the UK, particularly the riots between the two factions at Brighton. The supporting US tour featured a legendary November 20, 1973 San Francisco, California concert where drummer Keith Moon passed out twice during the show and was replaced by a member of the audience.
The band's later albums contained songs of more personal content for Townshend, and he eventually transferred this personal style to his solo albums, as seen on the album Empty Glass. 1975's The Who by Numbers had several introspective songs in this vein, lightened by the crowd-pleasing Squeeze Box, another hit single. Nevertheless, some rock critics considered By Numbers to have been Townshend's suicide note. A movie version of Tommy was released that year. It was directed by Ken Russell, starred Roger Daltrey in the title role and earned Pete Townshend an academy award nomination for Best Original Score. In 1976 The Who played a concert at Charlton Athletic Football Ground which was listed for over a decade in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest concert ever.
Who Are You and Moon's death
In 1978, the band released Who Are You, a move away from epic rock opera and towards a more radio-friendly sound, though it did contain one song from a never-completed rock opera by John Entwistle. The release of the album was overshadowed by the death of Keith Moon in his sleep after a drug overdose, only a few hours after a party held by Paul McCartney. Two ironies about the last album include the cover, which shows Moon sitting in a chair with the words not to be taken away, and the song Music Must Change, which has no drum track. Kenney Jones, of The Small Faces and The Faces, joined the band as Moon's successor.
In 1979, The Who returned to the stage with well-received concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in London, at the Cannes Film Festival in France and at Madison Square Garden in New York City. By late autumn, the band had agreed to undertake a small tour of the United States. Sadly, this tour was marred by tragedy: on December 3, 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a crush at Riverfront Coliseum before The Who's concert resulted in the deaths of eleven fans. The band was not told of the deaths until after the show because civic authorities feared more crowd control problems would arise if the concert was canceled. The band members were reportedly devastated by this event. Also in 1979, The Who released a documentary film called The Kids Are Alright and a film version of Quadrophenia, the latter becoming a huge box office hit in the UK and the former capturing many of the band's most scintillating moments on stage over the years. In December, The Who became only the third band, after the Beatles and The Band, to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine. The accompanying article, written by Jay Cocks, was overwhelmingly positive with respect to The Who, their members, and their place in rock music, saying that The Who had outpaced, outlasted, outlived and outclassed all of their rock band contemporaries.
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