Why baba oriley

The lyrics also spoke of a painful and joyful time of adolescence that could never be taken back. It was a song that spoke of looking ahead and never looking back.

It spoke of a generation that wants to see reality and harmony at the same time. Teenage Wasteland is more the people and not so much the place. According to groovyhistory. They are about young people, probably farmers whose parents cannot buy them much of the things they need. No one can deny that the sixties were a time of experimentation, much like this song. People were searching for expanded consciousness in things like drugs.

Everything came to a head at Woodstock. Although instead of celebrating it, Townshend is calling attention to the insanity of it all.

When he plays the song live, he tells the story of the lyrics and how much they mean. The lyrics express contempt for the same people they sang about in their first hit. He felt that they had not lived up to the values they embraced and all the social change they said they wanted to bring about. So, the wasteland was a world not restored despite lofty promises.

According to shmoop. There is even a Bible reference when Ray tells his wife, Sally; they need to go south to find their daughter. Additionally, the song has a lot of meaning taken from the book of Genesis. Their daughter has left to seek a mythical place called Lifehouse, where music makes them whole again.

Throughout the lyrics, some references sound like a play on Sodom and Gomorrah. By the end of the song, it begins to sound more like Exodus, when the couple decides to escape their lonely life and look for the promised land of Lifehouse, where restoration happens. Even though the movie Lifehouse was never released, Townshend pursued the project throughout his life. He revised the script to make it more relevant to the current time since some references were already a part of life.

Even though it was never completed, it's easy to see where Townshend was going with the concept. At the Lifehouse, the experience-starved pilgrims would find not only reality, but harmony. In music they would discover the deeper commonalities between them and their even deeper commonalities with God. Townshend intended to illustrate this ultimate epiphany by incorporating the ideas of yet another influential figure, and here's where the "Riley" comes in.

Terry Riley was a minimalist composer and musician who made a splash during the s with ideas about multi-layered, amelodic compositions.

He was among the first to use tape loops and delay systems to explore the musical possibilities lying within repeated, overlapping, and interlocking musical patterns. His most influential piece was simply titled In C and consisted of 53 separate patterns, repeated and woven together into a harmonious whole.

Riley developed his patterns by working from a single note or chord, but Townshend theorized that these patterns could be drawn from a different source.

By feeding an individual's biographical information into a computer driven synthesizer, he argued, a musical portrait of that individual would be created. Individual portraits would vary; they would reflect the idiosyncratic personality traits of individuals. Linking Baba and Khan to Riley, Townshend believed that when these individual musical portraits were played simultaneously, the separate patterns would overlap and interlock, producing a harmonious whole—one giant chord capturing the harmony of the universe and humankind's unity with one another and God.

In Townshend's most ambitious moments, he envisioned live concerts that would mimic Lifehouse 's storyline. Individuals would be invited onstage where their vitals would be fed into a synthesizer. Once a series had been collected, they could be played producing a harmonious group portrait.

This proved too difficult to actually produce, but Townshend did incorporate the basic concept into "Baba O'Riley. Running through the song, underneath the other instruments and vocals, this organ track imitates the sort of musical pattern Townshend drew from his study of Riley.

Individual songs from the rock opera were sprinkled on The Who's next several albums and Townshend's first solo album. In , Townshend released a box set titled the Lifehouse Chronicles that includes early demos of the music and a BBC radio enactment of the story. And the same year, he was able to play Lifehouse 's material in a few shows. Die-hard Who fans made them sold-out affairs. The opening song "Baba O'Riley" remains the most memorable and widely recognized legacy of the project. It's been frequently covered, and used in several movies and television shows.

Many of the song's fans don't understand it or its history—but they could if they would just look closely at the title. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. Previous Next. Source Khan's concept squared with Townshend's own experience. Riley on to Something Townshend intended to illustrate this ultimate epiphany by incorporating the ideas of yet another influential figure, and here's where the "Riley" comes in.