The Who

Spitting postwar working-class teenage defiance at the adult world in a stammer, the song made the band, at a stroke, the voice of the mod generation.

• Listen first to Daltrey's delivery. In every verse he deliberately stutters before words, a device explained both as an imitation of a pilled-up mod and as a borrowing from the stammering vocals of blues songs. The other members answer him with short choral replies in a back-and-forth (call and response) structure.
• Between the verses Entwistle's bass steps forward for a short solo. In the pop singles of the day it was rare for the bass to take the lead. The story goes that his strings kept snapping during the sessions, so he bought several of the same bass.
• As the song goes on, the tonal center (key) rises a step at a time, again and again. Feel the tension build as the same song repeats from ever higher ground.
• In the final stretch, the guitar's long howl against the amp (feedback) tangles with Moon's drum barrage, and the song ends as if collapsing. It sounds like the on-stage destruction of gear carried over to tape.

Weaving spiritual questions drawn from Meher Baba and the theme of mass idolatry into a two-disc story, this album turned a singles band into a rock-opera band.

• The opening track, “Overture,” is an operatic prelude that lays out the album's main melodies in advance. Listen for the French horn, played by Entwistle himself.
• The signature track “Pinball Wizard” begins on acoustic guitar. Townshend's fast strumming, with the middle note of each chord held on a different note (suspended chords), builds tension before thick electric chords burst in. He said he wrote it to win over the critic Nik Cohn, a pinball fan.
• The studio recording sounds lighter and thinner than you might expect. Compare the same songs with the Woodstock or Leeds recordings and you can hear how much heavier and rougher they became on stage.
• The repeated choral passage late in the final track is the part that was playing at Woodstock just as the sun came up. Follow it from its start, like a quiet prayer, to the swell of the whole band.

Made just as the opera-band label was sticking, it is the record that proved how fierce a band the four were on stage.

• In the signature track “Young Man Blues,” the band keeps stopping dead mid-song and then hitting single notes one at a time, a stop (break) passage. Listen closely for the moments when silence and roar trade places.
• Townshend ran a Gibson SG Special into Hiwatt amps for a thick, tearing tone (distortion). With no rhythm guitarist, he moves between chords and solos on his own.
• Entwistle's bass is effectively a second lead instrument. Listen for the bass filling with fast lines the space left when the guitar heads off into a solo.
• “My Generation” stretches into an improvised medley of nearly 15 minutes, with fragments of melody from Tommy surfacing along the way.
• The original LP flaunted its raw, in-the-room feel, with a sleeve dressed up like a bootleg and even a note to the effect that the crackling noise should not be corrected.

Salvaged from the collapsed “Lifehouse” project, the song paints both a wasted teenage landscape and a longing for liberation. Its title comes from Meher Baba and Terry Riley, the composer of repetitive music.

• The relentless repeating notes of the intro were made with the automatic repeat function of a Lowrey organ. Don't miss the moment when, after the same figure has run on for a long while, the piano and Moon's drums come in.
• Listen for the change in vocal delivery. Daltrey sings the verses with force, then Townshend takes over the middle section in a gentle voice.
• At the end Dave Arbus's violin enters and speeds up, racing on like an Irish dance (a jig). It was reportedly Moon who suggested bringing in this player.
• Producer Glyn Johns's recording lets every instrument be heard clearly apart. Notice the clean, solid sound, with drums and organ never smothering one another.

A song that looks back on the late 1960s, swept up in revolutionary fervor, with a cynic's conviction that the world will not change even when new faces take power.

• Underpinning the whole song is a repeating figure made by running an organ through the filter of a synthesizer (EMS VCS3) so that it throbs like a pulse.
• The album version runs over 8 minutes 30 seconds. In an era when the 3-minute single was the norm, the sheer length, with its long guitar riffs, verses and instrumental stretches, was radical.
• Late in the song the whole band drops out, leaving a long passage of synthesizer alone. At its end, Moon's drums storm in and Daltrey lets out a long scream, one of the most famous moments in rock history.
• The film of Moon's last performance, shot at Shepperton in 1978, is of this song too. Compare it with the studio version and hear how freely his drums roam.

The band's second rock opera, which revisits its roots through the story of a young mod named Jimmy, made at the band's own studio, Ramport.

• Four themes, each modeled on one of the four members, recur throughout the album. Listen and compare how the same melody returns in the first and last tracks.
• Field recordings of waves, rain and passing trains link one song to the next. They paint the story's setting, the Brighton seafront, in sound.
• Entwistle recorded the brass parts in layer upon layer (overdubbing), building a sound as thick as an orchestra's. Listen for the layers of horns in a song like “5:15.”
• The centerpiece, “Love, Reign o'er Me,” opens with rain and thunder before Townshend's piano enters. The long, soaring high note Daltrey sustains at the end is counted as the moment his voice climbed highest.

A song about the confusion and questions of identity from the night he met the punk generation, and the title track of the last album Moon left behind.

• In the intro, layered choral voices repeat the title over a pulsing synthesizer figure. The song is built from questioning voices stacked one upon another.
• Midway through, the tempo suddenly slows and only an acoustic guitar remains. This quiet passage (the bridge), set in the heart of a rough rock song, is where the song catches its breath.
• Entwistle's bass traces melodies beneath the chords without pause. Listen to the left and right speakers in turn to hear how the guitar and bass are divided.
• The album version runs over 6 minutes; the single was cut short. Only the album version lets you hear the long instrumental stretch in the second half intact.