Out here in the fields, I farm for my meals
I get my back into my livin'
I don't need to fight to prove I'm right
I don't need to be forgiven
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Don't cry, don't raise your eye
It's only teenage wasteland...yeah...
Sally take my hand, we'll travel south cross land
Put out the fire, and don't look past my shoulder
The exodus is here, the happy ones are near
Let's get together, before we get much older
Teenage wasteland
It's only teenage wasteland
Teenage wasteland
Oh, yeah
Teenage wasteland
They're all wasted
Song Notes : "The first part of the title comes from Meher Baba, who was Pete Townshend's spiritual guru. The second part comes from Terry Riley, an experimental musician Townshend admired"
The title is not mentioned in the lyrics. Some people know this as "Teenage Wasteland."
"This is the first song on Who's Next, the most successful album of The Who's career. Although this is one of the most popular Who songs, it was never released as a single"
"This marked one of the first times a synthesizer was used to form the rhythm of a song. Until then, just about everyone using a synthesizer was using it as a lead instrument. The synthesizer part was played from tape at their concerts because it was too difficult to reproduce live"
"This began as part of Townshend's "Lifehouse" project, which is a film script he wrote. The playscript was published in 1999 by Pocket Books, Great Britain. In the screenplay of "Lifehouse," Townshend wrote about the composer (Bobby) setting up the concert: "An experiment Bobby conducts in which each participant [in the concert] is both blueprint and inspiration for a unique piece of music or song which will feature largely in the first event to be hacked onto the grid." Townshend subsequently decided to actually pursue this, and he announces the experiment toward the end of the playscript Intro referenced above. The project is still ongoing, which you can see at lifehouse-method.com"
"Townshend was never able to convince anyone to do the Lifehouse film, and he more or less gave up on that - but he never gave up on having it produced. He revised the script to be more relevant to the world of the Internet (which had caught up with his 1971 concept of a global grid), and to incorporate thoughts and insights he'd had in the ensuing 25+ years, and it was performed on BBC3 on December 5, 1999. A recording of that performance (along with a lot of additional material) is available from Townshend's mercantile website eelpie.com"
Regarding the phrase "Teenage Wasteland":Lifehouse is set in a time where most of England is a polluted wasteland. Townshend described it as: "A self-sufficient drop-out family group farming in a remote part of Scotland decide to return South to investigate rumors of a subversive concert event that promises to shake and wake up apathetic, fearful British society. Ray is married to Sally, they hope to link up with their daughter Mary who has run away from home to attend the concert. They travel through the scarred wasteland of middle England in a motor caravan, running an air conditioner they hope will protect them from pollution."
"As for the "teenage" bit, Townshend said: "There are regular people, but they're the scum off the surface; there's a few farmers there, that's where the thing from 'Baba O'Riley' comes in. It's mainly young people who are either farmer's kids whose parents can't afford to buy them experience suits; then there's just scum, like these two geezers who ride around in a battered-up old Cadillac limousine and they play old Who records on the tape deck... I call them Track fans." So basically, teenagers traveling across the wasteland to attend this concert"
