MUSIC

Some Music I Didn’t Know, Yet I Did

You may never have heard of it either

Image created with AI illustration inspired by Terry Riley and The Who.

Most people have heard The Who’s Baba O’Riley. That’s not the music I didn’t know. I even knew its name, though many think it’s called “Teenage Wasteland” because of the chorus. If you happened to know the real name, you might have googled it to find out why is so odd.

Wikipedia might have told you this:

The song title refers to two of Townshend’s primary inspirations at the time: Indian spiritual master Meher Baba and American minimalist composer Terry Riley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_O%27Riley

So there you go. For me, that was as far as I went.

But yesterday I happened to listen to a podcast where I learned that the Who’s song beginning was influenced by a composer named Terry Riley.

Wait, why is it O’Riley in the title and not Riley? Blame Pete Townshend:

“I concocted this organ sound through a synthesizer, which you hear bubbling away in the back of Baba O’Riley. So the two names together were Baba, for Meher Baba, and O’Riley for Terry Riley, and it’s O’Riley because it sounded a bit Irish at the end.” https://petetownshend.net/meher-baba