9. The WhoWho’s Next
I used to be a massive fan of The Who when I played in rock bands before I went electronic. The band has something unique in rock music, in the sense that they’re made up of four guys basically performing solos. Keith Moon played his own beat, John Entwistle played 100 notes per second, Roger Daltrey was singing all the time and Pete Townshend had two roles: rhythm and solo guitar. And on top of that he was also singing. That album was basically a wall of sound. Theoretically, an album like Who’s Next doesn’t work. For them, however, they were able to project this kind of unique, organic, violent, sexual type of sonic statement, so that was one thing. Also, Pete was very high on my wish list for Electronica because of this album: it had songs like ‘Baba O’Riley’, and he’s the first person to have integrated sequences in electronic sounds into British rock music. He always wanted to push the boundaries of rock with a broader vision and he’s the inventor of rock opera as an art form, with films like Tommy and Quadrophenia. This inspired me to push the boundaries of what I could do with music onstage myself. When I heard ‘Baba O’Riley’ for the first time, I was working as a studio assistant. I thought that this was a fantastic tribute to Terry Riley and I was actually working with him on an album in France, preparing some sequences for him.
