The Who's best album

 It is The Who's best-selling album—and, in main man Pete Townshend's view, the finest. But it was born out of a crisis: Lifehouse, the follow-up to The Who's conceptual hit Tommy, had faltered after months of preparation because no one, but its author, understood it. Ethan A. Russell's cover photo for Who's Next poked fun at 2001: A Space Odyssey, but served equally well as a comment on the band's own more grandiose ambitions (a rejected cover idea featured Keith Moon in a corset, with a riding crop).

Humiliated, Townshend was persuaded to put the best songs on an album that told no story. Some were hard, such as "Bargain"; some were singalongs, such as "Getting in Tune"; and one—bassist John Entwistle's droll "My Wife"—was nothing to do with Lifehouse at all (the woman in question, said Entwistle, took it well: she did not come after him—her lawyers did).

Towering above all the rest were a trio of the finest hard rock anthems that ever erupted. "Baba O'Riley"— its name a conflation of Townshend's guru Meher Baba and avant-garde composer Terry Riley—is a sublime blend of synthesizer and slashing guitar. "Behind Blue Eyes" is poetry with an attitude. And "Won't Get Fooled Again" is simply a monster.

All three were part of The Who's performance at the post-9/11 gig at Madison Square Garden, The Concert for New York.The night's most rapturously received set, it proved that the passing decades had diminished neither the singers nor the songs.