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Baba O'Reily



Re:

>I have a question about the title of the song Baba O'Riley.
>I'm sure it's a pretty stupid question but now that the list
>seems to no longer be under siege I feel I won't get flamed
>at least nearly as bad.

>What does Baba O'Riley mean.  I have recently found from
>the liner notes in 'My Generation - The Very Best of The Who' that, well
>I'll quote Pete saying 'This was a number I wrote while I was doing these
>experiments with tapes on the synthesizer.  Among my plans was to take a
>person out of the audience and feed information - height, weight,
>autobiographical details - about the person int the synthesizer.  The
>synthesizer would then select notes from the pattern of that person.  It
>would be like translating a person into music.  On this particular track I
>programmed details about the life of Meher Baba and that provided the
>backing fro the number.'  That said, I have also recently been
>told that the word baba means father and O'Riley was a
>guy who did the keyboard set-ups for The Who.

>With this information I'm confused.  Is this a title that
>dedicates the song to Meher Baba and Mr. O'Riley or what.

¦This is how Pete explains it on "Whodunnit?"

Baba is in fact referring to the spiritual guru, who was theoretically hooked 
into the the aforementioned 'bio information' machine. Reily, is Terry Reily 
whose work with synthesizers Pete was enthralled with at the time. That is 
the etimology.  The demo is supposedly quite a piece.

- -Chaim