CHRISMORPHET/REDFERNS/GETTYIMAGES
“THE Who’s Next
cover is a complete improvised accident. The sky was shot on the Sussex Downs or somewhere. If you saw the whole transparency, right in the middle is a tiny Land Rover, with its lights on. It was all sort of based on ‘Going Mobile’, so it’s very illustrative in a way. Then Pete asked if I wanted to come with them to this gig [in Sheffield, 3 July 1971]. We were coming back and I’m in the front seat with Pete, who’s driving. He’d go at 100 miles an hour no matter what was happening, so I was sort of terrified! We drove by these shapes. If there hadn’t been a roundabout half a mile later, that shot never would have happened. Because it was then that Pete asked me if I had any ideas. I didn’t, but I said: ‘There’s these things back there.’ He turned around really fast, drove back and we walked up to them. There were several of these things up on some kind of ridge. It looked like a moonscape. In John Entwistle’s book I read that this whole thing was their idea, which pissed me off. But if he and Roger really did walk up to these monoliths and go, ‘2001!’, then that makes sense. That’s why the first thing on the contact sheet is everybody behaving like apes. I didn’t tell them to do that. This is the first time I’ve told this to anybody! I thought it was great, but it didn’t work for me. It was too on the nose.