I read or was told that the idea for the Who song was this: There was a person named Baba something or something Baba. They were at hospital or something hooked up to an EKG (electrocardiogram, a machine that monitors heart rate and the electrical impulses in the cardivascular system) and Pete Townshend somehow hooked up the EKG machine to a synthesizer, and that's where the organ riff in the begining of the song (before the guitar comes in) came from. Is this true? Are parts of it true?
No. The name Baba refers an Indian guru named Meher Baba whose teachings Pete Townshend was into. The Riley part is for Terry Riley, an American minimalist composer.
The synth passage was derived by programming various biographical details about Meher Baba into his ARP 2600 (I think this what he used?).. Pete Townshend had this grand idea for the aborted Lifehouse project where each member of the audience at a Who concert could program details about themselves into his synth, thus generating a transcendent music for each personality in the audience and making the rock concert a cooperative project by the artist and the audience.
