The song was originally intended for a rock opera on which Townshend had been working, Lifehouse, which was a multi-media exercise based on his followings of the Indian religious avatar Meher Baba, showing how spiritual enlightenment could be obtained via a combination of band and audience.

Townshend was influenced to write the composition by an incident at Woodstock when he chased Abbie Hoffman off the stage, who had commandeered the microphone during a break in the band's performance.

Townshend interviewed several people with general practitioner-style questions, and captured their heartbeat, brainwaves and astrological charts, converting the result into a series of audio pulses.

For the demo of "Won't Get Fooled Again", he linked a Lowrey organ into an EMS VCS 3 filter that played back the pulse-coded modulations from his experiments.

[12] The demo, recorded at a half-time tempo compared to the version by the Who, was completed by Townshend overdubbing drums, bass, electric guitar, vocals and handclaps.

[14] Lambert proved to be unable to mix the track, and a fresh attempt at recording was made at the start of April at Mick Jagger's house, Stargroves, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.

[16] Townshend played a 1959 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins hollow body guitar fed through an Edwards volume pedal to a Fender Bandmaster amp, all of which he had been gifted by Joe Walsh while in New York.

[15] After Lifehouse was abandoned as a project, Johns felt "Won't Get Fooled Again", along with other songs, were so good that they could simply be released as a standalone single album, which became Who's Next.

[20] "Won't Get Fooled Again" drew strong praise from critics, who were impressed that a synthesizer had managed to be integrated so successfully within a rock song.

[22] Cash Box said of it that the song has "rousing magic with the Who's trademark instrumental and vocal strength" and that "revolutionary lyric matched by the group's performance fervor make this a monster on its way.

"[24] Rock critic Paul Williams in a Rolling Stone issue, published on 17 September 1981, compared the instrumental built-up of the long version to the Doors' "Light My Fire".

It has subsequently been part of every Who concert since,[30][31] often as the set closer and sometimes extended slightly to allow Townshend to smash his guitar or Moon to kick over his drumkit.

[34] In October 2001, The Who performed the song at The Concert for New York City to help raise funds for the families of firemen and police officers killed during the 9/11 attacks.

They finished their set with "Won't Get Fooled Again" to a responsive and emotional audience, with close-up aerial video footage of the World Trade Center buildings playing behind them on a huge digital screen.

[39][40] On 30 June 1979, he performed a duet of the song with classical guitarist John Williams for the 1979 Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Ball.

[41] In May 2019, Daltrey and Townshend performed a version of the song on classroom instruments with Jimmy Fallon and his house band the Roots for the Tonight Show.

[57] Both Axel Rudi Pell (on Diamonds Unlocked) and Hayseed Dixie (on Killer Grass) covered the song in their established styles of metal and bluegrass respectively.