In contrast to the Record Plant and Young Vic sessions, recording with Johns went well, as he was primarily concerned with creating a good sound, whereas Lambert had always been more preoccupied with the group's image; Townshend recalled: "we were just getting astounded at the sounds Glyn was producing". Townshend used early synthesizers and modified keyboard sounds in several modes, including as a drone effect on several songs, notably "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", but also "Bargain", "Going Mobile", and "The Song Is Over". The synthesizer was used as an integral part of the sound, as opposed to providing gloss, as was the case on other artists' albums up to that point. Moon's drumming has a distinctly different style from earlier albums, being more formal and less reliant on long drum fills—partly owing to the synthesizer backing, but also due to the no-nonsense production techniques of Johns, who insisted on a good recording performance that used flamboyance only when truly necessary. Johns was instrumental in convincing the Who that they should simply put a single-disc studio album out, believing the songs to be excellent. The group gave him free rein to assemble an album of whatever songs he wanted, in any order. Despite Johns' key contributions, he only received an "associate producer" credit on the finished album, though he maintained he acted mainly in an engineering capacity and based most of the arrangements on Townshend's original demos.
In contrast to the Record Plant and Young Vic sessions, recording with Johns went well, as he was primarily concerned with creating a good sound, whereas Lambert had always been more preoccupied with the group's image; Townshend recalled: "we were just getting astounded at the sounds Glyn was producing". Townshend used early synthesizers and modified keyboard sounds in several. modes, including as a drone effect on several songs, notably "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", but also "Bargain", "Going Mobile", and "The Song Is Over". The synthesizer was used as an integral part of the sound, as opposed to providing gloss, as was the case on other artists' albums up to that point Moon's drumming has a distinctly different style from earlier albums, being more formal and less reliant on long drum fills—partly owing to the synthesizer backing, but also due to the no-nonsense production techniques of Johns, who insisted on a good recording performance that used flamboyance only when truly necessary. Johns was instrumental in convincing the Who that they should simply put a single-disc studio album out, believing the songs to be excellent. The group gave him free rein to assemble an album of whatever songs he wanted, in any order. Despite Johns' key contributions, he only received an "associate producer" credit on the finished album, though he maintained he acted mainly in an engineering capacity and based most of the arrangements on Townshend's original demos.