Never Mind the Bus Pass

Who’s Next is the fifth studio album by The Who and was released in August 1971

Turning away from a concrete piling, located in the mining town of Easington Colliery, the band have apparently having just urinated on a large concrete piling protruding from a slag heap. Easington Colliery is an old coal mining town in County Durham, in England. It is situated to the north of Horden, and a short distance to the east of Easington Village

But sometimes you can’t go when you need to. According to photographer Ethan Russell, most of the members couldn’t urinate (he has never said which, but we’re willing to bet that Keith Moon could!), so rainwater was tipped from an empty film canister to achieve the desired effect. Russell also took an alternative photo of teh scene

The photograph is often seen to be a reference to the monolith discovered on the moon in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had been released only about three years earlier

Earlier cover designs included photographs of obese nude women and Keith Moon dressed in black lingerie, holding a whip and wearing a wig. Sadly NMTBP haven’t been able to track down these photographs

In 2003, VH1 named Who’s Next the second greatest album cover of all time