Who’s Next : Life House (Deluxe Edition Remastered) The Who

• 1Baba O'Riley (Remastered 2022)05:08
• 2Bargain (Remastered 2022)05:34
• 3Love Ain't For Keeping (Remastered 2022)02:10
• 4My Wife (Remastered 2022)03:41
• 5The Song Is Over (Remastered 2022)06:24
• 6Getting In Tune (Remastered 2022)04:50
• 7Going Mobile (Remastered 2022)03:45
• 8Behind Blue Eyes (Remastered 2022)03:42
• 9Won't Get Fooled Again (Remastered 2022)08:32
• 10Behind Blue Eyes (New York Record Plant Sessions / 1971 / Version 1 / Take 15 / Remastered 2022)04:23
• 11Getting In Tune (Lifehouse Chronicles / Alternative Mix / Remastered 2022)03:57
• 12Mary (Alternative Mix / Remastered 2022)04:19
• 13Love Ain't For Keeping (New York Record Plant Sessions / 1971 / Take 14 / Remastered 2022)04:50
• 14Pure And Easy (Olympic Studio Mix / Demo / Remastered 2022)05:32
• 15I Don't Even Know Myself (Original Mix With Count In)05:02
• 16Too Much Of Anything (Original Mix With Count In And Original Vocal)04:34
• 17Time Is Passing (Live At Young Vic Theatre, London, UK / 1971 / Remastered 2022)03:41
• 18Bargain (Live At Young Vic Theatre, London, UK / 1971 / Remastered 2022)05:50
• 19My Wife (Live At The The Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, USA / 1971 / Remastered 2022)06:45
• 20Baba O'Riley (Live At The The Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, USA / 1971 / Remastered 2022)05:21
• 21Won't Get Fooled Again (Live At The The Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, USA / 1971 / Remastered 2022)08:57
• Total Runtime01:46:57

Info for Who’s Next : Life House (Deluxe Edition Remastered)

The suite of songs by The Who on which, more than half a century ago, Pete Townshend foresaw the invention of the internet, of virtual reality and pandemic-style lockdown, is to be heard as he intended for the first time.

It features all of his songs, in their many stages of development, from the abandoned, audacious Life House project, started in 1970 as a follow-up to The Who’s epic Tommy, and from the undisputed rock classic of 1971 that it evolved into, Who’s Next.

Who’s Next | Life House sets out Townshend’s extraordinary vision of a world beset by climatic catastrophe and pollution, leading to a curtailing of personal freedom that will be all too familiar to the pandemic generation. Decades ahead of his time, he details how the population is then seduced and sedated by access to an entertainment “Grid,” piped into every home via the use of virtual reality experience suits.

In his introduction to the new editions, Townshend describes Life House as “a portentous polemic about the coming of a nation beaten down by climate issues and pollution.” He then explains how “an opportunist and autocratic government enforce a national lock-down in which every person is hooked up to an entertainment grid.” Music itself then becomes an inconvenient diversion, “a very real distraction to the subjugation of the population in suits,” with fascinating consequences. Songs that depicted a dystopian world in which faceless corporations control our lives may have been fiction at the time, but they have come to be more like documentary.

The unfulfilled project, which Townshend conceived as one part film script and one part blueprint for a live musical experiment, brought him to the edge of a breakdown. But, as he writes, “some wonderful music came from the project, and the idea has always held me in thrall, partly because so many of the strands of the fiction seem to be coming true.”

Listeners will hear, for the first time, how that concept folded into Who’s Next, widely regarded as not only one of the greatest albums in the band’s astonishing catalogue, but a seminal moment in music history. Here, The Who’s instinctive, scintillating cohesion reached new peaks, Townshend’s brilliant creativity as one of rock’s great auteurs brought thrillingly to life by Roger Daltrey’s unsurpassed vocal performances, John Entwistle’s visceral, fluid basslines and Keith Moon’s fiery potency on the drums.

The Who & Life House by Pete Townshend:

1971. Life House was a double-barrelled project. One part film script, the other part the plan for a live musical experiment to be carried out at the Young Vic Theatre to be filmed and incorporated into the fictional movie.

After the success of Tommy, providing The Who with a very powerful and uplifting concert piece as well as a hit album, I tried to create an audacious music project that would replace it musically for stage and album. I hoped too for a movie. I framed Life House as a portentous polemic about the coming of a nation beaten down by climate issues and pollution. In a sci-fi setting an opportunist and autocratic government enforce a national lock-down in which every person is hooked up to an entertainment grid, provided with solace, food, peace, and spiritual succour. The population could enjoy this Grid safe at home, using virtual reality experience suits. Life experience programmes would be provided by a co-opted entertainment industry and piped down tubes and wires to every home.

Music is discovered to be a very real distraction to the subjugation of the population in suits. Slowly it is removed from the programming. Rebels and renegades who refuse to be compliant ride around in crude converted buses and vans, listening to rock ‘n’ roll. It is the rebels who begin to hear rumours of the “Life House,” a place somewhere in London where live music is being performed, and an outlandish experiment was taking place.

One aspect of both the story and the hopeful plan for the Young Vic live music experiment was for me as a composer to act as a computer to create tailor-made compositions for selected audience members who attended a series of workshops at the Young Vic. Two good examples of the kind of music I hoped to compose are the electronic music backing tracks of ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. In the story a new leader (partly based on myself, and partly based on several technical advisors I was working with at the time) put on a series of concerts, where such tailor-made music is created, and eventually would be piped into the government Grid to allow the oppressed population to break free.

A side bar of the fiction is that many participants in the government Grid project begin to advance spiritually, partly because of the sheer number of lifetimes they can enjoy squeezed at high-speed into every moment they remain incarcerated. When the Life House experiment does reach its target, and music is secretly piped into every individual’s experience suit, a universal uprising with immense spiritual and congregational impact takes place. In the Life House itself, down at the Young Vic, the participants all disappear to a higher level.

Earlier, I used the adjective ‘audacious’ to describe my plans. In fact, the fiction and the experiment were both flawed, and neither were properly realised. But some wonderful music came from the project, and the idea has always held me in thrall, partly because so many of the strands of the fiction seem to be coming true.

The Who

Digitally remastered

THE WHO
There are four names always on or near the top of the list of all time great Rock ‘n’ Roll bands: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and The Who.

The Who was formed by sheet-metal worker Roger Daltrey in 1963. The the line up, after a couple of adjustments, established itself with Daltrey on lead vocals, Keith Moon on drums, John Entwistle on bass and Pete Townshend on lead guitar. Townshend, honouring his art student credentials, wrote (and still writes) music famous for having an ‘edge’, complemented by the wildly creative performance techniques of each member of the band.

It is generally acknowledged among rock aficionados that The Who in their heyday were the most exciting live band on the planet, with their Live at Leeds album (1970) hailed as the greatest live album of all time. The compositional skills of Townshend have always been way beyond the conventional, as is proven not only in classic songs like ‘My Generation’ and ‘Baba O’Riley’ but also in his two great rock operas (a form he more or less invented single-handed) Tommy and Quadrophenia.

Today, despite the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle, The Who remain a potent force on the rock music scene. Their Concert for New York City appearance after the tragedy of 9/11 was a classic, as have been their annual performances at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. In 2006, Pete Townshend wrote The Who’s first studio album for the new millennium, Endless Wire and the band toured Europe and the U.S. during 2006 and 2007.

The Who are still highly active, with Townshend continuing to write and seek new musical challenges and Daltrey still the charismatic frontman he’s always been. The Who have recently launched their very first official website, www.thewho.com.

This album contains no booklet.