You can now buy 'Gettin' In Tune - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of...The Who' in e-book form by clicking here!
Tracklisting:
(Who's Next): Baba O'Riley/Bargain/Love Ain't For
Keeping!/My Wife/The Song Is Over//Gettin' In Tune/Goin' Mobile/Behind Blue
Eyes/Won't Get Fooled Again
(Our attempt at re-assembling 'Lifehouse'): Pure and Easy/Gettin'
In Tune/Goin' Mobile/Time Is Passing/Behind Blue Eyes/I Don't Know
Myself/Teenage Wasteland/Baba O'Riley/Let's See Action!/Mary//Bargain/Love
Ain't For Keeping/Relay/Too Much Of Anything/Put The Money Down/Won't Get
Fooled Again/Naked Eye/Water/Greyhound Girl/Join Together/The Song Is Over
Introduction:
‘The
note is eternal, I hear and it sees me, forever we blended, forever we die’
'Lifehouse' and 'Who's Next' - two works that are so
utterly completely different it's hard to believe that in actual fact these
projects have most of their songs in common. These two are, as such, nearly
always discussed as two separate entities, but no: their DNA strands are wrapped
around each other for life, so for once on the AAA we're going to give you two
very different reviews that basically cover the same thing, with a 'weird' take
on the concept and a more 'normal' take on the final album that combined became
the longest article Alan’s Album Archives ever published. You see, while
everyone reviews ‘Who’s Next’ with a paragraph or two about how it started as
‘Lifehouse’ you truly can’t tell the story of one without the other: the DNA of
the two are wrapped around each other so that these songs make most sense as
part of an ongoing ‘plot’ – even if it is a plot that was never fully
established (and which wre’ve had fun in this article trying to replicate with
a few digs at the Colalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in power
when the article was first written). If the plot for an album that never really
existed anyway doesn't do it for you and is too weird even by our book’s
standards then feel free to skip the bits in italics and go on to the 'normal'
print; equally if you're bored or reading about 'Who's Next' but you're tickled
by the idea of 'Lifehouse' than that's the part when you can probably stop
reading, or you can be brave and read it all, whatever floats your concrete
monolith boat.
To provide a
bit of history first though for those who don't know, 'Lifehouse' is the biggest,
grandest, most impossible Who concept ev-uh (yep, even more than a handicapped
pinball wizard), based around a vague idea of the 'lost chord' that unites all
of humanity and which will bring peace and prosperity to the whole world when
all of our individual 'notes' are in harmony. Pete believed that somewhere,
tapped away in people, was some sort of general mass consciousness, a sort of
‘lost chord’ that, when joined together, would represent nirvana for humanity
(or Who fans at the very least). It is in many ways an extension of the part in
‘Tommy’ that was generally considered to ‘work’ the most, as Tommy fed from his
audience and gave back in turn, but with that idea writ large. The idea was
that The Who would book a theatre every might and play to a group of fans -
some of them the same every night, some new - and see how the 'vibrations' subtly
changed and if The Who could get this down in musical form. The characteristics
of each person would then be fed into their 'synthesiser' and turned into
'music' which could then inspire more music - something that worked
spectacularly well when Pete combined the musical DNA strands of guru Meher
Baba and synthesiser pioneer Terry O’Riley for [127] ‘Baba O’Riley’, but abandoned
en masse when it became a) too expensive b) too complicated c) The rest of the
band and even unshockable manager Kit Lambert went 'eh? Whaaaaat?' and d) The
only theatre The Who could get at short notice was 'The Young Vic' in London
and that was partly booked during the week anyway which rather destroyed the
musical vibes (though a few gigs did go ahead - one of them can be heard on the
deluxe edition of 'Who's Next', though it's marred by technical gremlins and a
reliance on 'oldies' because The Who haven't had enough rehearsals of the new
songs yet).
That’s the part even casual fans have vaguely picked
up on. There was more to the plot than that, though, something fans don’t often
realise so even though it was never finalised, here is our final version of it,
based on what Pete spoke about in interviews, with a little bit of moulding
going on to fit the story that 'appears' to be there in there somewhere. As I'm
sure you'll agree it's impressively spot-on for our times and yes, almost all
of this genuinely does come from Pete in 1971: On this future vision of Earth
people no longer interact – instead they are all contained within their tiny
narrow boxes, unable to meet except in ‘Life Suits’ due to the strong pollution of the outside
world. Two 'lost souls', maybe 'twin flames', are searching for each other in
our (fairly) distant future where a totalitarian regime and a diet of reality
TV (not that it was called that, but that's clearly what Pete meant) mean that
people have lost touch with anything 'real'. Life is a series of repetitive
jobs that involve thought not feelings and emotional connections between two
people have been if not quite outlawed then certainly frowned upon. Most of the
inhabitants of the new world accept it because they don't know anything better.
However two of them actively search for a better world based on 'reality' and
find each other against all odds. One of them got a name in the plot and even a
song: 'Mary' so she's easy to identify: she's a teenager, possibly still a
schoolgirl, who hears about this exciting thing from centuries ago called rock
and roll and searches everywhere for sound of it. One magical night she hears
it, played by an outlawed historian and rock and roll fan who didn't get a name
in the original plot (some fan sites call him 'Bobby' but he doesn't sound like
a Bobby and I've no idea where they got that name from, so we'll call him 'Max'
after our website mascot),as amplified through 'the grid' (which is basically a
1970s musician's premonition of what the internet might look like - seriously,
Pete was way ahead of his time). She sneaks out of her house to track him down
discovering the pollution isn’t as bad as she was told and meets him, he laughs
and calls her his 'groupie', they find out the amazing run of coincidences in
their lives and despite their age and cultural differences they become an
'item', united in their desire to enjoy rock and roll and their attempts to
take down what they see as an increasingly corrupt establishment. We don't know
what the ending would be, but judging from the songs 'left over' things go sour
in their partnership in both a romantic and career-sense as they realise the
enormity of their challenge and the difficulties facing them and instead sadly
go their separate ways, their song over. As with Pete’s other grand works the
ending is ambiguous: [140] ‘The Song Is Over’ offers hope that somehow this
band of misfits encourage the world to start talking to and learning from each
other again; [136] ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ rather suggests that the new bunch
of leaders end up every bit as corrupt as before.
So where did such a strange and unlikely concept
about human beings being notes come from? Well Pete was clearly influenced by
the poem 'A Lost Chord', written by Adelaine Anne Proctor in 1860 which takes a
more religious reading of the idea that mankind will one day be 'in tune' like
the keys on her piano; probably too the Arthur Sullivan piece inspired by it
and perhaps the 1933 Jack Hawkins film based on it as well. Maybe even The
Moody Blues' album 'In Search Of The Lost Chord' from 1968 which looked at how
the 'chord' had been searched for by every musician of every era before they
discover that actually it's the meditation word 'Ommmm' that unites humanity in
peace. The Who were never the sort of band to go in for that sort of hippie
speak and it's notable that 'Lifehouse' seems to have an unhappy ending where one
chord can never save us all, only humans (though music is still our best means
to do exactly that). However the poem still seems like the best bet and may
well have appealed to Townshend as a writer, as it speaks of music being like
'magic' and created by some divine other - not there one minute and in reality
as something concrete the next (even for a singer-songwriter-guitarist, Pete
was obsessed with making music and once referred to making things on tape on
his home machines as 'my only real hobby'. He clearly thinks of it as magic
still).
Then again this album's other big influence is, like
'Tommy', the works of Meher Baba. The self-confessed 'avatar' (ie God in human
form) stopped speaking at the age of twenty-six but still continued to write
about his beliefs and visions and many of them were 'in tune' with the
1960s/70s in a way that more cruel and rule-filled religions like Christianity,
Islam and Judaism could never be (Baba's teachings are closest to Buddhism, but
even there not in a purist form). The 'big' concept, which drove both Who
projects, was the idea that the world is an 'illusion' - that only by bringing
everybody's 'perception' of it together can we truly understand what the 'real'
world is. While 'Tommy' picked up on the 'inability to communicate so as to
hear yourself more' half of this idea, 'Lifehouse' has the other in spades -
the idea that music unites us all (just as The Who once united their audiences)
and brings out a part of mass consciousness we can never find by ourselves. We
need each other to bounce ideas off, to see things from a different perspective
and to understand that there is something out there bigger than ourselves. It
speaks volumes too that for at least one of the proposed 'Lifehouse' storylines
the characters all live in their own bubbles, alone and afraid to venture
outside because of 'pollution' (perhaps of the spiritual rather than physical
kind). Baba's most famous saying outside Pete and fellow convert Ronnie Lane's
work is 'don't worry, be happy' - which seems like a strange thing for two of
rock's biggest worrywarts to hang on to, but that theme is in there too.
Throughout Pete's 'big idea' works people do awful things to the main
characters (physically in 'Tommy', via Government on 'Lifehouse' and through
misunderstandings on 'Quadrophenia') but they always end with the hope of
salvation: that one day, if you can see through all the smoke and mirror
illusions set up to distract us from 'real' life, we too can live in the
present and embrace it, without guilt for the past or worries for the future.
'Tommy' may well be the most Baba-centric album in the Whoniverse, but the
influence is plainly there in 'Lifehouse' as well. It seems a tragedy that Baba
died in January 1969, just before his most vocal worshipper turned his ideas
into song - but maybe that was meant to be too, with the cup of understanding
passed on to a new disciple. Or something. I don't know, I'm just a blogger and
this is only a tiny viewpoint of the ‘Lifehouse’.
The ‘Lifehouse’ idea was so grandiose and ethereal
that even as erudite a writer as Pete Townshend struggled to bring it down to
earth and he especially found difficulty telling his bandmates what the piece
was all about, causing a nervous breakdown and a loss in confidence that lasted
until near the end of the decade. Most people, even the biggest Who fans, think
of this concept as monkeynuts – and they’re probably right in the sense that
‘Lifehouse’ is a great idea that was surely impossible to turn into something
concrete and releasable. Pete really struggled to put his concept over to the
band too (John admitted years later he thought the plan was to turn a concert
venue into a hippie commune!) and Pete badly lacked the support of Kit Lambert
who had so helped him navigate the difficulties of making ‘Tommy’. Their
fall-out was sudden and surprising: as soon as the album came out directors
were lining up to make a film of the deaf, dumb and blind kid. In the end it
was director Ken Russell who shouted loudest and – after agreeing to Pete’s
term of casting Roger in the title role – was given carte blanche to do what he
liked with the work. For a while though Kit was as protective over the the
project as Pete, aiming to write the film script himself and causing
disagreements eith its chief composer about the best direction to take it in.
Pete’s interest in a film waned as ‘Lifehouse’ took over as Kit just didn’t get
‘it’ and the manager got frustrated as he came back from lengthy business
meetings in America to find that pete in London cared only for his new baby.
The pair’s close friendship – and the tipping point for Townshend – came when
he found that Kit had sold filming rights to the ‘Lifehouse’ shows on the
understanding that it would be a TV re-make of ‘Tommy’ instead of a whole new
work and when Pete overheard a conversation with a business accolade where his
closest friend and ally in the world referred to him by his surname
‘Townshend’. Suddenly all those warnings in ‘Tommy’ about corruption and
celebrity seemed to be coming true and without any allies or anyone there to
interpret what was in his head Pete felt crushed.
Many fans hear the vague concept and think that Kit
was right – this wasn’t an album, it was an idea that could never work and
almost everyone considers ‘Lifehouse’ an unworkable failure, however great the
scartered pieces left in its wake. However is this idea really as untenable as
people have made out in the years since? ‘Tommy’ by all accounts came together
at the eleventh hour – whose to say ‘Lifehouse’ wouldn’t have done the same as
more and more people got on board with the idea. Before judging this failed
concept, bear in mind three things. Firstly the interaction The Who felt during
the finale of ‘Tommy’ was real – there clearly was something in Pete’s idea of
having the audience shape the band shape the audience – it’s only making it a
concrete plan that the concrept fell apart. Secondly, the Who really did ‘feed’ information about a
person into a new-fangled invention called a synthesiser once (either a VCS3 or
an ARP synth fans!) back when the very first digital ones were on the market,
replacing the old analogue mellotrons with a sound that was other-worldly and
futuristic. By spiralling the twin strands of musical DNA from twopeople Pete not only proved the cpomncept
could work but came up with one of his best-loved songs, Baba O’Riley (named
after Pete Townshend’s spiritual guru Meher Baba, whose ‘information’ was fed
into the synthesiser - no I’m not quite
sure how that works either - and Terry O’Riley, jazz-classical pianist and
lover of tape loops whose 'modal figures' - psychedelic scales to you and me -
clearly inspired this song musically). Thirdly, replace the word ‘radio’ with
the word ‘internet’ and the concept is spot on; no band ever listened to or
took ideas from the audience as much as The Who did (‘Listening To You’ from
‘Tommy’ puts these sentiments across perfectly) and if only the worldwide web
had been around 30 years earlier the band could easily have been inspired,
challenged and intrigued by comments made by their fans on sites like the very
one these books were taken from. During its early stages this ‘Lifehouse’
concept would have been a double-album, a touring stage show which changed
every night depending on the audience and a big budget feature film – all three
seemed unlikely for ‘Tommy’ too in the early stages yet somehow happened and in
the wake of their biggest success ever everyone wanted to work with The Who.
Like Brian Wilson four years before him, Pete’s new
work was just too ahead of its time, too inventive, complicated and sprawling
for anybody to pull off all on their own and the guitarist was simply too close
to the subject matter to delegate material to anybody else as he perhaps should
have done. Making ‘Lifehouse’ now would be difficult – making it in 1971, when
these concepts of ‘inter-activeness’ and ‘togetherness’ were new and alien to
the world in large, was nigh on impossible even for a Pete Townshend who did
everything short of magic to pull it together and make it work. After all, the
pressure on The Who’s shoulders was enormous – after ‘Tommy’ anything the band was bound to be scrutinised closely and
the fact that Pete was boasting in the press that this album would ‘revitalise
the whole of the jaded rock and roll industry’ probably didn’t help either. So
Pete gave up, filed away some songs for later and allowed his double-album
vision to be condensed his double album into a killer eight-track collection,
with a new and hilarious song by John Entwistle added at the last minute.
While most casual fans were content with ‘Who’s
Next’, serious Whonatics saw 'Lifehouse' as something of the 'holy grail'
amongst Who recordings, fans who knew the pieces of the jigsaw were brilliant
but didn’t have much of a grasp on the bigger picture. A few clues have come to
light in the years since though, such as an abandoned second go in 1978 (which
became ‘Who Are You?’ and seems mostly to have consisted of [184] ‘Sister
Disco’) and a third go in 1999 that arguably should have been lost, a
revisitation of the story with only the barest use of music as a book and radio
play (this time told squrely from the point of view of Mary’s father rather
than Mary herself). Pete, inspired by the worldwise use of the worldwide web
which so reflected his ideas for ‘Lifehouse’, created a blog to specifically
talk about this project and ‘leaked’ various demos from both the first two
versions of the concept, later rounding them up as a box set and a single disc
set in the year 2000. Back in 1971, though, the album’s reputation grew like
wildfire due to the brilliance of the music that did escape from the album
sessions: most famously of course the eight songs that were taken from the
original concept which may have run to as many as nineteen tracks and released
as the far more compact 'Who's Next' (with John Entwistle favourite [140] 'My
Wife' added to the running order). That album has, generally rightly, come to
be regarded as one of the band's greatest moments, with the planned concept
album scrapped and replaced by a series of tight recordings made by engineer
Glyn John who cared nothing for the storyline but everything about making a
tight and impressive album. Rootsy in a way that 'Lifehouse' could never have
been and made with a consistency and diversity even over and above The Who's
usual levels and with a good balance between tried and tested ideas and whole
new concepts ('Who's Next' is arguably the first rock album to use a digital
synthesiser, as opposed to the monologue 'mellotron' method), this album was
always going to be a strong seller. However those who yearned for more weren’t
disappointed either, with several additional key tracks written for ‘Lifehouse’
that became much loved highlights of Pete’s demo collection ‘Who Came First’, 1974
Who outtakes set ‘Odds and Sods’ and a couple of standalone singles released in
1972. ‘Lifehouse’, even before it was cobbled together as a bona fide box set
in the CD age, seemed like a hugely impressive collection of songs even if few
really truly grasped the concept.
Even after these three versions, however, it feels
as if 'Lifehouse' still isn't quite there yet: the box set contained lots of
extraneous stuff written and recorded later, much of it orchestral while the
play changed Pete's original storyline so much he may as well have sat down to
write a different work altogether. Only by hearing everything alongside each
other – the play, the box set and Who’s nNext plus random oddities – do you get
any sense of what ‘Lifehouse’ might have been really like and even then we can
only speculate – although speculating is what sites like ours were made to do
so that is what we are going to do here. Obviously there is no one agreed
'Lifehouse' tale to draw on and no two Who fans agree on what music would have
made it to the album (it seems unlikely all nineteen selections we've picked
here and which were recorded at the time would have made the record for reasons
of space, even if it became a double as everyone assumes, but hey you should
know by now that we'll take up any excuse to write long articles!) However
doing ewhat we normally do and writing a ‘srtraightforward’ review of something
that didn’t technically exist seemed ‘wrong’ somehow. As I’m sure you’ll agree
the concept of ‘Lifehouse’ is vague enough and the songs malleable enough to
fit multiple variations, while reviewing an album that predicted the internet
actually on the internet seemed too good an opportunity to be ‘weird’ to throw
away, so what you get for the next section of the review is more of a ‘story’.
Think of this not as the definitive conclusive guide to what 'Lifehouse' might
have been like, but a very weird AAA version instead...
The
Album (Lifehouse):
Music.
I remember that word now. How magical it used to sound back in the days when I
first heard about the concept. I couldn’t get my head around it at first – how
could people in the past distant days have celebrated certain noises, put them
on things with funny names like LPs and CDs and sit back in their arm-chairs
and say ‘Ooh yes, that’s what I feel like, I agree with that’ or move them to
outrage, to the point where they’d stand up and pace and snarl and say ‘We can
do so much better than this, where did it all go wrong????’ I could never
understand that. Didn’t these people
realise that listening to such things would get them into such trouble with the
Coalition? That listening in to intelligent people unbowed by the system
telling us how the world should be lived could ever be anything but a threat to
the people in charge? How could there ever have been a time when it was any
other way?
I
hadn’t given much thought to that word ‘music’ again for ever such a long time.
You don’t give it much thought do you? I mean, its banned and all that and I
didn’t really know what that word meant anyway, but something stayed with me
all through my childhood about what the idea was and how great it must have
been in the days gone by, to be listening to music right out there in the open.
It was one of my friends at work who brought it up again; he was a strange guy,
he kept whistling to himself at work though he knew it was against the law.
Luckily the girl who was our boss didn’t seem to mind and even stopped working
sometimes so she could come and listen. He said he didn’t know any songs
himself – well, you don’t do you? Not unless someone sings them to you and
they’re hardly likely to do that or so I always thought - but I liked to listen
and after a while the two of us both thought we recognised some of them, enough
to join in and give us a go. I got the strangest look I’ve ever been given by
my co-worker when we joined in, something that was a cross between admiration
and fear. It was as if the very depths of his soul had been open to us and he
didn’t know whether he wanted us to see him like that or shut us off and never
open the door again.We had never heard more thsn one voice at any one time
before. It felt kind of…strange.
Anyway,
this guy (I promised not to give his name, to protect him) was truly weird. You
see, he told me a folk story. I thought at the time that it can’t have been
true, it was just too unbelievable. You’ll laugh when you hear it, it just
doesn’t make any sense. You see, some decades ago there was meant to have been
a big craze for this thing called the internet. It was big and it was wide and
it contained ever so many delights, thoughts from almost every single member of
the population once it caught on, some funny, some deep, some profound, little
titbits of life the world over that let you see inside another person’s life
and what they thought about things. I mean, there’s no point thinking things is
there? It’s all thought for you, what to say, what to do. I mean what a funny
little world that must have been, having all that choice open to you and not
knowing what to do with it. Hah, and what a word that was, ‘the internet’. It
implied a connection of things – and where I came from connecting to things
just didn’t apply, you were separate, kept apart from people and doing your own
job in isolation with no idea of how it affected anybody else. You weren’t
allowed to ‘feel’ anything for what you did, you just had to do it. They called
it the worldwide web too I understand.World wide – I didn’t even know what the
world looked like. I mean most people belonged to something called ‘The Flat
Earth Society’ but they had given themselves away by telling us they had
members ‘all over the globe’ which set me thinking maybe we were on a sphere? There
was definitely something creepy about that phrase ‘the worldwide web’, so
creepy I edged away from it and I had dreams that night after I heard about it,
as if all these little nuggets of truth from across the globe were following me
and catching me in this giant spider’s web full of arachnids named Boris and
once I’d opened the door to it I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried.
I
didn’t want to know about it at first. I mean it’s not just that it’s banned,
it’s what a weird unworkable concept that was. All those thoughts, colliding
into each other, provided by other people outside your mind - I mean, you just
wouldn’t know what to believe, what was real,it was easier to have someone tell
you. Yet I somehow knew implicitly that if you could read enough of these
truths, sift through them all bit by bit, then after time you could find some
sort of mutual understanding, as if all the humans who had ever had any
thoughts would be part of this giant ‘universal truth’ and I even imagined that
there was some true universal path mapped out for us where we could understand
how other people thought, see what they saw, hear what they heard, felt what
they felt. But that was just silly wasn’t it? That was just a fairytale that
someone had come up with, someone with too much time on their hands who needed
to work longer shift patterns. Wasn’t it?
Because
then this guy surprised me. He didn’t say a word the next day after our singing
session, he just came in and looked at me and our boss slyly, as if judging
what our re-action would be. He then brought out this curious little piece of
equipment. He said it was something called a ‘personal computer’ and that he
still had a connection to this thing called the internet that someone the other
side of the world had been keeping what he called ‘online’ for several years
and that all the files that had ever been posted by anyone were still out there
for anyone with access to read. I laughed. I mean, everyone knows the only
computers around are massive, meant for work purposes only and there’s nothing
personal about them whatsoever. Some of the privileged few in our workstation
got to use them, but only under the strictest supervision for set time periods
only. But then he showed it to me. And my world was never the same again.
Because
there it was. The ‘Lifehouse’. A collection of bits and pieces of recovered music
that had been kept safe from all countries and all times since the late 20th
century, all gathered together in one place on a hidden 'dark' part of the
'Lifehouse'. They all had unusual names like [42] 'A Quick One While He's Away'
and [76] 'Glow Girl' and [4] 'I Can't Explain' and all sorts of unusual
phrases, each full of such emotions I had never dared open myself up to before.
All those desires, all those hopes, all those dreams, it was utterly
overwhelming, while some even dared to speak out against the rulers of the
world that made me turn scarlet as I read people actually daring to think
thoughts that weren’t those of their leaders. I felt strangely ashamed and yet
also rather relieved when I realised that I, too, had felt some of those
feelings and thought some of those thoughts and never told anyone. Things like:
'Surely there's more to life than this?' or 'what if we were to do things
differently?' or 'what if we were all equal?' or at times simply 'Why???' I got
scared and asked my co-worker to turn the curious machine off right then and
there and then he showed me something that made me stop in my tracks.
It
was a music that caught my eye though, specifically a review dedicated to an
album with the deeply unsettling name ‘Who’s Next’, an album I was told was the
starting point for the whole ‘Lifehouse’ project, which soon became my
favourite of all these illicit works. It was a daring name, confrontational,
side taking, quietly confident that the listeners would want to follow what did
come next. I was intrigued by the cover too, where four men with spookily long
hair appeared to be defacing a concrete monolith, one last futile gesture of
outrage against a society that had for so long tried to box them in (although
according to my later researches it turned out to be a last minute desperate
attempt to shoot an album sleeve when another of Keith Moon cross-dressing gags
thankfully fell through and the photographer happened to spot the concrete on
an English motorway while driving with the band between gigs one day - and that
they later claimed to hated it even if it did look more than a little like the
‘wasteland’ outside). Extraordinary. How could people be so openly
revolutionary about that? Even without the music and despite the danger I knew
I was in I knew I wanted to hear and see more things like that. Despite my
better instincts I was hooked.
And
later I did hear more and I was never the same person ever again. So this is
what I had been tantalisingly waiting to hear for all my years? I can’t
describe what it felt like to hear my first song or later my first full LP,
huddled around a tiny computer, afraid of being discovered but so lost in the
music I didn’t care if they’d found me straight away and took me away. I began
to hang out with this strange guy more and more so I could learn more and more
about these strange and wonderful sounds. I once said to him that I wished that
the music could be continued somehow, that we could break some few remaining
instruments out of the museums they lay in gathering dust, plug them into the
'Lifehouse' and experience that joyous noise in person. And he told me that
somebody had done exactly that: several centuries after the music had existed
an underground radio network had suddenly sprung into life, oh so briefly and
oh so brightly. They were led by an outlaw named Max who broadcast music 'live'
as often as he could, re-recording it as many times as he dared while he
changed locations all the time and broadcasting on analogue equipment in our
digital age, whilst moving between broadcasts on his mobile buggy so that the
establishment couldn't always track him down (sadly neither could we, as his
broadcast range altered from night to night depending where he was). He had
been inspired by a monkeynuts website dedicated to albums of music that had
long since passed with the curious name of ‘Alan’s Album Archives’ none of
which meant anything to me at the time, albums and archives both being long
dead and names being used only by the rich and powerful. Most of the music
listed on the site had long since died out too, although much of it survived
including that single copy of Pete Townshend’s rock opera ‘Lifehouse’ which had
inspired the site I had read, celebrating not just music but the opinions,
ideas, romances, daydreams, beliefs, hopes, fears and somehow the life essence
of a bunch of people who had clubbed together to create and maintain the site
from all corners of the world (which of course doesn’t actually have corners,
being round, and yes it turns out my instimncts were right about that too!).’Lifehouse’
became my favourite record - and his too as he played it incessantly.
I
became interested in who else might be listening to the broadcasts as the same
names kept being mentioned the whole while - exotic names like Slack TV,
Barnacle Bum, Face Of Bo and Flufflewina - all alien monikers to me apparently
chosen at random from an old defunct social media platform named twitter which
became a shorthand for our 'real' names. I soon discovered that Lifehousers were
made up of people all over the globe, or my work colleague said, from as far
away places as Sweden, America and Skelmersdale (that last one sounded such a
pretty place!), all of them trying to spread the word about what music was and
what it could represent. When the recession of the early 21st
century hit, you see, the Coalition in power at the time started a policy of
isolationism and all the other countries eventually followed suit, leaving us a
stranded island alone in the middle of the gaping sea, all borders closed. We’d
never been encouraged to think about what lay on the other side of the sea so
we never thought about it – but oh I thought about it now. By learning through
other people and finding out what I had in common with them I also began to learn
more about myself, a voyage of discovery that taught me so much more than I had
learned from the junior workstation schools of my youth. And when the music
talked to me, it was as if I was listening for the first time in my life to
something that made sense, that I was only now doing and thinking what I should
have been doing my whole life, spreading light and truth across the world as a
lighthouse spreads light to those caught up on the rocks.
You
see, it wasn’t just a world of music ‘Lifehouse’ opened me up to. I became
obsessed with these mysterious voices writing these titbits of hidden knowledge
in awe, just as I was able to imagine other countries I had never even heard of
before now, less dreamt I would one day be able to talk about it in detail with
the inhabitants. As time wore on and the guy at work could tell I was ‘one of
them’ (ain’t it funny how we all seem to look the same?) I badgered the guy for
the secrets of the technology, so that I could communicate and pass a small
part of my understanding to the people out there. I hurriedly began to scribble
notes on the music I found. I knew I would be in trouble if I was ever found
out but I knew that I had to make my own connections with this music and pass a
little tiny piece of my own self down to other people. I began to connect with
the others out there, around the globe. They laughed when I told them this,
told me that they had all felt like that at first, that they too were worried
about who on earth would want to connect with them but that they were convinced
that if enough of us showed up we could spread our ‘life essence’ and find the
one universal truth that would save mankind and give us the path we were
looking for.
That
wasn't enough for me though: I became besotted and after Max went missing for
two whole days I couldn't bear to think about the fact that he might not
broadcast again. As my feelings were beginning to interfere with my work and
I'd be found out anyway, I decided to sneak away, to slip away under the cover
of darkness and try and unite myself with this mysterious broadcaster and see
if there was any way in which I could help him. Piecing together all the clues
Max had delivered in his final broadcast about the next potential position (a
triangle formed around 'Abbey Road' 'Shakedown Street' and '4 Way Street', the
three albums played that night) I stole a buggy and set off to find him - and
through some form of telepathy or luck I did indeed find him. He was shocked at
first, then defensive and in denial about who he was and what he was doing, but
after quoting all of Alan's Album Archives' 'core' 101 albums in order he
realised that I was who I claimed to be: a fan (a 'groupie' he called me - I
slapped him, once I went away and researched what what one of those was). Even
though he was so much older than me and was the only person I ever physically
met from another land, we found we had everything in common: our growing sense
of outrage at the system that had betrayed us and tried to silence us and pitch
us against each other through random policies that played up our differences
when, underneath it all, we were clearly the same as one another. Even the language
barrier wasn't a barrier at all with so much out there which we had in common
to share with each other, from what made us laugh to what made us cry to what
made us think and almost all of it stemmed from the music. It wasn't long at
all before the Lifehouse broadcasts became twice daily, the two of us taking
shifts and helping each other try and send out our voice to the masses before
it was too late. We thought as one, wrote as one - and eventually lived as one.
The
pairing was never easy. We nearly got caught and separated so many times, with
everyone telling us it was for our own 'good' (even though it clearly wasn't).
We both became homesick and longed to go back to our families, usually after
some minor fight about what to play next (CSN or Y?) but we persevered and we
made headway. Slowly, little bit by little bit, the fans came to our broadcasts
which were passed on through word of mouth just as my introduction had been.
Eventually we had a following - not a strong one, not as strong as the original
'Lifehousers' would have had when this music was new and fresh and everyone was
talking about it, but enough to make us feel as if we were doing good work. We
even helped overthrow the Government thanks to a series of co-ordinated attacks
that took down the evil Coalition down permanently, spreading news about how
the evil leaders had fun with pigs, kept the disabled prisoners in their own
homes or sent the unemployed through costly work programmes that achieved
nothing or on endless courses designed to break their spirit. Little bit by
little bit we celebrated our small successes, became elated at the small rate
of progress in our own tiny part of the world and breathed new life purpose
into the other as we went from one daring escapade to the other.
But
it all became too much - too much of anything is too much for us these days. Though
we overthrew the old Government through sabotage and truth, we couldn't do
anything about the new one put in its place who came with a different name but
the same old baggage. The two of us, also, began to see differences where once
we had only ever seen similarities and our broadcasts became fewer and fewer as
less and less people kept tuning in, disillusioned at the state of the new
world we'd bequeathed them as a consequence of taking down the old one. In a
way I felt ashamed: so many people had been looking up to me and yet I knew nothing
more than what I'd learnt from the records I'd played and soon there were
other, greater numbers of listeners writing in who were far more erudite than
I. The whole 'Lifehouse' broadcast project so very nearly came to nothing. But
then I realised than I still had a duty to future generations to see if they
could rid themselves of this vicious circle of repeated corruption and phony
leaders. Just because our generation couldn't get it together was no reason why
the next one couldn't - or the one after that. After all, the music we played
every night had lasted centuries with their meaning still intact - who (and
indeed Who) was to say that some future successors of our selves might not get
it together one day? Especially as we ourselves were carrying a member of the
next generation inside us. The music was in danger of being snuffed out and we
couldn't let that happen.
So
we decided to invite our followers unite with us and tell us their stories,
sing us their songs and read us their words - and when that wasn't enough we
invited them to make their own interpretations of the songs from yesteryear
we'd been playing all those years. Perhaps, dear reader, you are one of them.
And that’s why I’m writing this report on behalf of the Lifehouse organisation,
spending my precious allotted hour of free time on the 'Lifehouse' when our
electricity supply will allow us talking to anybody out there who’s listening
(now there’s a great title for a follow-up: ‘Who’s Listening’?) Our albums are
picked at random, although I am very privileged to have been chosen to study my
favourite work, ‘The Lifehouse’, an album that rings truer in 2171 than it must
have done when The Who composed it a century ago and one ripe for all sorts of
interpretations. I can’t say I’m looking forward to my next choice, ‘The Spice
Girls: 75 years Of Hits’ though – why did that one out of all the records in
the universe have to survive eternity intact? One day we're going to unite all
these songs, combine all the things we've learnt, assimilate all the viewpoints
as we can and maybe, just maybe, we'll find that one pure note that runs
secretly within us all, so pure and easy. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the
album that might just as well be telling our story...
The
Songs:
Plot:
It's the start of a great new adventure - as it is everyday. Max the Musician
is still hopeful that if he keeps dre-discovering enough 'abandoned' music and
broadcasting it to people then he'll understand how life, the universe and
everything works, with one note threaded between all the songs he hears, so
pure and easy...
[120] ‘Pure and Easy’ is
easily the best known of all the ‘Lifehouse’ songs that didn’t make the ‘Who’s
Next’ album and sounds like a 'theme tune' of sorts with lyrics about the plot
of finding the 'lost chord' and dreaming of a better future ('Lifehouse, unlike
'Tommy' or 'Quadrophenia', never had an overture or even an underture!) Fans
heard this song first via the first Townshend solo album 'Who I Am' in 1971,
but it's the Who’s outtake released in 1974 that caused practically all fans to
think of this song as a favourite. Of all the ‘Lifehouse’ songs, this is the
one that sheds most light on the concept, detailing one note or one chord that
could save humanity or destroy it, depending on what we all really want in our
hearts. Unlike many of the songs here this one is a hopeful composition and one
clearly set in ‘our’ time, telling us that in years gone by mankind really did
live in harmony with music allowing people to come together and unite and that even
in the mess of the modern world he still has the power to change things for
good or for ill. Max senses eternity in the ‘words’ and ‘guitar’ of the ancient
music he plays over the Lifehouse which give him hope that life doesn’t have to
be the way it is. Max imagines a crowd of people cheering, coming together to celebrate
the sheer joy of being alive. The lyrics also touch on the idea that the
further we get from the ‘source’ the more impure mankind gets, the more
isolated and frustrated, as ‘all men are bored of other men’s lies’ and each
has their own vision of the world around them. This is a rare song that juggles
multiple human civilisations and all of humanity across time, with epochs
crumbling and falling and coming and going and the tune reflects this: while
there is a simple organ part that holds the song steady throughout, the melody
is ever moving, twisting and turning this way and that, ebbing and flowing with
each new attempt by civilisation to do something different. Throughout it all
though dictatorships, democracies, societies and regimes all fall, all
inadequate for that very real sense of belonging which is at the core of the
human soul. This song though is the other side of the coin from ‘Won’t Get
Fooled Again’ – mankind hasn’t been fooled yet and still has a chance to right
the wrongs of past mistakes if only we can connect back with who we are,
instead of who our leaders want us to be, reflected in one note pure and easy,
flowing free like a breath rippling by. The middle eight, telling us that love
‘can knock down many walls’ and that happiness is open to everybody if they
‘fulfil your dreams’ rather than the dreams those around you want you to fulfil,
is one of the most uplifting Who moments of them all, telling us how our future
is safe and secure for humanity however horrible the generations suffer in an
attempt to get there, before the song returns once more to the idea of there
being ‘one note’ – that all our dreams, whatever they are, fulfilled side by
side might lead to a new great chapter for humanity. The singalong infectious
coda, which goes on forever on the ‘Odds and Sods’ version, is Max’s last
desperate attempt to get the world to hear it’s call, repeating ‘there once was
a note...listen!’ over and over, as if nagging us into submission. As you can
probably tell, this song is integral to the ‘Lifehouse’ story and has left more
than one reviewer shaking their head over how a song as fitting and developed
as this could possibly have been left off the ‘Who’s Next’ album. Things become
stranger when you learn that there are no less than three studio versions of
the song knocking about (four if you count the live version from the Young Vic
Theatre). The ‘Who’s Next’ bonus version is timid, obviously an early version
with the band still getting to grips with the song and treating it more as a
pop tune than anything (I can totally see this song as being picked as the
‘lead single’ the way [100] ‘Pinball Wizard’ was for ‘Tommy’). The ‘Odds and
Sods’ version is the best, being much slower and more thoughtful and it has far
more of the ‘polished’ sound Glyn Johns perfected for the ‘Who’s Next’ album,
with much better placement in the mix between instruments. The third version is
from Pete’s solo album ‘Who’s First’ and features the guitarist on lead.
Without Roger’s punch, this third version is far more reflective than the other
two and includes an interesting alternate ending that goes ‘excepting one
note.....’, with the song dropping out to reveal just that one single keyboard
line before returning to the opening ‘There once was a note...’, as if to mimic
the cyclical nature of humanity. In any version, though, this is a truly
mind-bogglingly gorgeous song that’s perfect for The Who, uniting so many
‘thematic threads’ on the healing power of music, the need for humanity to
commune with one another and the search for identity that I think my head just
exploded, the sort of graceful intellectual work that still manages to work as
a glorious song even if you didn’t understand the lyrics and one of Pete
Townshend’s very finest moments. With any other band this song would be
celebrated as a masterpiece and one of their best-selling applauded
achievements – it speaks volumes that in The Who canon ‘Pure and Easy’ exists
purely as an outtake.
Plot:
Preparing to broadcast again, Max gets ready and tries to be at 'one' with his
audience, imagining himself speaking to one eager listener hanging on his every
word – one who in the form of Mary just happens to be listening...Oh and by the
way, if you’re reading this book in order congratulations because you’ve just
reached our book’s infamous ‘middle song’ if you lay them all out in order. And
what an apt one it is too!
[121]
‘Gettin' In
Tune’ is simpler still, Max sitting at his piano playing a note that
reflects his inner turmoil and emotions and hoping that the vibrations might
resonate with his listeners, if he has any. Another polemic about the power of
music to connect with people like no other art form, it is a much more reduced
version of the same idea, slowly growing from a cute breathy ballad into a Who
production powerhouse stage by stage. The lyrics also explorte the key
‘Lifehouse’ idea that all beings have different frequencies and notes belonging
to them personally and that searching gfor the right soul to spend your life
with depends on finding someone who ‘resonates’ with you and with whom you can
create beautiful harmonies from their blend of notes (which are rare, Max
getting fed up of ‘having to say do you come here often?’) The song is also,
though, about being in tune with the universe, of a Tommy-like need to listen
to what is really going on without the distractions of everyday life. Each of
us have days when things just work out perfectly – and others when everything
seems to go wrong, as if we are out of harmony with the world for whatever
reason. The resulting piece sounds like an early version of [152] ‘I’m One’
from ‘Quadrophenia’, both melodically and lyrically, with the narrator quietly
confident in himself and finding his significant other despite the many
problems he comes across and the lack of faith others have in him. There’s
a metaphor about song construction going on too, with the narrator reaching out
for the notes in the song simply because ‘they fit in well with the chords I’m
playing’, reminding him about the harmony he feels within himself but doesn’t
see in the rest of the world. Roger Daltrey is at his absolute best on this
song, vulnerable and defiant all at the same time, with his voice unusually
deep and sonorous on a track pitched lower than normal. The lyrics are strong
too, being perhaps the best of the many ‘Lifehouse’ songs on this theme of
being in harmony, but the tune’s a bit of a plodder alas and not quite up to
most of the others on this album (personally I’d have released ‘Pure and Easy’
and dropped this song from ‘Who’s Next’). Everyone else in The Who are pitched slightly
oddly too: Pete’s guitar and piano seem much wilder than they ought to be,
John’s sour harmony vocals are that bit loud and this is surely a qunique Who
song where Keith’s drum part feels a little over-played. Sadly the ‘Who’s Next’
version fades early, but an alternate take from the early ‘Lifehouse’ recording
sessions with the original arrangement exists (released on the ‘deluxe’ edition)
played at a slower tempo and with an absolute monster jam at the end that just
runs on and on, an organ part now doubling the piano one as the track speeds up
and Pete lazily plucks out some extra notes on his guitar. Alas all we have to
savour now in 2071 are the official CDs (which are now certifiably unofficial,
of course, having been outlawed by our beloved highness The Grand Lord Dictator
Cameron).
Plot:
The broadcast over, Max is on the run again and fleeing the authorities trying
to stop him spread music and happiness. He escapes in his LifehouseBuggy, the
transport used on the future earth to keep out the air pollution and escapes,
reflecting on how much he enjoys being ‘outside’ when so many Lifehousers are
trapped indoors… [122] ‘Goin' Mobile’ is
another of ‘Lifehouse’s lesser songs and in retrospect I’m amazed that filler
like this was substituted instead of, say, ‘Pure and Easy’ or ‘Join Together’.
It’s a fun but not very deep song featuring Pete on lead vocal imagining
himself as one of Lifehouse’s underground figures, a ‘hippy gypsy’ with
transport that allows him to travel anywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love
this song’s central idea about travel and having everything along with you for
the ride so that you never have to worry about being tied down – no joke now
that we lead such a regimented existence thanks to the coalition cutting all
the jobs and then making us work sweeping the streets for free. Pete’s demands
to ‘keep me moving!’ are very Who-like while he seems to contradict [23] ‘My
Generation’ as he cries to life to ‘keep me moving over fifty!’, realising that
he’s going to be restless for change his whole life through, not just his
adolescence. Alas though there’s something not very believable about this Beach
Boys car track parody and for once The Who are using synths as weird bleeping
noises in the middle section of the song (actually an ‘envelope follower’, a
device a bit like a vocoder, attached to Pete’s electric guitar during the
solo) rather than as a proper distinctive backing track as on ‘Won’t Get Fooled
Again’ and ‘Baba O’Riley’. This effect does, at least, have the feeling of a
totalitarian regime (sounding like a cross between a police siren and a fire
engine wail) as Pete’s acoustixc guitar dodges and dives, evading the people in
hot pursuit of him. The song also seems to give up a couple of verses and
minutes in, until a final verse (‘I don’t care about air pollution!’) that
seems tacked on. Pete’s admitted that this song was one of the ‘lighter’ pieces
adapted from ‘Lifehouse’ and that it didn’t really further the plot much. Acoustic
arrangements on Who songs are usually the highpoints of their albums (the later
‘Behind Blue Eyes’ being a case in point), but this acoustic arrangement track
just sounds tinny, with Pete’s reedy vocal a pale copy of Roger’s at full
throttle. Even this track is only poor by comparison to its siblings, however –
on most earlier Who albums, this piece would still have been at least a minor
gem and a strong performance from Pete, playing more or less solo with just
Keith Moon’s thrashing drums to accompany him, just about rescues it as a song.
Plot:
It's another boring day in Lifehouseville for Mary, who yearns to see the
outside world even though she knows it's banned (admittedly, the line about
'playing the guitar' doesn't fit our plot and nor do the lines about walking
down the beach; is it too late to change it forty-five years on or have we just
got this one wrong?!) Anyway, every day feels the same and Mary yearns for
something different...
[123]
‘Time Is
Passing’ is a curious little song that doesn’t sound much like The
Who and was clearly in the ‘Lifehouse’ project more as plot-filler than a song
in its own right with its country-rock stylings and reflections of boredom.
Lyrically, though, this is another fine Townshend track with his writer’s eye
working well, summing up in just a few lines the sheer joy of traditional
family life used here as a distant evocative memory – exactly the sort of thing
that was dying out when this song was written in 1971 and is long gone now. It
makes me nostalgic for a time I don’t really believe ever really happened, with
the narrator idly walking by the sea and getting drunk at a family gathering,
safe in the knowledge that he is loved and that wasting time, if it was a
pleasure, is never truly wasted. The country-ish backing doesn’t suit this song
or the band, however, though having said that the track does come alive for the
chorus which is full of yet more ‘Lifehouse’ imagery. This time around the ad
hoc music that the family make in their backyard during the narrator’s
flashback is a metaphor for the harmony they feel and in the present day the
narrator knows that ‘only by this music’ – with feelings running well between
him and his loved ones – can he find freedom. Things get even more eerie by the
end, with ‘dead men in their graves’ desperate to return to earth to find the
delights they all but threw away at the time without really noticing. Alas all
of that community gets lost ‘beneath the waves’ as a new tidal pull of societal
change make people scared of family and brotherhood and their own laughter.
However, the great thing about music is that it lasts as a memory, recalling
happier times when life was closer to rthe source of that mystical ‘one note’.
Between ourselves I could have done without the ‘sea’ filled imagery in the
second verse, though, which is far more effective when re-written as [158] ‘Sea
and Sand’ on the next Who album ‘Quadrophenia’. ‘Time Is Passing’ is,
ironically enough, little more than time-passing filler given the other great
songs on the ‘Lifehouse’ project (and is one of the few songs they were right
to drop from ‘Who’s Next’), but it is important to the plot and has a certain
charm about it nevertheless.
Plot:
There's a dark side to living life on the run as Max wonders if he really is
right to defy the authorities so. He yearns for someone to keep him on the
straight and narrow and tell him when he's 'wrong' while keeping him away from
'evil' pills...
No
such worries about [124] ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, one of the most
devastatingly moving songs on the whole Lifehouse internet. Pete is meant to
have written the track very much with ‘Lifehouse’ in mind, with the segue
between the sweet and innocent opening and the hard, nasty tag mirroring the
idea that the ‘Lifehouse’ one chord trick can be used for humanity’s good or
ill, depending on what the majority of us think. But unlike some of these other
songs it works equally well as a stand alone song and a believable one at that –
indeed, Roger Daltrey was apparently overwhelmed when he first heard this song
because Pete was, as he so often did, writing about the world through ‘his
eyes’ and he felt the song very personally as his pal finally understanding his
scarred background and former bullying nature (Pete’s eyes are brown you see and
Roger’s are blue; It’s also common knowledge that Roger’s teenage years were a
bit – shall we say – wayward and only the success of The Who calmed him down
from being the tearaway he was). Roger is, in many ways, the perfect case
study: Daltrey has often admitted that were it not for The Who he’d have ended
up down the ‘wrong path’ in some criminal gang and probably prison long ago,
because that’s what happened to people born where he was and made to act
‘tough’ in fear of getting beaten up. Pete acknowledges this, but also how
angelic and good Roger could be and is when life heads down a different path.
Early Roger is fated to ‘telling only lies’, but he only acts as if his
conscience is ‘empty’ – really he feels everything so deeply, still haunted by
dreams of how his life could be different and of a time when true feelings can
be of ‘love’ not turned into ‘vengeance’. In terms of ‘Lifehouse’ this song is
about people breaking away from the idea of a community, where when things go
wrong ‘I blame you’ and people rely on each other for the wrong reasons,
demanding a coat when they have made themselves shiver from the darker side of
life themselves or sticking your fingers down someone’s throat when they have
ingested too many pills.The three part harmonies of Roger, Pete and John at the
start are simply gorgeous, showing a distinct CSN influence and an enveloping
warmth that is missing from most of this deliberately cold and detached
sounding record, with Roger’s lead part surely his very best of all, wrapping
itself warmly round John’s bass and Pete’s acoustic guitar. It’s the perfect
summary of that numb feeling when you’re past caring who you are or what people
think of you after one hurt too many with a sound that could either be ice-cold
or warm and felt too deeply all at once. Many Who songs are built on contrasts,
but ‘Blue Eyes’ switch between the needy first section and the angry, out of
control second is pure genius, The Who lulling you into thinking that they are
going to stay vulnerable for a whole song before demonstreating that, actually,
this sense of distance with the outside world is what causes the anger and
frustration of most of their songs. This sudden violent section is the only part
the world sees though, the narrator turning from set-upon victim into an aggressive
monster who refuses to be hurt – cause and effect if you will. If only someone
had played this song to the Coalition when they started all that bogus talk
about the lower dregs of society – this is true evidence of how far a person
can be pushed before he snaps. After all, the narrator is asking an unseen
person to stabilise him in an up-and-down world (possibly the love interest in
the ‘Lifehouse’ story; more likely Meher Baba again in terms of inspiration),
holding him back when he wants to fight, calming him down when he feels elated
and even sticking their fingers down his throat when he takes too many drugs.
We all need a protector, nowadays more than ever, and this song sums up that
dichotomy between acting on our overpowering emotions and not having any at all
perfectly. The result is one of The Who’s most powerful, thoughtful songs,
poignant and profound and with a scary beauty they never quite recapture as
well again, floating mid-air like a drunk about to let out a swing at someone
but secretly hoping that someone will stop them.
Plot:
More doubt. Max is pleased to see the 'Lifehousers' responding on the illegal
part of the 'grid' but he's frustrated that they only understand him on one
layer when really he's made up of several 'notes'. The same goes for Mary, who
knows she's due for more in life than the humble, narrow existence society has
mapped out for her as she hears another song she deeply identifies with... Enter
[125] ‘I
Don’t Even Know Myself’. Many fans don’t seem to like this song,
which did see release at the time but only as the B-side of ‘Won’t Get Fooled
Again’, but they’ve got cloth ears if you ask me – this very personal song of
confusion is a great attempt at updating the first Who single [4] ‘I Can’t
Explain’ for an older audience and its lyrics are among some of the best Pete
ever wrote on his favourite theme. The song isn’t obviously a ‘Lifehouse’ era
song, although its sentiments do tie in well with the confusion heard in ‘Naked
Eye’, with a narrator who should be happy and contented, but patently isn’t,
confused as to where he fits into a world he can’t comprehend. The song does
date back earlier than most of the other songs here, being performed in concert
as long ago as 1970 (you can hear a cracking version of it at the band’s Isle
Of Wight show that year) and some of the lyrics would probably have been
changed had the song made it to the originally planned two-disc version of
‘Lifehouse’ (especially the last, revealing verse that finds Pete agonising how
to follow up his greatest triumph with the line ‘Tommy’ is the way I’m staying
– and no one will ever know it!’) However, it still fits like a glove on a
concept album about people hiding up their ‘real’ selves, the narrator
admitting that he’s frightened beneath all his bluster and dismissive of those
who write him off for being a Wholigan when he’s really just a messed up kid
looking for love. Like many of Pete’s best songs, ‘Myself’ features a narrator
whose outer confidence masks an inner turmoil, mimicked by the arrangement
which varies from straightforward rocker to country and western as if it isn’t
quite sure what sort of song this wants to be either, with the main character
pleading to his creator that he doesn’t mind being unhappy sometimes as that’s
a part of living – but why does he have to carry this empty feeling around with
him all the time? The moment when this track suddenly becomes a full-on
charging Who song though (‘Do you remember me? I don’t remember you!’) is well
worth the wait, with the sudden charge of John and Keith in tandem before Roger
unleashes one of his best screams (‘I’m just trying to fight my way out of this
dream!’) is superb. Even with so many similar songs in his back catalogue, this
track brings out the best in Pete’s observations as a writer too, with the character
finding that the life he’d been aiming for for so many years is actually false
and vapid by the time he gets there.
Only one line lets this song down – the rather unconvincing ‘come on all
of you big boys, come on all of you elves, don’t pretend that you know me when
I don’t even know myself’, a line that presumably would have been changed
unless Pete was seriously thinking about adding some, err, elfin types to his
film script for ‘Lifehouse’! Even so, dig that melody which spends the whole
song wandering around the chords in search of a home and yet ends up at the end
as lost and confused as it ever was when it started. For once, though, Pete’s unreleased
demo is better, navigating the different sections rather better with just two
guitar parts and a piano to get it out of trouble.
Plot:
Apparently the original intention for this song is Mary's farmer parents
escaping their rural paradise for the bright lights of London. However that
doesn't fit with anything else I've heard so, erm, err, umm, after a lot of
thought it's Mary be-crying her loneliness and the 'teenage wasteland' that
means she'll never be 'whole’ with her peers, feeling as dis-connected to them
as she does.
[126 ] 'Teenage Wastleland' would
presumably have been replaced at some stage with 'Baba O'Riley' given that the
two start off with the exact same lyric. However musically there are so many
differences between them and given that Pete often liked to give his concept
albums a ‘repeat motif’ we’re going to stick both songs here – perhaps woith
the idea that one is Mary yearning to escape to a new world and one is her
parents out looking for her? The opening verse is the same, but it's sung to a
mournful and slow piano backing, similar to 'The Song Is Over', rather than the
defiant robotic chords of it's successor. While the ‘famous’ version is much
more like The Who’s normal frustration turning to violence, this version is so
much slower and sadder, Mary stuck in one place as she’s forced to ‘get my back
into my living’. The 'don't cry, don't raise your eye' middle eight is present
too, but as a slow, depressive refrain rather than a song of frustration and
power. The rest of the song is quite different and more like a track from
'Quadrophenia' as a wannabe hip teen worries that he lacks the right dress-code
to be 'cool' and is fed up of the fact that his peers get to live somewhere
posh and ‘we sleep together in a caravan’. I suspect this bit might be from the
dad’s point of view as he too feels hemmed in, condemned to being an ‘ordinary
man’. There are more plot points too relating to the original idea of Mary's
family as farmers ('Hey you, don't work on the turnips!') and the fact that
they live in a 'caravan' that's 'goin' mobile'. However the best moment is a part that
suddenly kicks into a Daltrey type scream with the plea that ‘grief ain’t gonna
break my heart!’ With so much talent passing her by, there’s nothing left for
Mary and the other teenagers to do except get ‘wasted’, a very Who pun on why
people take to addictions to fill a hole they can’t fill with anything
meaningful in their lives. The song isn't quite as 'special' as 'Baba O'Riley'
and wouldn’t have had anything as like the same impact, but even in this early
different it's a quite beautiful and moving song about alienation, isolation
and desperation as Mary tries not to ‘raise her eye’ and cry. It is also very
much growing on me as I get used to the idea of the tune going in a different
direction and there would certainly have been enough room on the album for two
versions had Pete wanted it that way.
Plot:
Ditto (this being virtually the same song).
[127]
‘Baba
O’Riley’ was the first track I heard and its strange impersonal
bleeps rang so true with my own impression of the mechanical, unchanging world
I lived in. Other Lifehousers had noted before me that this five minute track
was originally part of a much bigger, longer track that erupted into the song
proper only after several minutes of austerity, erupting into song only after
the tune had found no other way out of its self-contained prison. But oh when
the song erupted, when the original Lifehouser referred to as Roger Daltrey
came screaming in with the first verse (I picked these colloquialisms up from
the other Lifehousers) my head nearly exploded. Such a build up of tension had
gone into the song that hearing this cold synthesiser erupting into the warmth
of human emotion I thought had been long since dead was moving indeed. That
synthesiser part was the main difference from the previous version, an
incredible invention where as far as I can tell the recording of the world’s
first digital synth becomes the perfect cold and unfeeling backdrop for such a
warm song full of rage and need. The twin strands of DNA conjured up by Meher
Baba’s ‘note’ (as Pete interpreted them) and the sort of pulsing keyboard
swirls perfected by synthesiser pioneer Terry O’Riley combine to make a
thrilling mathematical pattern that’s truly hypnotic (especially on the ten
minute instrumental version released on one of Pete’s Meher Baba albums). The
tired but unthinking worker, putting his back into living, suddenly realises
just why he’s alive and what life is about, but he can’t communicate it to
those around him (a common Townshend theme as I discovered later). The song
erupts into yet another stage when something I’m reliably informed is an
electric guitar comes crashing in for the second verse, lifting the song to yet
another level and sounding like the very essence of human spirit railing
against the cold, hard, mechanical world it found itself in. The attack doesn’t
work though – despite his Hurculean effort the singer seems to tire, the song
drops down and still that synthesiser beat carries ever onwards, broken only by
the tired, defeated middle eight ‘don’t cry, don’t raise your eye, it’s only
teenage wasteland’. The very words of this song chimed with our situation, the
idea of ‘teenage wasteland’ with so much potential left unused and no chance to
ever make anything of it, becoming just another nameless worker in a maze of
human workers, an isolated note in a chorus of noise that just didn’t get heard
or allowed to live to its fullest potential. There’s hope in the third verse, though,
with the singer imploring us all to ‘get together before we get much older’,
uniting in our need to all be of one chord (a battle cry turned into a full
song that will be dealt with later on) and the introduction of Lifehouses’
sub-plot, a romantic journey taken by the narrator and ‘Sally’ (surely to be
replaced by Mary if Lifehouse had been finished?) across ‘Southern Lands’ in
search of the mysterious figure uniting everybody with the music pouring out of
the Lifehouse. The song then ended on a last battle-cry, with the song’s riff
joined by a far more human sounding fiddle player (guest Dave Arbus of the band
‘East Of Eden’), busking and improvising his way through the song’s many twists
and turns fighting the system that traps it, the equal of its cold ticking
mechanical heart until an epic race to the finish where the song gets faster
and faster until both sides in the war crumple to a heap at the end, both
destroyed (a mirror of what will happen to the worn out revolutionaries who
just want comfort by the end of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’). I remember asking my
new Lifehouse friends what the curious title was about and was told that it may
have originated from Townshend’s early ideas for the album, when he was still
intending to ‘re-intrepret’ all the members of The Who’s concert audience into
sound and basing songs around their DNA or ‘life essence’. The song we have
here is a combination of synthesiser pioneer Terry O’Riley, whose experimental
work inspired this track’s lolloping synth licks and Townshend’s spiritual
‘guru’ Meher Baba, whose talk of peace as the only solution for humanity and
not worrying about human frailties struck a chord with many Who fans too in the
60s and 70s. If rock and roll is at its heart the sound of ordinary gfeeling human
feelings fighting against a cold rigid system then ‘Baba O’Riley’ must rate as
one of the finest rock songs of them all and this is a track that has
everything – power and purpose and fight yet still stumbling against a brick
wall. It is also the single best use of synthesisers in the musical world
everywhere – everyone else will use them for colour, noise or because its in
‘fashion’ but here The Who use it because there isn’t anything else that could
possibly sum up this song’s fight against the unmoving concrete monolith of
life as well.
Mary's
been listening to 'Lifehouse' for a while now and wants things to change; she's
obsessed with Max's broadcasts about uniting together and changing the world
for the better and thinks it is time to stop talking and start doing...
[128] ‘Let’s
See Action’ is a single released after the event that was intended
for ‘Lifehouse’ – although, interestingly Pete released a slightly superior
version on his solo album ‘Who’s First’ in 1971, a year before most Who fans
heard it. The ‘Lifehouse’ era is also the peak period for the interaction
between Pete and Roger and few songs ever use their different styles as well as
this one does. Roger’s aggressive desire to get involved in what he thinks will
help society tempered by Pete’s more reflective philosophical section,
commenting on religious imagery (that theme of water as redemption washing us
clean crops up again here and will be used endlessly on ‘Quadrophenia’). This
is notable in the plot as the Lifehousers all agree on change but disagree on
the best way to do it: those who have been in the fight for a long time are
tired and just want to live on the outskirts of society but the newer members
like Mary want to doverthrow the regime and bring peace to everyone. Her elders,
though, know how many people will be hurt if that’s what they do. The dichotomy
between the two singers is powerful, as a double-tracked Roger is left
literally chasing his own tail, powerless to move, Pete having already played
his future out by poiunding revolutionary stages like a clown. The answer is
another typically glorious period ‘round’ in which the lyrics all bleed into
each other in a ccycle that can never be broken, Pete singing that ‘nothing is
everything is nothing is everything is…’ over and over, before the band version
sadly fades right there (Pete’s superior demo carries this magical moment on
for a further thrilling two minutes). The idea seems to be that, no matter what
we do as individuals, it will never be big enough to affect the world view in
the way we want – and yet, at the same time, any small change in outlook makes
a subtle difference to the world we live in. It’s a sobering thought I’ve
pondered on many times during my slave labour under the Coalition and makes for
a fine if unusual pop song that deserved to do so much better than #16 when
released as as single, one of the most important Who songs that only true fans
know.
Plot:
Mary plucks up the courage to head out of her safe, protected life and meet Max.
He’s overjoyed – he didn’t knowanyone was listening to him and at last he feels
that his messages must be working if he has touched someone enough for her to
risk her life and escape the Coalition. He falls in love...One
of the most obscure songs from 'Lifehouse' – a track that doesn’t seem to exist
except as part of a very lovely Townshend demo – is also one of my favourites.
The ultimately abandoned and unloved [129 ] 'Mary' is, you see, one of the loveliest love songs Pete ever wrote. You
can tell the songf means a lot to its author if only because he re-uses his
tender acoustic playing that has run through everything since [100] ‘Pinball
Wizard’, warm and tender compared to the alienation at the heart of many of
Lifehouse’s songs. 'You are everything a man could want - and I want you Mary'
is the refrain, while later lyrics have the narrator remain amazed at the
amount of sacrifices she's made to be with him and the 'holes in her coat' or
‘Lifesuit’ despite the poisonous radiation outside. One interesting addition to
the plot that doesn’t seem to have been picked up on anywhere else is that the
pair used to be friends before Lifehouse separated their worlds: Mary is
shocked that the voice she has been listening to is someone she used to know
and Max remembers being a child and knowing her. The 'broadcaster' remembers
being 'pushed away' because their similarities and their bond was too strong
and their telepathy too scary, but vowed that one day ‘I’d land me Mary!’and
suddenly his dream has come true. A nice acoustic opening similar to [152] 'I'm
One', suddenly grows into a bigger, electric song that would have sounded great
with John and Keith playing at full power (though as always Pete's basic
version of both parts is pretty stunning), before the song opens out into the
flashy acoustic strumming that will end up in [179] 'Who Are You' eight or so
years later. A lovely song, this one deserved an 'official' release much sooner
than the 2000 'Lifehouse Chronicles' box set. The broadcaster also realises
just how lucky he is because 'the sun doesn't shine on every man', leading him
to sing...
Plot:
Contemplating his rough-shod existence, Max figures that all the dangers he's
been through and all the risks have been worth it just to reach this one, truly
magical being...
Just
as the song fades away in comes one of the most mournful licks I’ve ever heard
played on a beautiful pedal steel guitar - and I’ve heard quite a few now, I’ve
become obsessed with music these past few years – on a track called [130] ‘Bargain’.
It's a fantastic assimilation of everything The Who stands for tied up into
four majestic minutes that’s one of the very best things the band ever did.
Musically the verses are The Who of old, running down everything in its path at
100 miles an hour with the band on classic rock interplay form and no fan of
their early brash-worthy singles will be disappointed by it. Yet lyrically,
peeking behind that front, this track is an uncharacteristically vulnerable
love song, acknowledging that the narrator’s hard-done-by, hateful past is
worth it just for the small amount of love he feels he is getting in the
present. I’d never known what it was like to ‘yearn’ for anything, seeing as
all of my life had been pre-planned for me on an hourly basis, but this song
said so much whilst saying so little that it soon became one of my favourites.
When it gets going this song becomes a typical Who rocker, angry loud and
defiant, listing all the macho things the narrator will put up with to win his
love and its impressive, with one of the best group performances on the record.
The theme of human life being as easily converted to badness as goodness is
another key Lifehouse theme, with both sides distilled into the proverbial soup
of human conduct and life. It was the middle eight that broke my heart,
however, with the song pulled back to reveal such a naked, vulnerable heart
with the narrator admitting that he’s nothing without the love of his life
there to guide him, pleading with her to get things back to the way they used
to be. The moment when Pete tells us, fragiliy stepping out from behind Roger's
angry sneer, how he’s ‘worth nothing without you’, is perhaps the single most
moving thirty seconds in the Who’s canon, with Pete’s vulnerable vocal on this
passage saying everything that Roger’s powerhouse of a character just can’t
admit. One Lifehouser, whose comments were used in a book about the band, also
equates it with the search of identity in a world of conformity, with the loved
one giving the narrator the confidence he needs to stick his neck out and be
himself, a concept that fits the original Lifehouse story about how human
beings need other people well. The song then melts back into that aching pedal
steel lick from earlier now played on a cold-hearted synthesiser suddenly
turned warm, before the song rights itself back into its earlier rockier self.
The result is an impressive combination that shows off the best sides of both
The Who’s work – the sheer noisy directness and take-no-prisoners wall of sound
that’s brittle and tough and the vulnerability underneath it all, the need to
be loved and understood that underpins all these tough songs about frustration
(it is very like the ending to ‘Tommy’ in fact and that’s no bad thing).
Everything about this track is perfect, from John Entwistle’s ever-restless
bass riff that seems to be doing its own ‘pleading’ throughout the song,
running up and down the chords looking for a way out to Roger Daltrey’s defiant
vocal to Keith Moon’s thrashing wild drums that still leave enough space for
the sadness to peek in to, best of all, Townshend’s simply beautiful
guitar-work that is full of such unspoken desire it’s hard not to cry. The
balance of this track - the chaos contained within such a simple, direct tune –
spoke to me vividly and I know its spoken of by many at The Lifehouse as
summing up what they felt about going through half their lives on auto-pilot
before discovering this world of emotions which mean so much to them that they
would have gone through anything to find it. The song is clearly Baba-inspired
as well (the 'you' in the song - this is on face value a love song but it's
really a double-layered track about spiritualism too, in as much as George
Harrison's best solo work was written for God as much as his wife of the time);
as Pete put it in period concerts 'if you're alive right now you're getting a
bargain' - there's no worries about what might come in the future, no doubts
about what might go wrong, no guilt about the past, just acceptance and
gratefulness for being alive and the chance to make his voice count in the
pantheon of noise that is modern life. The Who are stretching their sound
greatly on this album, making the listener fill in the gaps about what’s really
going on in the heads of the various narrators, and none of these special
tracks are more fleshed out than this perfect compromise between heavy rocker
and subtle ballad which is also beautifully mixed – Glynn John’s work on ‘Who’s
Next’ was rightly applauded but this is the song that deserves the accolades
the most, with a perfect balance between roar and squeak. The result is a
bargain, no matter how many deluxe editions we have to fork out for, one of the
best I ever had. Who says love songs have to be sissy? Not The Who, that’s Who!
Plot:
The pair have been together for a while now and are still very much in love,
which ain't for keeping ya all!...The finished version of
[131a] ‘Love
Ain’t For Keeping’ was vastly inferior, I felt, to an outtake a
Lifehouser had found buried on a curious titled collection of Who recordings
named ‘Odds and Sods’. On that version Pete takes the lead for a fiery, raw
rocker that uses its lyrics about the narrator being overwhelmed by the beauty
of life around him as a musical metaphor for lust on which his guitar work and
that of guest Leslie West is particularly strong. Listen out too for a largely
instrumental coda that merely underlines the addictive nature of events for the
narrator. The ‘finished’ version is a much more laid back acoustic
country-rocker with Roger on lead and music that seems much more suited to
celebrating the joys of family life, with the opening evocative lines about
‘new mown grass’ (whatever that might be – I only know about concrete in my
dystopian universe) sounding casual and innocent rather than lewd as before as a
couple escape the rain just long enough to enjoy the sun in the sky and the
sensation of being alive and together (note too the ‘Lifehouse’ references to
pollution and ‘black ash’ which the lovers blatantly ignore – was this meantg
to be another plot point that got forgotten?) I was especially taken by the
harmonies on the instrumental middle section in both versions - when I found
out that that’s what they were – which were truly lovely and did much to
rubbish some of the things I had heard said about The Who on ‘Lifehouse’ that
they were a band that couldn’t do subtlety or beauty.After all, this song just
aches beauty, the moment of grace when you have at last found the person you
love more than any other and that you can at last combine your two fragile
personal worlds as a glorious one. The babies are asleep, the work is all done
and your responsibilities have been fulfilled, leaving you nothing to do except
to enjoy each other’s company – another very baba-ish song about the thrill of
living in the moment and counting your blessings. The result is a short but
thrilling hymn to how wonderful it can be to be alive with a family of your own
and the wonderfulness of love, which came as a shock to me in our times when
relationships are prepared for you from birth, two notes combined and entwirled
together. Why, I’ve even heard that in the past those of different classes even
got to fall in loved with each other when the occasion allowed! How strange!
The
time of unity is at hand, with Mary and Max convinced that they have enough
material ready to broadcast to bring down the Government and unite the masses
against them. For that, though, they need listeners to pass on what they've
been hearing, even if it ultimately takes generations to fully be realised... The beating
heart of ‘Lifehouse’ was the last song to be released from the project for
years – as the third standalone single in 1972, [132] ‘Relay’. A more
typically Who-like song than some others on the album, it is all about the
power that people have when they come together rather than work alone, each
extra point of view chipping away the harder corners of someone’s point of view
until you get true democracy and something that benefits the most amount of
people at any one time. Of course, most of the fans who heard the song as a
single probably just enjoyed it as a typical Who style rock song, a sequel
rather than prequel to ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ where ‘somethjing’s brewing’
and it needs word from the people on the street to pass the feeling of revolution
on. The lyrics focus on the idea that, despite the status quo and the forces in
power each generation, there will always be those on the fringes who understand
the real ‘truth’ and essence in life (that one chord idea yet again) and that
they in turn will pass those ideas down to the next generation in a kind of
never-ending relay race. The trick is to get your word about how life should
‘really’ be alongside the people who live in the same ironclad institutions so
that at least some hope will exist for the human race. The tune is fast and
frantic, as if the Who know that they’re influence among the young is fading
fast now that the 1970s are in full swing or in the context of ‘Lifehouse’ that
the authorities could discover Max and Mary at any time. A strange choice as a
single, this largely one note song could have benefitted from one of the band’s
typically wistful Pete-sung middle eights to break up the pace a little bit and
this is the weakest use of period synthesiser after ‘Goin’ Mobile’, but the lyrics
alone make this a fine entry into The Who canon.
Plot:
Everybody does come together and thanks to Max and Mart's broadcasts know where
to meet and when, discovering to their joy that they can leave their homes and
mingle. After all, there are far too many of them to arrest en masse...[133]
‘Join
Together’ follows on neatly, being the second standalone single
released in 1972 and a surprising absentee from ‘Who’s Next’.To get the most
out of this song you truly have to understand it as the pay-off to the whole
piece: after being in isolation for most of their lives, Max and Mary are
overjoyed to see people turning out and mingling in a communal area in defiance
of the people who want to keep humanity apart because they are dangerous when
they get together. This being The Who the most uniting thing in the world is
music, Max urging people everywhere to come out of their hiding places and
‘join together with the band’. Even though it is as trick The Who had done a
few times before, most notably at the end of ‘Tommy’, it works particularly
well here as The Who become the source of identity for those who don’t have one
and a voice for those who are powerless to say things themselves. The theme is
that we are much more powerful when we work together than against each other
and again the thrill here is hearing reformed school bully Roger using the
words of his old victim to declare that he doesn’t care a fig for differenceds,
‘what you read or what you wear’ – all you need to belong is a need to belong. Though
for some fans this is a pale re-tread of [111] ‘See Me, Feel Me’ it is the
perfect turning point for ‘Lifehouse’, turning a dictatorship into a democracy
with the power of nothing more than rock and roll. The tune borrows heavily
from The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’ and its sentiments are similar, asking
for everyone in the Lifehouse audience to join with the band as they attempt to
discover the ‘one true note’. The lyrics are better than that makes it sound,
though, with Roger screaming that there are no prejudices or categories as far
as the band are concerned – they just want their audience to be themselves and
add their ‘power’ or ‘persona’ to the music the band is creating, to be ‘fed’
into their machine so we can discover the one note that unites us all. The
arrangement of this song is quite an experiment for The Who and might be why
this catchy track didn’t sell better, featuring a long drawn in opening that
doesn’t sound much like The Who at all and two mouthorgans from Roger. The
tension leading into the first verse is incredinly powerful and is only finally
punctured by an all out Who attack with Pete on especially good form playing
one of his better guitar solos. The result is so powerful that I want to get up
from my workstation and join them, getting my fellow workers to come along too,
even though I know it will lead me into so much trouble. The only slight
problem with this song is that, unlike ‘See Me, Feel Me’, the song has nowhere
to go and it shrinks by the end rather than peaks. Even so, that’s because it
isn’t quite the end of the story yet, with lesser writers ending things there
but Pete more interested in exploring what happens to fill the vacuum of
totalitarian regimes…Another much under-rated song.
Plot:
The Government are overthrown (yep, just like that - maybe they had an EU
referendum that wiped them out too?) so why aren't Max and Mary happy? Well,
after years in isolation there are just too many people to look after and too
much fame... [134] ‘Too Much Of Anything’ is
a sweet little sermon from Meher Baba via Pete Townshend and Lifehouse’s characters
about what happens next once a Government have been opposed. As with ‘Love
Ain’t For Keeping’ writ large, to lead a successful and happy life we have to
lead a balance – enough work but not too much, rest but not too much, lots of
love but not to the point where it’s restrictive, etc. This song suffers from
the opposite problem to most of these ‘Lifehouse off-cuts’, sporting a lovely
yearnful melody but a rather boring production that sounds more like the solo
Daltrey records I found on an obscure internet site I found one night when the
powers that be weren’t looking and some weaker lyrics than usual for this
period. There some nice moments too though on this song which had an unlikely
inspiration – a newspaper report about a man who died from drinking too much
orange juice, something that in the right quantities is good for you but which
taken to excess can kill. In a repeat of ‘Tommy’ A weary Pete, now twenty-one,
discusses how his hands have felt a lot and his eyes have seen a lot and his
brain has thought a lot but that so much of it have been wasted, seeing and
feeling and thinking without healing any of it the way human beings should to
live a fulfilled life. There’s an interesting verse that doesn’t seem to belong
to ‘;Lifehouse’ at all as Roger sings how he ‘can’t remember before ’49 though
I know that ’48 was there; Pete would have been four in 1949, the age when most
human beings start recording memories. The inference seems to be that we only
really live when we learn things through trial and error and learn through our
mistakes (or perhaps that because he was ‘living in the moment’ as a babgy and
toddler the narrator was trfuly happy back then). I had to laugh at Pete’s own
comments I found on an old website full of rock music quotes too: discussing
how this song is anti-excess of any sort, Pete adds: ‘Realising at the last
minute how totally hypocritical it would be for a load of face-stuffing drug-addicted alcoholics like us to put this
out, we didn’t’. The Who obviously felt something for this simple little track,
however, recording at least two different arrangements of it – the first,
released on ‘Odds and Sods’, is lumpy and uncoordinated but the second,
released as a bonus track on the ‘Who’s Next’ album is quite exquisite at
times, with the band gelling particularly nicely on the harmonies. The result
is a real grower: over-shadowed by noisier, more immediate songs from the
period, after many years you find yourself yearning for this song’s quiet
simplicity.
Plot:
Just as with the end of 'Tommy', the fame goes to the couple's heads and soon
Max and Mary are cynically demanding money from their followers to fund their
new society before they 'wake up' and realise that the music didn't teach them
to act like 'Gods' but to 'mirror' their fellow human beings... Debate rages
about [135] ‘Put
The Money Down’ – chronologically the only recording we know about
belongs to the ‘Quadrophenia’ project, although some fans argue that Pete had
written the song for use in the ‘Lifehouse’ project when it was still a double
record and that he only recorded it later, with this piece almost always
mentioned in listings for ‘Lifehouse’ (although it is notable by its absence
from ‘Lifehouse Chronicles’). In some ways it fits, especially here when the
Lifehouse heroes are in danger of becoming every bit as corrupt as those they
have overthrown – however this song’s laidback cynical bark feels very out of
place if you do listen to all the ‘Lifehouse’ songs together. It’s a slow,
blues song more akin to the slow-burning covers the band were playing in their
seminal ‘Live At Leeds’ days (not that I know what a ‘Leeds’ or a ‘university’
are by the way – although according to one ‘Lifehouse’ scholar Leeds is a place
that used to exist somewhere in segment 43 of Great Britain and a university is
a place of learning, closed by the coalition Government after riots by students
over tuition fees). Roger tries his best to put his stamp on the song with a
vocal recorded later especially for ‘Odds and Sods’ in 1974. Two and a half
years after the backing track, but there’s not much here for him to get his
teeth into except bark that ‘before I walk on the water, put the money down!’
My guess is that by 1971, after seven years of constant touring, the need to
create and be poure and ‘real’ and honest versus the need to make money by
endless touring and performing the same songs over and over again were really
taking their toll. After all, few rock and roll bands came close to lasting
that long at the time – most bands had broken up by now, jaded and insecure
long before seven years were up. It wouoldn’t surprise me if Pete was equating
what happens to rock bands (all that brotherly love, celebrating similarities
and a shared enemy in the system) with what happens to political parties by the
end (where the differences end up driving everyone apart once victories have
been won and everyone becomes stuck repeating themselves and things that used
to work but no longer do, while getting repeatedly sick of spending time round
the same faces all the time). There’s a curiously long fade out too – most of
the ‘Lifehouse’ songs end too quickly and could have benefitted from being
longer (yes, even the nine minute ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’) but not this one,
alas, which drags badly. Still, I’ll come out and say it: this track feels as
if it belongs to me and is a core part of Lifehouse’s last quarter.
Plot:
What's more, the 'new' Government that's been elected on promises of freedom
and fairness are just as bad as the old regime, meaning that Max and Mary have
ultimately changed nothing and are even being blamed for the continued
suffering. No wonder this song ends with a scream... Surely
the most famous moment from ‘Lifehouse’, so daring is [136] ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ it
made me gasp out loud when I first heard it and it never fails to impress me on
repeated listening. Certainly, it was the best known song from the album in the
late 20th and early 21st centuries, taken as a rallying
call against anyone in power and trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Out of
context it’s just a Damn good rock and roll song – one that fights with power
and anger for eight precious minutes over a classic cunrching riff and more
throbbing synthesiser pulses back when the sound was new, only to end up in a
scream and with a hangover, nothing ultimately changed after all. In context
it’s the perfect semi-ending, as humanity goes back round in cycles, robbed
once again of the chance to live a pure lifestyle under a regime that allows
everyone to be themselves. The sad fact is that humanity just can’t sustain
these ideas en masse – there will always be too many people polluting and
corrupting the system and the best way of fighting it is not to take a regime
down and leave a vacuum that’s unfillable but to ‘pick up my guitar and play’
and educate people as to how it doesn’t always need to be like this, to gain
smaller kinder changes that make life worth living. Pete has said that this
song, when heard as part of ‘Lifehouse’, is meant as a warning to the
characters in the Lifehouse world that people trying to do good aren’t as
straightforwardly heroes or villains as they make themselves out to be and
comes with a sarcasm and bite missing from most of the rest of the work. This
rallying cry of wild mayhem and fury, then, is actually at heart a song about
being cautious. Very Who! Hmmm....I don’t care if this song came out in 1971
either – it’s definitely about the fabled villain Nick Clegg, the two headed monster
our forefathers warned us about who sold out some mighty fine sounding
principles in return for power. The killing lines about the masses swallowing
the spiel given to them by each man in power across history, ‘we know that the
hypnotised never lie’, is absolutely devastating, especially Pete’s plea after
Roger’s nastiest line ‘do yer?’ All he can do, though, is peek out from behind
the voice of the mainstream with the odd aside, as the institutions are just
too big to break on their own. ‘The world looks just the same and history aint’
changed’ Roger smirks, telling us how people recycle the banners used ‘in the
last war’ and how everyone gets back to business as usual, ‘smiling and
grinning’ while the musicians have to go back to work fighting a whole new
corrupt system over again. Everything about this song is leading us to be
cynical and question everything around us – quite fitting for a hit single that
sounds so completely different to the normal run of things (the lengthy running
time, senselessly chopped when released as a single and taking out most of the
good bits – particularly the glorious double-tracked Townshend guitar solo - and
the uncompromising lyrics back in the days when all songs were about love in
one form or another). This song is a close cousin too of ‘Baba O’Riley’ back
where we nearly began with nothing changed, the same pulse of emotional
electric instruments thrashing about against a cold harsh landscape of synths
that just won’t be altered or stopped. The Who sound magnificent here, with
some of Keith’s greatest drumming, Roger’s most devastating lead vocals and
some thrilling cat-and-mouse bass from John that leads this song to physically
dance, weaving and dodging the bullets from the synthesiser’s pull, but its
that guitar burst that haunts you long after the song has stopped playing, a
fight that can never be won. When the song drops out unexpectedly in the
middle, leaving Pete to thrash wildly at a half-chord as if in defeat, it
sounds like the world coming to an end and that those in power have truly won.
The band soon hit into the song again, though, starting with Roger’s classic
scream, but this whole ninety second coda isn’t about rallying the troops –
it’s about how the whole of humanity is doomed to this same cycle. The only
words in the whole of this second section is ‘meet the new boss – the same as
the old boss’ - a chilling reminder that
no matter how hard we fight, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of a
successful revolution, power, corruption and the complexities of running a
stabilised country will always suck in those who try to rule. The result ias a
truly gloriously perfect song, exactly hat the world needed in 1971 and here in
2071, post-Brexit and Trump, a reminder that life really is a choice of voting
in the less evil of two lessers rather than the lesser of two evils, an obvious
hit song that also played a key role in the ‘Lifehouse’ concept, an ugly
pay-off that re-writes and utterly improves on Tommy’s song [109] ‘Welcome’. Listen
to this again in the context of what the Coalition have done in the sixty years
since 2010 and then tell me The Who didn’t have a time machine...
Plot:
Even the unbreakable bond between Max and Mary is being tested. On the surface
they're still the 'golden couple' playing up to their role - but secretly 'it
don't really happen that way at all'...[137] ‘Naked Eye’ is the ‘Lifehouse’
song with the longest gestation, having started life as an improvisation played
at the dend of [23] ‘My Generation’ across the 1970 tour as heard on ‘Life At
Leeds’. Back then it was The Who’s troiumphant goodbye to the audience – but by
the time it appears on album here it is a less than triumphant goodbye to
someone you love, a song of personal failure. ‘Naked Eye’ fits the ‘Lifehouse’
concept well, though, with some very hard hitting lines about the loss of
communication and respect between two people, with a relationship that seems
cosy from the outside but crumbles when held up close to the ‘naked eye’, two
notes that are out of tune and harmony with each other. Roger and Pete trade
lines on this track, leading many Who critics to wonder if they are talking
about themselves and the fragile state of the band on this song –if so it
wouldn’t be the first time. But I think it more likely that this track is at
one with the stormy songs of Pete’s from ‘Who Sell Out’, a fucked up love song
about an unsuitable relationship taken further down the same road with someone
with whom things are sometimes so great and sometimes so wrong it hurts. Why
can’t they get in tune? The opening line
finds the narrator tracing patterns in the stars that all seem to be connected
and doing the usual things his peer group tell him to do to feel like a ‘man’
(get a car, take drugs, etc) only to find himself still confused and lost,
wondering why he can’t find his own way in the way world when from the outside
it seems so ordered. The song mirrors ‘Love Ain’t For Keeping’ as the narrator
walks out into nature with a girl, but this isn’t love and a communion of
souls, it is lust pure and simple and the narrator clearly feels nothing for
the girl he is with. Like Jimmy at the end of Quadrophenia to come, he is high
on pills and booze, the stimulamnts over-stimulating not just his body but his
spiritual feelings, leading him to trace dots in the stars that have led him to
this placed that really aren’t there at all and is all of his doing. The power
he feels ‘when I fly’ is clearly false, an illusion of highness that doesn’t
actually exist but which makes him feel bigger and more important than he
really is. The joke played on him, though, is that the intoxicants make him
feel more than ever what’s gone wrong, a ‘naked eye’ that tells a truth so
strong he can’t shrink from it. His marriage contract is just a bit of paper,
signed when he believed in something he didn’t really mean with someone who
felt the same and now he can’t bring himself to have sex with the girl he lost
love in but can with various strangers (for ‘you can cover up your guts, but
when you cover up your nuts you’re admitting that there’s something wrong!)
What the narrator wants, just as he did when the piece started, is love, but
the love he reached out for has become a constant daily battle of Mary holding
a gun as he clutches his wounds. By the time we finally wind down to where the
‘My Generation’ improv started Roger’s words to an audience hang mockingly in
the air: ‘So very long, bye bye bye bye…’ Some reports about what Pete intended
to do with ‘Lifehouse’ involve the sacrifice of at least one of the participants
and usually Max. This song sounds like him at least contemplating suicide as he
declares himself too fit to lead anyone when he can’t even keep it together
himself. The Who’s band interplay is amazing on this track, best heard in live
form from the ‘Young Vic’ concert included as a bonus track on the ‘Who’s Next’
CD, Roger sizzling with emotion on a character that really suits him like The
Who’s earliest days, a loser trying so hard to be a winner that he ends up a
loser all the same. Everyone sounds good though, with Pete’s solo guitar
outbreak at the end amongst the best individual thirty seconds of the whole of
the ‘Lifehouse’ tapes as he reaches through the structured plot and all the
pressure on his shoulders by the time of the gigf to reach into the darkness
for some of his darkest, reallest playing. In short, it’s a crying shame that
‘Naked Eye’ didn’t make the record in favour of lesser material.
Plot:
A boozed-up max announces that we all need love in any form (or rather 'Water',
love in spiritual love, and 'somebody's daughter', love in sexual form). I hope
this one was broadcast after the watershed... [138] ‘Water’ conrtinues
the theme and again sounds like the end of ‘Quadrophenia’ and [161] ‘Dr Jimmy’
in particular, as a loving sensitive soul is turned into a nasty lecherous
unfeeling louse (which is after all very nearly the word ‘soul’ backwards)
through pressure and friction. In many ways it’s a better song though, closer
to the original Who sound of tearaway teenagers let loose, a Substitute Stones
again in an era when even The Stones hadn’t done this sort of thing for years.
‘Water’ is another early song written for the project whose lyrics don’t seem
quite as directly related to the plot as before. However these two songs were
always played as a pair and always feature on lists of ‘Lifehouse’ material.
Roger is at his lecherous best as he cruises the streets looking for
‘somebody’s daughter’ to make love to, while also longing for water to arrive
in the polluted Lifehouse world to wash the human excess away so he doesn’t
have to live feeling like this. What he is really crying out for though, in a
prequel to [163] ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, is water – this being Pete’s first use
of many of his favourite metaphor for love which can give love or kill it
depending how it is used. This was the very last of the ‘Lifehouse’ tracks to
be released, as late as 1973 (when it was the B-side of the ‘Quadrophenia’
track [157] ‘5:15’). As a performance, ‘Water’ is nicely tight, with the band
working together well on a song that’s very bit the way Roger originally
envisioned the band as an R and B power trio and with Pete truly dancing on top
of John’s slinky bass grooves heading for as truly epic finale, although it
still feels slightly like a backwards step for a band who have reached such
huge heights on the rest of the work.
Mary
splits to start her own broadcasts as Max wonders why he feel compelled to go
after her despite enjoying his new-found freedom once more...[139
] 'Greyhound
Girl' is only the second song generally referred to as part of
‘Lifehouse’ that never got further than a demo and again seems like it would
have been a big key part of the album. The song was never released under the
Who name but did slip out as the B-side to Pete's solo hit 'Let My Love Open
The Door' in 1980. The broadcaster knows with his head that his great love
affair is over, but his heart won't let him stop thinking of Mary. He vows to
break away, to start away with someone else, but he keeps finding himself
called back to the girl whose musical notes so resonate with his. Every kiss
has him determined it will be the last, every gesture he stores in his
memory-banks as the final time he'll see her do it and every row they have he
feels relieved they'll both soon be free of each other - except they can't ever
be free of each other, they were meant to be with each other – and somehow they
messed it up. Pete's interest in dog races continues after 1968 single [82a] 'Dogs'
with this song that uses the metaphor about a 'greyhound girl' that has him
chasing after her as surely as greyhounds chase after rabbits, a primal
instinct he can’t kick no matter how much he questions it himself (‘I’m looking
for reasons, but there ain’t a reason or why to wherefore on my Greyhound
Girl’). The broadcaster admits he's always 'looking for reasons' to get back
together - but he doesn't really need one as his heart is enough. Though
lighter than most Townshend demos, without much happening, you sense The Who
would have kept it this way for the final record as the song sounds really good
like this, with a slow careful pulsating organ part keeping the ties between
the lovers going, even whilst a stinging Townshend electric guitar solo tries
to break them apart. Like 'Mary' this is a gorgeous under-rated song that
deserved to be better known and loved by The Who community at large.
The
'Lifehouse' universe a mess and his broadcasts a shambles without Mary, Max
realises that instead of bringing people together he's split from the only
person who ever mattered to him. So he ends the broadcasts still hoping to
inspire listeners with the idea of the 'pure and easy' single note to unite
humanity left for a new generation to find, while hoping those who come after
him will pick up the baton and try again, with more success at running a pure
civilisation this time...[140] ‘Song Is Over’ was surely
intended to be the grand finale to ‘Lifehouse’ even if it ended up as merely
the close to side one on ‘Who’s Next’ – it just has that feel to it somehow, a
funeralaic air that things can never be the same again. In some ways this
ambiguous song mirrors [111] ‘Listening To You’, the hopeful, bouncy end to the
sad story of ‘Tommy’ and [163] ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, the simply startling song
of redemption from Lifehouse’s successor ‘Quadrophenia’. This humble ballad has
Pete sounding sad and lost, his plans in tatters, mourning the person who
‘tried to find me’ and who was ‘the first song I ever sang, but it stopped as
soon as it began’. However there is also one last gasp of hope as the narrator
is free to start again with someone else, to look for another note that sparks
as well as his did with Mary while simultaneously beginning a whole new
civilisation somewhere under an endless sky. The sighing tune is perfectly cast
for such an edgy, regretful song and although Townshend’s lyrics about loss are
for once not up to the tune they still do a respectful job of summing up the
un-sayable. That’s especially true of the energetic middle eight that seems to
come in from an entirely different song and jazzes the whole sung up a bit,
with Roger butting in to explain that even in his hour of need he’s still
reaching across the Lifehouse for a connection, some emotion that others can
understand. This song is also surely meant to mirror ‘Pure and Easy’ and ‘Gettin’
In Tune’ at the start of this epic work, referring back to the idea of a ‘lost
chord’ uniting humanity, with both of them also using songs as metaphors for
relationships as a chord becomes one note again. Cleverly, in ‘The Song Is
Over’ it really does feel as if we are getting two melodies that are breaking
up before our ears, the two tunes running counterpoint to each other and
represented by the guitar and Nicky Hopkins’ ever-lovely piano playing, having
run out of things to say to each other until Roger’s last gasp of a reprise
from ‘Pure and Easy’, the idea that out there is another note ‘rippling by’
gives us hope again accompanied by truly thunderous drumming from Moon. Notably
the cold hard synthessier hasn’t bee around since the second act when the
Lifehousers overthrew the Government but is back again here, perhaps the lure
of another society far away that needs reforming too? Many fellow Lifehousers
commentating on this album call this a ‘complex’ song, adding that The Who
never performed it on stage so it must have been difficult (forgetting,
perhaps, that even the highly complex [42] ‘A Quick One’ mini-opera became a
live favourite, even with the twists and turns every verse or so), but it
actually sounds quite simple compared to the other songs here combining just
the two sections, one happy one sad, unlike the towering depths of conflicting
emotion in, say, [163] ‘Love Reign O’er Me’.
And
so here I am, now chief of the Lifehousers, taking on the responsibility of
spreading knowledge to the next generation of those who want to make the
escape. And if ‘they’ find me and stop me, I don’t care, for I know now that
spreading this music, this enormous communication carrier of human emotion,
this is the most important thing I could be doing with my life and I hope that
whoever finds this note takes heed of it. Whatever century you are in, take
‘Lifehouse’ as a warning but bask in its glow as possible salvation, with music
uniting the world and bringing us hope of better days. Rise against your
oppressors and think for yourselves. I – [THIS SITE HAS BEEN CLOSED DOWN BY THE
COALITION OF GREAT BRITAIN UNDER ECONOMIC PROSPERITY LAWS ARTICLE 21:56.
INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS MUST BE OUTLAWED, THEY ARE A DANGER TO THE STATE. THE PURPETRATORS
RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SITE SHALL BE DEALT WITH AND MADE TO RE-JOIN THE RANKS OF
THE ISOLATED AND DESTROYED. DO NOT REVOLT. EVERYTHING THAT BRINGS HOPE IS TO BE
EXTINGUISHED AS A DANGER TO OUR ECONOMIC BURDENS AND THE MASSES WILL BE PUT
BACK IN THEIR PROPER PLACE IN ORDER FOR THERE TO BE A BETTER CHANCE FOR ALL.
MUSIC IS DANGEROUS, REPEAT, MUSIC IS DANGEROUS AND CAUSES FALSE HOPE, BELIEF
AND DREAMS THAT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO BE FULFILLED FOR THE GOOD OF THE SYSTEM.
ALL DANGERS TO THE COALTION’S MANAGEMENT SHALL BE DEALT WITH AS SOON AS DAVID
CAMERON HAS FINISHED WITH HIS PIG. FORGET WHAT YOU HAVE READ AS IT WILL ONLY
CAUSE YOU PAIN AND SUFFERING. RETURN TO YOUR DUTIES FORTHWITH. THE ONLY WAY OUT
OF HARDSHIP IS THROUGH PROFITS. THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE PROFITS IS HARDSHIP.
MESSAGE ENDS.]
The
Album (Who's Next) (and 'My Wife'):
Suddenly here
I am back in the present day again, clutching a record with a monolith on the
front. Gone are those hazy, crazy dreams of instant communication among all men
via some temporary future portal - instead the methods of instant communication
in my day and age seemed to be used for sending pictures of cats being cute and
people doing silly things to people. Slowly I come to my senses and realise
that my path now is not to analyse what could be but what was instead: the
Who's fifth LP 'Who's Next', rebuilt from the remnants of 'Lifehouse' with the
addition of one new John Entwistle song. Along with follow-up ‘Quadrophenia’
and the mega success of 'Tommy' notwithstanding, “Who’s Next” is generally regarded as the
closest-to-perfection of any of the Who’s eleven albums recorded between 1965
and 1982, The Who release with the least amount of filler and the best balance
between high conceptual deep thought and down-to-earth rock and roll. Which is
strange given the complexities of 'Lifehouse' and the fact that only about half
the album is truly made up of the best material available from the original
concept, but then this really is quite a different animal - if ‘Lifehouse’ was
made chiefly for its creator and other deep-thinking minds who liked to think
deep thoughts, then 'Who's Next' is the revised version that's intended to
appeal to everyone and which simply loves to party. With only eight songs from
'Lifehouse' left intact and cleary jumbled up even if our version of it is way
out, the plot is now nonsensical, with pretty much all the references to the
'lost chord', the 'Lifehouse' grid or the glory of rock and roll removed. All
that's left are the sub-plots: the love stories, the growing anger as the old
corrupt Government gets replaced with a shiny bright but still corrupted new
one and a joyful song about escape in a 'mobile' - and with love, politics and
cars being common features of many a rock and roll album in 1971, 'Who's Next'
sounds closer to being a 'proper' average album of mis-matched songs than would
have been the case if, say, the more plot-centred 'Tommy' or 'Quadrophenia' had
been cut down to size. It's a testament to Pete's vision though that even the
fans who'd never heard of 'Lifehouse' or read the newspaper reports about its
creator's breakdown still sensed that there was 'something' other about 'Who's
Next' and that this was at the same time much more than just another
love/politics/car album. Close enough to the average to be acceptable as a pure
rock album, but significantly better than most, 'Who's Next' is one of those
album that comes as close any music made in a particular era can be to being
timeless and there's a reason new fans keep discovering and coming back to this
album even more than the deaf, dumb and blind pinballing kid or his younger mod
brother.
One of the biggest reasons for the timelessness is
producer Glyn Johns, who was brought in after the initial sessions for the
album at Mick Jagger's 'Stargroves' house broke down (fittingly, the house
where Sutekh The Osirian Destroyer lives in the 'Dr' Who episode 'Pyramids Of
Mars' – seriously, Mick gave his permission for the location filming!) with
only a solitary backing track for 'Won't Get Fooled Again' from these early
sessions actually used on the album. This was Johns' first work for The Who and
the production polish was a big relief after his recent, very different
sessions for The Beatles' 'primitive' album 'Get Back' (which George Martin
walked out on partway through). Johns, a former Beatles tape engineer, was much
more interested in getting new and inventive sounds on tape and would in truth
have been a far better fit for 'Abbey Road'. In The Who - and especially Pete
Townshend's increasing love of new gadgetry and instruments - he finds a band
that he can believe in whole-heartedly and he pulls out all the stops, going
the extra mile with the set-ups and mixes so thast all the instruments sound
beautifully placed and separated yet still part of an organic whole. 'Who's
Next' is often greeted as simply an album of great songs but actually it's the
sound of this album that makes it great and makes it sound like these often
very different tracks belong together, with a polish in the production that
somehow doesn't tame or tamper with the band's wild energy and where everything
that usually rattles and rolls gets to shimmer at the same time. You only need
to listen to 'Face Dances' 'It's Hard' and even reunion album 'Endless Wire' to
hear how much later producers thought of this one album as The Who's 'de facto
sound', but every later producer misunderstands how to get it, with The Who
diluted and slowed down with all the extras piled on top; here it's as if a
giant silhouette has been draped in splashes of colour rather than simply
'painted in'. Glyn apparently loved
working with a band with the intelligence of The Who - but what he wasn't
buying was the 'Lifehouse' concept. It was him as much as Pete's confused
fellow band-mates who persuaded Townshend to drop the idea and instead
concentrate on making the 'Lifehouse' songs as excellent as they could make
them individually, without the confinements of a story to keep them together.
However, it's interesting to note that almost all of the 'Lifehouse' songs were
recorded, not just the eight that made the record (though 'Put The Money Down'
was left till 1973 and 'Mary' 'Teenage Wasteland' and 'Greyhound Girl' never
made it past Pete's demos).
The greatest sound on 'Who's Next' is clearly the
synthesiser. Pete Townshend was always a lover of gadgets - especially anything
to do with music (his 'Scoop' demo album sleevenotes are full of specifics of
what was recorded on which machine in which setting) - and his new favourite
purchase at the time was a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1, before upgrading to
what I am told is an ARP. Where this differed from 'synthesised' music in the
past was that it was entirely digital, with a 'clean' robotic noise that
sounded quite different to all previous versions, which tended to use tape
loops inside mellotrons, moogs and the 'chamberlain', which all generally had a
much softer, more emotional sound (any Moody Blues album made between 1967 and
1972 features lots of them - especially 'In Search Of The Lost Chord' as it happens).
What Pete could do for 'Who's Next' which no other musician had before was play
the Lowrey in 'loops', inspired by classical musician Terry O'Riley (half of
'Baba O'Riley' for a reason) who played with similar long flowing note 'runs'
on the piano (but who would have loved the synth). The idea is one that modern
listeners would recognise as being a musical version of 'buffering' - a swirl
of notes going round and round while seemingly searching for a 'connection'
with something that they never quite find - which, spiritually, is exactly what
is going on in both 'Baba O'Riley' (a song many people mishear as a song about
getting 'wasted' - actually it's a song about escaping 'wasteland' and joining
together) and 'Won't Get Fooled Again' (which is about cycles in politics and
how 'they' always end up corrupt by having power over 'us'). It helps that this
synthesiser sounds cold and placid, unbreakable, mathematics more concerned
with the bigger picture of humanity than what happens to individual puny humans.
Two unbreakable chains that are unrelenting and never broken make for the
perfect backing track to tales of timeless motifs like isolation and greed and
though a brand new and in many ways frightening back in 1971 the result was
always going to be two songs that were instantly recognisable and universally
adored. To this day no one has used a synthesiser better to my ears - including
Pete, who got rather carried away with it on both the later Who albums and his
own solo work (though 'A Little Is Enough' sounds pretty good too mind!)
However it wasn't all just Pete - at least not on
'Who's Next' as oppsed to 'Lifehouse'. Glynn also put the emphasis on this as a
'Who' album, encouraging a bigger role for Roger and Keith in the instrumental
stakes, with some blistering vocals and thunderous drumming. He also encouraged
the band to keep one of John's new songs for the album rather than wasting it
as a B-side as per usual, which is how [141] 'My Wife' became
added to the line-up properly, John having been kept out of Pete's writing
process this time around (unlike 'Tommy', though in a way ‘My Wife’ does
reflect the marital gloom of ‘Greyhound Girl’ especially). This much loved song
is one of its authors funniest, adding a comic element that this deadly serious
album badly needs, although like many of the band’s ‘comedy’ songs it’s all
played deadly straight. To the tune of a tinkling, energetic piano riff the
narrator tells us how he is desperate to stay away from his partner who is
making stuff up and paranoid about him being up to something - until she has
calmed down enough for him to admit what he’s really been up to, which is
probably worse. John was, I think, aiming for a caricature of male and female
weaknesses and like many of his songs contains a ‘flawed narative’ where we
can’t believe the person singing as the saint because she’s right to turn on
him (if for all the wrong reasons!) The threat of the wife following in hot
pursuit is magically recreated with the use of John’s beloved horns and Keith
Moon’s fiercest drumming (how he kept it up for full 3:40 I’ll never know!) and
sounds genuinely threatening, however witty and unlikely the lyrics are. The
real Mrs Entwistle found this tale hilarious, apparently (much more so than the
similar ‘My Size’ from John’s first LP) because it went so far against the
reality of her and her husband's actually rather sweet courtship, though fans
kept getting the wrong idea and meeting her backstage at gigs saying how
'sorry' they were for her being pilloried like this (luckily Alison had a big
sense of humour herself or she would never have lasted twenty years with John!) A word too about Entwistle’s singing: the
bassist known as The Ox never got that many chances to sing on his songs –
Roger will end up singing most of them on The Who’s catalogue and he probably
wouldn’t have been allowed this one if it had been recorded as anything more
than a B-side at first – but he sounds pretty amazing here, full of all the dry
pathos he needs to make the song work as a black comedy. The result might not
have the depth or the wonderment of Pete's songs for the album, but it adds a
welcome dose of both rock and roll and humour which helped make 'Who's Next' a
far more versatile than the more solemn and sombre 'Lifehouse' would have been.
Pete having washed his hands of all responsibility, Glynn
may also have been responsible for the running order, which fits together
nicely for an album that turns what sounds it like it might have been
'Lifehouse's original order on its head. Though our guess is that 'Gettin' In
Tune' and 'Pure and Easy' were the sort-of overtures, inviting the listener
into the conceptual work, it makes perfect commercial sense to start the album
with the catchy-yet-edgy sound of 'Baba O'Riley', a song quite unlike any that
had ever been played on radio before. Those opening synthesiser swirls are
irresistible, while the way the song sucks you in layer by layer is a key trick
The Who will repeat on 'Quadrophenia'. The song moves on neatly to the push-me,
pull-you of 'Bargain', which starts as a ballad and quickly turns into another
rocker to encourage fans worried about talks of high concepts and art. For my
money the 'wrong' version of the joyous 'Love Ain't For Keeping' is used, with
Roger on lead and the mood acoustic rather than electric, but it's a heartfelt
love song that works well as a contrast with successor 'My Wife', that
Entwistle tale of the downsides of romance and marriage. Side one feels like it
just has to end with 'The Song Is Over', a piece that in plot terms may well
have ended the entire work and which included an added snippet of 'Pure and
Easy' at the end, with one of the project's best songs relegated to a mere
couplet, perhaps the biggest mistake of the final album. 'Gettin' In Tune' is a
natural song to begin something and side two makes sense, while 'Goin' Mobile'
is the one track that sounds out of place (there are far better songs from
'Lifehouse' that could have fitted here and two rockers together sounds wrong).
'Behind Blues Eyes' deserves, like many spookly atmospheric songs, to come
nearer to the end to set a bit of drama and colour. 'Won't Get Fooled Again' -
the pivot, in many ways, of 'Lifehouse and its story and the collapse from hope
to disillusionment - is in commercial terms the perfect closer, with nothing
able to follow Roger's scream. Had The Who swapped 'Pure and Easy' for 'Goin'
Mobile' and the two versions of 'Keeping' around maybe 'Who's Next' would have
sold an extra billion copies, who knows? Personally I would have added at least
‘Mary’ and ‘Join Together’ in there as well. However the album does slot
together well considering it's been diluted and altered and the sequencing of
the album - a forgotten and much under-rated art in making music - is I think a
major positive in how 'Who's Next' was
received.
'Lifehouse'
wasn't easy to make though. In fact it was such a strain that Thre Who really
struggled through the album sessions - not that you can really tell from either
these recordings or the ones abandoned and left behind, but it was more than
just a loss of confidence in the songs that meant Pete had something of a
nervous breakdown that, apart from a slight reprieve during 'Quadrophenia',
would leave the guitarist partly incapacitated for much of the next decade.
Though not a serious 'breakdown' in the true Brian Wilson sense, this shouldn't
be underestimated either: things will get very serious around the 'Who By
Numbers' period in 1975 as Pete’s life falls apart in much the same way as
‘max’s seems to at the end of ‘Lifehouse’ and it is not for nothing that Pete
refers to his ‘character trait’ woven into ‘Quadrophenia’ as a ‘hypcorite’,
writing songs about purity and love while too smashed out of his face on booze
to go home to his wife and kids. The 'golden boy' of 'Tommy' will never quite
regain the confidence he had a good two-thirds of the way through this project
('Lifehouse' has been called The Who's 'Smile' occasionally, which is true as
far as impossible-project-that-broke-so-many-rules-it-worried-their-creator
projects go, but that would make 'Who's Next' The Who's 'Smiley Smile' made
largely with other people's help and that comparison doesn't work at all!) The
biggest change for The Who, though, is the loss of Kit Lambert to The Who
story, with Chris also taking a back step in this period. A sensitive soul,
underneath all the windmilling and violence and wisecracks on stage, Pete had
come to look on Kit's opinions as the gospel truth: it was, after all, Kit who
encouraged Pete to think 'big' and start writing 'mini-operas' as early as 1965
so to hear even his biggest champion say he couldn't do something when he was
having his own doubts too helped kill the project off for Pete. Even though
they shouldn’t have done: ‘Lifehouse’ may have a convoluted plot that leaves
the listener to fill in a few holes, but no more so than ‘Tommy’ or
‘Quadrophenia’; a bit of love and support from someone (anyone!) and I still
think we could have seen a doyuble-album of ‘Lifehouse’ in the shops in 1971,
if not a feature film.
Thankfully Glynn kept that negativity out of the
room for the album, one that all The Who seemed amazed turned out as well as it
did given the headaches they had trying to create it. If you can hear the
strain anyway anyhow anywhere, though, it's on the 'Young Vic' performance
included on the deluxe edition of 'Who's Next' on what was meant to be the
start of a series of audience interactions, perhaps the weakest idea behind the
original ‘Lifehouse’ story (and yet one The Who just had to try, given how much
the audience are interwoven into the original plot of ‘Lifehouse’). The Who
play as well as they ever did and the audience are loving the new songs, but
you can hear Pete's frustration as he acts out of character, gets cross, asks a
chap in the front row to stop dancing while he struggles to remember the new
songs (he invites him up on stage later to boogie during the hit songs he knows
backwards, though it's not clear from the audio if he ever took up the offer!)
and rather than play all new songs, with the audience breathing new life into
them, The Who fall back on their old war-horses again and again. You can almost
hear Pete's heart breaking as he realises his project of turning the crowd into
musical notes just isn't going to work and that his grand visions for some
celestial goddess of rock and roll to inspire the band to new concepts and
creations just isn't going to happen and that he's going to be stuck playing ‘mere’
rock and roll for the rest of his life. After 'Lifehouse' Pete stops thinking
of the future and either dreams of a better mod past, gets drunk in the present
or angrily asks someone else to change the fate of music before him, because he
can't do it alone. 'Who's Next' is a peak and most fans assumed The Who would
just realise glossy albums of thoughtful-yet-hard rocking songs like this one
for the rest of their days, but it's also an ending too as The Who will never
again be quite so ambitious or assume with quite so much inner belief that
anything they touch can turn to gold, even though any lesser band could have
had hit records with 'Who's Next' soundalikes for the next twenty years easily.
Pete will return to his great unfinished work, of
course - several times.It probably still haunts him, as unfinished works seem
to always haunt their creators. 'Lifehouse' was such a big project that you can
hear elements of it in nearly everything Pete will go on to write: the 'rock
and roll is mankind's salvation' theme gets changed to 'mod' for
'Quadrophenia', while the novella that inspired 'Endless Wire' named 'The Boy
Who Heard Music' is a less personal, not-quite-so futuristic take on
Lifehouse's 'Grid', with added 'ether'. Then there's the radio play of 1999,
which shrunk the story, emphasised the parts of Mary's mum and dad (who might
not even have been in the original story), set 'Lifehouse' in the near-enough
present day and all but ignored the 'Grid' - which is odd given that the
then-brand new invention the internet was beginning to become a household name.
The radio drama adds in several sub-plots that probably weren’t in the original
version – the rock star visiting himself as a child, dreaming of the links he
can make with mankind; the failed marriage and mid-life crisis of Mary's father
which drives him to breaking point when he thinks his daughter has left because
of him and the general feeling of destiny and pre-ordained concepts that runs
through the play but isn’t actually a part of ‘Lifehouse’ bar the odd line and
the cyclical politics of ‘Won’t Get
Fooled Again’ (it's also notable that the writer of 'My Generation' should have
swapped his allegiances across the decades, concentrating more on the guilty
parent closer now to his own age than the freedom-loving children). Though the
work has its moments (and features a couple of extracts from Pete's rather
lovely demo for 'Behind Blue Eyes'), the project all felt a bit underwhelming -
a work we could recognise from other things, rather than a masterpiece that
broke new ground (as 'Lifehouse' surely would have done if released intact in
1971) or which more than vaguely tried to tell the same story we had been
waiting for across twenty-eight long years. Then again, the sprawling epic six
disc box set 'Lifehouse Chronicles' arguably took things a little too far:
there was no plot and tracks were included seemingly at random, including a few
that were 'inspired' by the 'Lifehouse' plot and an aborted re-make that
concebntrated more on the one-note philosophy in 1978 such as [181] 'New Song' [184]
‘Sister Disco’ and [185] 'Music Must Change' (all three re-recorded for 'Who
Are You') but which most definitely weren't around when 'Lifehouse' was being
planned in 1970. Pete also included everything that he could think of (and
could get copyright clearance for) that inspired him: classical music mostly
with lots from his beloved 'mathematical' composers Purcell and Scarlatti,
which are only really relevant for the opening surge of 'Baba O'Riley'. However
you do need that set for Pete's blistering original demo for 'Baba' which
carries on for some ten minutes and reveals that Pete's idea for 'feeding' the
notes of his audience into a machine could have worked, given lots of time and
better technology . The song doesn't really need anything else, even the
world-famous lyrics and tune on top, its hypnotic enough as it stands and it
makes you wonder if ‘Lifehouse’ ight not have run to a triple LP, padded out by
other fascimating snippets of music taken from audience members and fed into
the synthy computer bank. Equally Pete's demos for 'Lifehouse' released in the
years since are amongst his most complete and riveting, including and
especially the songs that didn't make the album like 'Pure and Easy' and 'Let's
See Action', both of which truly beat The Who re-recordings for once. The Who
also released a handful of their band outtakes on 'Odds and Sods' (adding more
to the 1999 CD re-issue) and even released three of the songs cut from Who’s
Next ('Join Together' 'Let's See Action' and 'Relay') as singles across 1972,
with all three of them appearing on compilations (though not that often sadly,
as none of them were particularly big hits, something that shook Pete's faith
in his concept further). Perhaps one day we'll get a 'deluxe' deluxe edition of
this album that includes the twenty songs from our 'Lifehouse' adaptation, a couple
of discs of Pete's demos and the Young Vic show, without the extraneous extras
of a loosely-linked radio play and an hour of Purcell like the ‘Chronicles’ box
set (here's hoping - there have been four different 'Tommys on CD by now and
three ‘My generations’ so why not a third 'Who's Next'?!) None of the
'Lifehouse' remakes have been anywhere close to being as successful as 'Who's
Next' though, so maybe less really is best for once? Maybe too much of anything
really is too much? (yeah, great time to work that out eh, a multiple thousand
words into this article!)
Even in diluted form - perhaps especially in diluted
form - ‘Who’s Next’ is special, containing everything that was great about the
early Who (heavy uncompromising rocking, three very special musicians and one
very special singer at the height of their powers, rock star posing but with
the songs to match and the sheer oompah of it all) with the best of the 1970s
maturer-style Who (lyrics stoked through with vulnerability behind the matcho
posing, the sheer range of instrumentation on offer, the use of synthesisers
before anybody else in the rock mainstream was using them and big concepts
relayed in simple easy-to-follow terms). Everyone will know two if not three if
not all of these songs, which have all become teenage anthems in the [23] ‘My
Generation’ mould, even if the band were well into their twenties by this time
with Roger about to turn thirty. The legacy lives on: ‘Baba O’Riley’ demolished
the field in terms of soundscapes; ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ takes the concept
one stage further, expressing the narrator’s feelings of helplessness and
disillusion not as a personal annoyance but as a rally against the world, all
held together with perhaps Pete’s ultimate rock and roll riff, the most
complicated John Entwistle bass part yet, crashing Keith Moon drums and a –
literally – screaming Roger Daltrey at his peak. ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ is less
known to the public at large but worshipped by fans and ever so nearly a single
– half ballad, half rocker, it’s spacey feel and troubled but snarling narrator
perfectly captures the Who’s template sound and the harmonies swirling across
the opening two minutes are the best on a Who record, matching the Beach Boys
and CSNY in their complexity and other-worldliness. Those are just the best
known songs too: 'Bargain' may be greater still, the ultimate meeting between
rock anger and spiritual love as Pete comes to terms with his violent past and
his Meher Baba-inspired peaceful side, simply agreeing to enjoy living in the
moment. 'Love Ain't For Keeping' charms like few other Who songs, a pretty and
personal song about enjoying married life and having 'fun' now the kids are in
bed. 'My Wife' is the relentlessness of the traditional Who with a cutting wry
humour even Entwistle hadn't used much before here. 'The Song Is Over' is a
beautiful, haunting, reflective song that just about works away from the
'Lifehouse' plot. 'Gettin' In Tune' too is plot-bound but its musical metaphors
work on some deeper level too. And even 'Goin' Mobile' isn't bad, just manic
and out of place. If all albums had been as consistent as 'Who's Next' rock
would have been in such a healthy place that Pete might not have needed to
revisit the band's mod past on 'Quadrophenia' - instead 'Who's Next' remains
one of those special kind of albums that's enjoyed by a majority and the
people, like me, who usually hate the big-selling albums, hailed for its
bravery amongst the crowd-pleasers, praised for the new ground broken amongst the
familiar old and coming with a glorious vision and imagination, even when the
concept that inspired it has been trimmed and pruned from something ethereal,
other-worldly and life-changing to something that was 'merely' a rather
splendid rock and roll album. In all, ‘Who’s Next’ is a fine album, as fine as
any made in the 1970s and a worthy addition to any self-respecting collector’s
collection if they have any taste in music at all, while Who fans will always
have a special spot for this doomed-high-flying-album-that-never-quite-was and the
grooviest-replacement-bus-service in music we got instead.
Other (shorter, honest!) Who articles from this website:
A complete collection of Who reviews:
'The Who Sing My Generation' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-who-sing-my-generation-1965.html
'The Who Sing My Generation' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-who-sing-my-generation-1965.html
'A Quick One While He's
Away' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/news-views-and-music-issue-67-who-quick.html
'Sell Out' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/19-who-sell-out-1967.html
‘Tommy’ (1969) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-who-tommy-1969.html
'Live At Leeds' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-33-who-live-at-leeds-1970.html
'Lifehouse' (As It Might Have Been) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-81-who.html
'Who's Next' ('Lifehouse' As It Became) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-14-who-whos.html
'Quadrophenia' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-60-who-quadrophenia-1973.html
'The Who By Numbers' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-69-who-by-numbers-1975.html
'Who Are You' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-72-who-who-are-you-1978.html
'Face Dances' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-137-who-face.html
'Empty Glass' (Townshend solo 1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/pete-townshend-empty-glass-1980.html
'It's Hard' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-who-its-hard-1982-album-review.html
'Endless Wire' (2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-who-endless-wire-2006.html
‘WHO’ (2019) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-who-who-2019.html
'Quadrophenia' (Director's Cut Box Set) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/abeach-is-place-where-man-can-feel-hes.html
'Quadrophenia' (Director's Cut Box Set) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/abeach-is-place-where-man-can-feel-hes.html
Surviving Who TV Clips
1965-2015 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-surviving-tv-and-film-clips.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1964-1967 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-non-album-recordings-part-one.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1968-2014 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-non-album-recordings-part-two.html
Pete Townshend “Scoop” 1-3
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-who-pete-townshends-scoop-demo.html
The Best Unreleased Who Recordings https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-who-best-unreleased-recordings.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Competition
Albums Part One 1965-1972
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Competition
Albums Part Two 1972-1975 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_9.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Three 1976-1982
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_16.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Four 1983-1990 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_23.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Five 1991-2000 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities_30.html
Live/Solo/Rarities/Compilation
Albums Part Six 2001-2014
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-who-livesolocompilationrarities.html
Landmark Concerts and Key
Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-who-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
Essay: Who Are You And Who Am I?: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-who-essay-who-are-you-and-who-am-i.html
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