Forty years ago this month The Who released what is generally considered to be their finest studio album, Who’s Next. Born out of the aborted Pete Townshend multimedia concept known as Lifehouse, the band turned confusion into cohesion in producing an album of immense quality and economy. Aided by associate producer Glyn Jones, Who’s Next signified a giant leap for The Who that would consolidate their position as one of the world’s greatest rock attractions for decades to come.
In the autumn of 1970, Pete Townshend began addressing the dilemma the recent success of their Live At Leeds album had deferred. How to come up with a studio album that would match the creative and critical impact of the rock opera Tommy? Released in the spring of 1969, the story of the deaf, dumb and blind boy had catapulted the band into the major league, particularly in America, where complete performances of the pioneering rock opera had won them a massive audience – from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York to Max Yasgur’s farm in Woodstock.
The scintillating Live At Leeds set – a six-track extract of their in-concert performance at Leeds University on 14 February 1970, had shrewdly fulfilled the desire for new Who product. Riding off the back of the worldwide success of Tommy, the timely capturing of their live act continued the momentum of the band’s new-found worldwide success. The album was a Top 5 smash on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Who continued touring throughout 1970 – gradually relying less on Tommy and honing an explosive live act that combined Roger Daltrey’s fringed-jacket frontman panache with Townshend’s increasingly aggressive guitar antics, John Entwistle’s dive-bombing bass runs and Keith Moon’s manic percussion. Their audiences lapped it up. The only studio material they released during this period was the single The Seeker issued in May 1970. Its lyrical theme of spiritual searching was a clear indication of Pete Townshend’s mindset of the time and an indication of what lay ahead.
In September 1970, Pete Townshend gave a hint to what he was planning initially with a few lines inserted in his then-weekly column for Melody Maker. “Here’s the idea. There’s a note, a musical note that builds the basis of existence somehow. Mystics would agree saying that of course it is OM but I am talking about a MUSICAL note. There is air that we breathe, we swim in it all our lives, we love it with our physical being and we watch it sustain the world around us. We seem adaptable and receptive to almost everything it produces; but most of all and this has little to do with the essence of survival most of us enjoy music. I’ve never been able to quite get to grips with how it all comes about, but artists and writers outside of music have noticed it too.”
As Richie Unterberger observed in his excellent book Won’t Get Fooled Again: The Who From Lifehouse To Quarophenia, this idea would blossom into a new composition titled Pure And Easy – the core philosophy of his next rock opera, to be titled Lifehouse.
Townshend’s ambitious plans were shared by The Who’s co-managers of the time, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Lambert was eyeing the medium of film as future big-money revenue for The Who. He had begun initial negotiations with Universal for a film version of Tommy plus a new Townshend venture, which was initially reported as being called Your Turn In The Barrel. This would later be dubbed Lifehouse – a complex project that would combine a film script, live performance, the innovative use of synthesisers, plus an intricate show and quadrophonic sound.
As early as October, Pete was unveiling his plans to the music press. He told Disc & Music Echo: “I’ve got a kind of pivot idea, basically based on physics, closely linked with the things mystics have been saying for a long time about vibrations in music. Basically, it’s about someone trying to discover the note that is everything, the essence, if you like, a musical sort of infinity. It’s a cyclic idea. It’s about a set of musicians, a group, who look like The Who, and behave remarkably like The Who, and they have a roadie who is desperately interested in ideals for humanity. He’s fantastically serious, but the group isn’t. Anyway, this group find a note which, basically, creates complete devastation. And when everything is destroyed, only the real note, the true note that they have been looking for, is left. Of course, there’s no one left to hear it; except the audience, of course, who are in a rather privileged position.”
The Lifehouse synopsis was a complicated one from the start. The setting would be an England greatly affected by an ecological disaster – the after-effects dictating that much of the population lives indoors. The main character Bobby challenges the Government by broadcasting liberating rock music, freeing the listeners of their restrictions and allowing a spiritual freedom. The concept of the grid, a shared communication funnel, was clearly ahead of its time: a prototype of what we now know as the internet. This is the script layout as Townshend envisaged it at the time:
“A self-sufficient, drop-out family group farming in a remote part of Scotland decide to return South to investigate rumours of a subversive concert event that promises to shake and wake up apathetic, fearful British society. Ray is married to Sally, they hope to link up with their daughter Mary who has run away from home to attend the concert. They travel through the scarred wasteland of middle England in a motor caravan, running an air-conditioner they hope will protect them from pollution. They listen, furtively, to old rock records which they call ‘trad’. Up to this time they have survived as farmers, tolerated by the Government who are glad to buy most of their produce. Those who have remained in urban areas suffer repressive curfews and are more-or-less forced to survive in special suits, like space-suits, to avoid the extremes of pollution that the Government reports.
“A young composer called Bobby hacks into the grid and offers a festival-like music concert – called The Lifehouse – which he hopes will impel the audience to throw off their suits (which are in fact no longer necessary for physical survival) and attend in person. ‘Come to the Lifehouse, your song is here.’
“The family arrive at the concert venue early and take part in an experiment Bobby conducts, in which each participant is both blueprint and inspiration for a unique piece of music or song which will feature largely in the first event to be hacked onto the grid. “When the day of the concert arrives a small army force gathers to try to stop the show. They are prevented from entering for a while, the concert begins, and indeed many of those ‘watching at home’ are inspired to leave their suits. But eventually the army break in. As they do so, Bobby’s musical experiment reaches its zenith and everyone in the building, dancing in a huge dervish circle, suddenly disappears. It emerges that many of the audience at home, participating in their suits, have also disappeared.”
“I didn’t understand a bloody word,” admitted Keith Altham, The Who’s long-time publicist and friend. “It was very hard to grasp the concept.”
From: https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/the-album-that-saved-the-who
