![]() Townshend plunged into the project with typical obsessiveness and even began writing a companion film. The story ends at a concert where they succeed in this spiritual fusion, and the band and audience connect and disappear to some version of heaven… or something like that (it’s explained at length in this set’s liner notes). He cooked up a plot set in a future totalitarian society, where people were connected and controlled via a sort of pre-internet called “The Grid” - except for some rebellious musicians who, through their performance, were able to tap into those magical notes and melodies and connect spiritually with their audience (approximations of those melodies underpin such “Who’s Next” classic songs as “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”). “Life House” was conceived as a follow-up to Townshend’s previous opus, “Tommy.” Steeped in Eastern religion via his guru Meher Baba, Townshend attempted to marry the musical and spiritual ambitions of the late ‘60s into a project that (to vastly oversimplify) revolved around the concept that a human being’s spirit could be articulated in a musical note or series of notes. ![]() It’s everything obsessives could have hoped for, and then some - it covers the entire 1970-72 period, including tracks from an abandoned EP and a second aborted album, an even less-realized 1972 concept outing called “Rock Is Dead” that eventually morphed into Who mastermind Pete Townshend’s next masterwork, “Quadrophenia.” ![]() And after 52 years, perhaps the greatest mythological album of the rock era - the Who’s aborted project “Life House,” from which the 1971 classic “Who’s Next” emerged - is finally getting its true day in the sun, in the form of a massive 10-CD box with a giant, fact-and-photo-filled book that takes at least six of those CDs to read.
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