Impossibly ambitious? Too many demands on the audience? Tommy done better? A final collapse before a glorious resurrection? 1971’s Who’s Next, which began life as a more-advanced-than-Tommy sci-fi rock opera called Life House (also called Lifehouse), is all that and more. All the elements of this oft-reissued opus have been remastered and reissued in several new configurations, the most complete being the Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition, which includes 10 CDs with 155 tracks sourced from the original tapes, 89 of them previously unreleased. That edition also includes demos, singles, studio sessions, and two complete Who’s Next–era concerts, from London and San Francisco. A 100-page hardback book provides the visuals. For immersive audio fans, there’s Blu-ray audio with new Atmos and 5.1 surround mixes of the original album. A 172-page Life House graphic novel is included for context. For superfans, there’s a raft of tchotchkes including a pair of gig posters, two concert programs, four buttons, and a band photo with printed autographs.
After Tommy, Who guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend began work on another, even grander multimedia concept album. Townshend told Billboard in 2003, “In Tommy I used the device of a child being smitten deaf, dumb, and blind by witnessing a violent trauma. In Life House I used a similar device again: an individual plunged into a life of virtual reality fed by something like the internet, suspended in a kind of parallel life in virtual animation, experiencing totally phony lifestyles.”
According to the original concept, humanity’s salvation lay in devising a single musical note that would trigger unity in the face of society’s impending doom. Things began to unspool when the idea of making a film and eliciting audience interaction became part of the plan. Music for Life House was recorded in New York at The Record Plant and later re-recorded at Olympic Studios in London with Glyn Johns in charge. Concerts at London’s Young Vic Theatre at which fans were expected to give their opinions failed when the crowd just wanted to hear the band play. The project’s overreach eventually had Townshend teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Once the Life House concept was abandoned, Glyn Johns encouraged the band to release the best of the Life House songs as a single album. Songs from Life House appeared on later Who albums including Odds & Sods and Hooligans. A complete version of the project, titled Lifehouse Chronicles, was released as 6-CD box set in 2000 on Townshend’s Eel Pie label.
What’s most impressive about the exhaustively completist reissue, as well as the separate, blue 180gm vinyl-LP reissue of the original album, is the improved sound. Most easily heard on the LP versions of “Behind Blue set are beautifully clear and detailed, a rarity for 50-year-old tape sources.
