UK Psychedelia Discussion Forum
Regal Zonophone 2
The doomed rock opera Lifehouse by The Who, originally planned as a double concept album
and the soundtrack to it's accompanying film.
Lifehouse was too technically complex and conceptually baffling to all except Pete Townshend. After a nervous breakdown while making the album and the lack of support from manager and producer Kit Lambert, Lifehouse was scrapped and pared down to the single LP Who’s Next, which became one of The Who’s crown achievements, critically and commercially.
Following the critically and commercially successful 1969 rock opera Tommy was no easy task for The Who. At first the beginnings were modest with a self-produced EP recorded in May 1970 at Pete Townshend’s garage studio (dubbed Eel Pie) — possibly to mimic the stripped and fantastic Live at Leeds, released that month. Featuring recent songs written while touring Tommy, The Who tracked “Postcard”, “Now I’m A Farmer”, “Water”, “Naked Eye” and “I Don’t Even Know Myself”. This EP never saw the light of day for various reasons, including questions of marketability and inflated song length. It's more likely that Townshend had instead concocted an epic idea worthy enough to follow-up Tommy — another rock opera that not only functioned as a soundtrack to a companion film, but would include an audience-participated live performance with the band itself.
That September, Townshend began recording elaborate demos for much of the album, tracking all the instruments himself. Unlike Tommy, the material for this project — now called Lifehouse — would consist of approximately 20 stand-alone songs, without the need for musical interludes to propel the storyline; each song would be self-sufficient. The original storyline itself was simple, albeit Bradbury-esque.
The setting was in the not-too-distant future, in an ecologically-destroyed United
Kingdom. Most people live in the major cities and are electronically connected via special suits to The Grid, a Matrix-like virtual reality computer program that feeds,
entertains and pacifies the populace, which is controlled by a villainous character named Jumbo.
Since it is not approved by The Grid, music is outlawed completely; despite this, a
hacker musician named Bobby who lives outside the city amongst the hippy-gypsy farmer communes broadcasts a signal of classic rock (called Trad) into The Grid.
Thanks to a great sound engineer, this reconstructed album is available under fair use policy for educational and other non-commercial purposes. If wanted, leave your email or website url here, stating your prefered format [flac or 320kbps] and I'll send you a link.
I've sent you an email, Robin.
Any comments anyone on "Lifehouse", the Who aborted and reconstructed double album? There's some more related stuff like Pete Townsend's Lifehouse Demos 6 CD box set {{no longer available to buy}, which includes his radio play of Lifehouse.
