The Real Congregation

Pete Townshend is an absolute genius. Say what you want about his sometimes willfully difficult solo work, his penchant for interviews that have the ability to effortlessly alienate all but the most ardent fans, not to mention those pesky (and unfounded) legal charges. You can run your mouth about that stuff all you’d like, but the one thing that you can’t argue your way out of is that at his best, the man took whatever was going on at that current moment in time… and then pushed the concepts past boundaries that would take most artists decades to catch up with.

It should probably go without saying that Pete was the “idea guy” for his group, The Who, but certainly relied on the power of his musical unit working as a whole to really put the concepts in motion. For example, his solo demos for the Tommy album are absolutely fantastic, and while they could have easily worked as an exceptional record on their own, it’s really the performance of The Who as a cohesive powerful unit that sells the incredibly lofty (and sometimes nigh on impossible to follow) piece. But, there’s actually been at least one occasion that the rest of the group might have held him back from where he could have really gone…

(I apologize in advance if I get any part of this story wrong. Much has been written about the Lifehouse project, but much like the story behind the songs themselves, very little of what’s been said on the record has been comprehensive.)

The year is 1970, and The Who have an unenviable task ahead of them: come up with some way to follow their landmark album, Tommy. Said album was a rock opera that was wildly successful against absolutely all odds. It was a tale of a young boy that went completely deaf, dumb and blind after witnessing some pretty nasty business. He’s mistreated by some rather awful family members, eventually becomes really good at pinball (!!!) despite his afflictions, and is regarded as the new messiah upon regaining his senses.

Yeah. Not exactly well-worn rock and roll territory, is it?

Pete Townshend, being the main composer of Who music, started work on a new rock opera known as Lifehouse. I’d like to tell you the story in a nutshell, but I can’t say that I necessarily understand it very well. For this reason, I’m actually going to quote what Wikipedia says is the original backstory:

“Pollution is so bad that the populace are forced to wear Lifesuits, suits that could simulate all experiences in a way that no one would have to leave home.

The story begins when a farming family in Scotland hear of a huge rock concert called Lifehouse occurring in London… Their daughter, Mary, runs away to join the concert. They don’t wear Lifesuits because they are supposedly out of the pollution’s range and they farm the crops that the government buys to feed the Lifesuiters. Bobby is the creator of Lifehouse; he is a hacker who broadcasts pirate radio signals advertising his concert, where the participants personal data are taken from them and converted into music, quite literally “finding your song”. At the climax of the album, the authorities have surrounded the Lifehouse; then the perfect note rings forth through the combination of everybody’s songs, they storm the place to find everybody has disappeared through a sort of musical Nirvana, and the people observing the concert through their Lifesuits have vanished as well.”

Yes, you read that right. In 1970, Pete Townshend was working on a science-fiction rock opera about the fucking internet. Of course it’s not nearly that simple.

Part of Pete’s plan was to stage what amounted to a never-ending rock concert, one where data could be collected from audience members to seemingly turn Lifehouse into an ongoing show that would change and morph indefinitely. They tried a few gigs out like this, but no one knew what the hell was going on, and really? The audience just wanted to hear “My Generation”. The gigs were scrapped.

If the saga has been recorded correctly, the main stumbling block in making Lifehouse work was a simple one: absolutely no one in The Who’s camp understood it besides Pete Townshend. And how could anyone be expected to wrap their heads around what would ultimately be the internet at a time when the height of technology was the 8-track tape?

And so Lifehouse was ultimately stripped for parts and turned into what eventually became the beloved Who’s Next album. Pete would attempt an ill-fated revival that fell apart for similar reasons around the time of 1978′s Who Are You, and while elements of the story popped up much later on Pete’s Psychoderelict solo album and The Who’s 2006 Endless Wire record, the closest things that exist to a finished version of the product are Pete’s Lifehouse Chronicles box set (which culls together six discs worth of absolutely brilliant demos, orchestral pieces and a pretty incomprehensible radio play) and his Music From Lifehouse DVD in which he performs a large portion of the music from all versions of the piece.

What makes Lifehouse such a fascinating unheard record? Easy. Those songs, man. This is a rock opera that gave birth to a good portion of The Who’s most impressive later work: “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “Goin’ Mobile”, “Who Are You”, “Behind Blue Eyes”, “Bargain”, “Join Together”, “The Relay”, “Music Must Change”, etc. Really, a full look at everything that was considered at one time or another for this cycle might read like the tracklisting to a greatest hits album.

Does Lifehouse really make much sense? Probably not, but believe you me, it’s quite possibly the greatest unfinished album in the history of rock and roll music. Period.