Lifehouse is an unfinished science fiction rock opera by the English rock band the Who intended as a follow-up to Tommy. It was abandoned as a rock opera in favour of creating the traditional rock album Who's Next, though its songs would appear on various albums and singles by the Who, as well as Pete Townshend solo albums. In 1978, aspects of the Lifehouse project were revisited by the Who on Who Are You. In 2000, Townshend revived the Lifehouse concept with his set Lifehouse Chronicles The site is now defunct. The artwork and design of the box set was undertaken by designer Laurence Sutherland. In 2023, an 11-CD box set of recordings intended or recorded around the time of the lighthouse project was released under the name Who's Next/Lifehouse. A graphic novel detailing a version of the story was released in the boxset also.

Original concept

alt=The Who live in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1971|thumb|[[The Who on tour in 1971']]

Lifehouses story was inspired by Pete Townshend's experiences on the Tommy Tour: "I've seen moments in Who gigs where the vibrations were becoming so pure that I thought the whole world was just going to stop, the whole thing was just becoming so unified." He believed that the vibrations could become so pure that the audience would "dance themselves into oblivion". Their souls would leave their bodies and they would be in a type of heaven; a permanent state of ecstasy. The only reason this did not happen at Who gigs was because there was a knowledge in the listener's mind that the show would end and everyone would wake up and go to work the next morning. These ideas were directly linked to the writing of philosopher Inayat Khan, a Sufi musician who had written about the connection of vibration and sound with the human spirit. Another source of inspiration for Townshend was Meher Baba, who claimed to be an avatar of Brahman.

What Townshend was aiming to achieve in Lifehouse was to write music that could be adapted to reflect the personalities of the audience.

The Lifehouse concept

Lifehouse began as a story written around several songs. According to Pete Townshend: "The essence of the story-line was a kind a futuristic scene...It's a fantasy set at a time when rock 'n' roll didn't exist. The world was completely collapsing and the only experience that anybody ever had was through test tubes. In a way they lived as if they were on television. Everything was programmed. The enemies were people who gave us entertainment intravenously, and the heroes were savages who'd kept rock 'n' roll as a primitive force and had gone to live with it in the woods. The story was about these two sides coming together and having a brief battle."

Under those circumstances, a very old guru figure emerges and says, 'I remember rock music. It was absolutely amazing—it really did something to people.' He spoke of a kind of nirvana people reached through listening to this type of music. The old man decides that he is going to try to set it up so that the effect can be experienced eternally. Everybody would be snapped out of their programmed environment through this rock and roll-induced liberated selflessness. The Lifehouse was where the music was played, and where the young people would collect to discover rock music as a powerful catalyst — a religion as it were. "Then I began to feel 'Well, why just simulate it? Why not try and make it happen?

The plan was for the Who to take over the Young Vic theatre with a regular audience, develop the new material on stage and allow the communal activity to influence the songs and performances. Individuals would emerge from the audience and find a role in the music and the film. When the concerts became strong enough, they would be filmed along with other peripheral activity from the theater. A storyline would evolve alongside the music. Although the finished film was to have many fictitious and scripted elements, the concert footage was to be authentic, and would provide the driving force for the whole production. In his 2012 memoir Who I Am, Pete Townshend makes reference to discussions in 1980 with director Nicolas Roeg to develop a film version of Lifehouse, implying that the project fell apart after Roeg learned Townshend made a pass at actress Theresa Russell, Roeg's partner at the time.

Townshend also revisited the concept, in modified form, in his radio play and recording Psychoderelict, which incorporated outtakes from the Lifehouse/Who's Next sessions and demos. In the plot of Psychoderelict, a reclusive rock star named Ray High is lured out of retirement by a fan-letter hoax between his manager and a gossip columnist, ultimately staging and broadcasting a virtual reality concert similar to the Lifehouse climax. He continued discussion of these themes in his later opus The Boy Who Heard Music.

In April 2019, it was announced that a graphic novel based on the Lifehouse concept was in production, with a scheduled release date of July 2020. The graphic novel was rescheduled to be released on 15 September 2023, as part of a Who's Next re-release box set. It was ultimately released in December 2023. It features a far more apocalyptic storyline, where a tyrannical government is overseen by Jumbo 7, who bans music and plans to use a "silver child" named Valentina to weaponize sound. Mary awakens from "grid-sleep" and finds the Lifehouse, where she learns about music from a guru-like musician and hacker named Bobby and leads the concert. It features a much darker ending than any of the other versions with a nuclear theme.

Radio play

Pete Townshend, along with playwright Jeff Young, completed a musical radio play script of Lifehouse as a collaboration between BBC Radio Drama and Eel Pie, Townshend's publishing company. The recorded version of this script is available on Lifehouse Chronicles, and the text is available as a Simon & Schuster Pocket Books, First Edition 1999.

The book contains the unedited radio play script of Lifehouse as well as an introduction by Townshend. The first broadcast of the radio play took place on 5 December 1999 on BBC Radio 3.

Intended track listing

Below is the track listing of the 1971 version of the Lifehouse album as listed on the first two discs of Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Chronicles, without the post-1971 songs; all songs written by Townshend

Intended personnel

The Who

  • Pete Townshend – songwriter, guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, banjo, vocals
  • Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
  • John Entwistle – bass guitar, trumpet, French horn, vocals
  • Keith Moon – drums, percussion

Additional personnel

  • Nicky Hopkins – piano, Hammond organ
  • 1971: Who's Next released by the Who
  • 1972: Who Came First released by Pete Townshend
  • 1974: Odds & Sods released by the Who
  • 1975: The Who by Numbers released by the Who
  • 1978: Who Are You released by the Who
  • 1981: Hooligans released by the Who
  • 1982: It's Hard released by the Who
  • 2000: Lifehouse Chronicles released by Pete Townshend
  • 2000: Lifehouse Elements released by Pete Townshend
  • 2012: Method Music released by Lawrence Ball
  • 2023: Who's Next / Life House [Super Deluxe Edition] released by The Who

See also

  • Smile (Beach Boys album)
  • Get Back (Beatles album)
  • Songs From the Black Hole

References