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Recording of December 2023: Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition

Recording of December 2023: Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition

The Who: Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition
Polydor/UME (10 CD, Blu-ray). 1971/2023. The Who, orig. prod.; Glyn Johns, affiliate prod.; Bill Curbishley, Robert Rosenberg, exec. prods. reissue; Bob Pridden, Richard Whittaker, Andy McPherson, Jaime Haworth, Pete Townshend, engs.; Jon Astley, Layla Astley, remastering engs.
Performance *****
Sonics *****

Impossibly bold? Too many calls for on the viewers? Tommy finished higher? A remaining collapse earlier than a wonderful resurrection? 1971’s Who’s Next, which started life as a more-advanced-than-Tommy sci-fi rock opera known as Life House (additionally known as Lifehouse), is all that and extra. All the weather of this oft-reissued opus have been remastered and reissued in a number of new configurations, essentially the most full being the Who’s Next/Life House Super Deluxe Edition, which incorporates 10 CDs with 155 tracks sourced from the unique tapes, 89 of them beforehand unreleased. That version additionally consists of demos, singles, studio periods, and two full Who’s Next–period live shows, from London and San Francisco. A 100-page hardback e book offers the visuals. For immersive audio followers, there’s Blu-ray audio with new Atmos and 5.1 encompass mixes of the unique album. A 172-page Life House graphic novel is included for context. For superfans, there is a raft of tchotchkes together with a pair of gig posters, two live performance applications, 4 buttons, and a band picture with printed autographs.

After Tommy, Who guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend started work on one other, even grander multimedia idea album. Townshend informed Billboard in 2003, "In Tommy I used the gadget of a kid being smitten deaf, dumb, and blind by witnessing a violent trauma. In Life House I used an analogous gadget once more: a person plunged into a lifetime of digital actuality fed by one thing just like the web, suspended in a sort of parallel life in digital animation, experiencing completely phony life."

According to the unique idea, humanity’s salvation lay in devising a single musical word that will set off unity within the face of society’s impending doom. Things started to unspool when the thought of constructing a movie and eliciting viewers interplay turned a 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 cost. Concerts at London’s Young Vic Theatre at which followers have been anticipated to provide their opinions failed when the gang simply wished to listen to the band play. The mission’s overreach finally had Townshend teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Once the Life House idea was deserted, Glyn Johns inspired the band to launch the very best of the Life House songs as a single album. Songs from Life House appeared on later Who albums together with Odds & Sods and Hooligans. An entire model of the mission, titled Lifehouse Chronicles, was launched as 6-CD field set in 2000 on Townshend’s Eel Pie label.

What’s most spectacular concerning the exhaustively completist Super Deluxe reissue, in addition to the separate, blue 180gm vinyl-LP reissue of the unique album, is the improved sound. Most simply heard on the LP variations of "Behind Blue Eyes," "Bargain," and "This Song Is Over," the midrange dynamics now appear richer and the bass response a contact extra lively. Keith Moon’s extra disciplined drumming (in idea due to Johns’s no-nonsense presence) sounds extra important and alive. Also on the sonics entrance, the 2 live shows on the Super Deluxe set are fantastically clear and detailed, a rarity for 50-year-old tape sources.

The 5 CDs of additional tracks listed here are much more priceless than the additional materials in most reissues in offering an overview of how the grandiose Life House was winnowed right down to Who’s Next. A telling instance is the inventive journey of "Baba O’Riley." The fundamental musical construction got here from a demo that has Townshend joyously exploring the then-new VCS3 and ARP synthesizers for greater than 13 minutes. A second demo, trimmed to 7:48, has Roger Daltrey singing phrases imported from one other tune meant for Life House, "Teenage Wasteland." Yet one other model, labeled "First Editing Demo" (7:53), with completely different guitar tones and with out the ultimate drum tracks, is way nearer to the launched model. In the San Francisco present, "Baba O’Riley" has John Entwistle’s bass guitar unusually ahead within the combine.

Album cowl photographs at the moment are thought of a consequential artform, and few have been as impactful because the peed-on concrete monolith from South Yorkshire that graces the Who’s Next cowl. According to Andrew Neill and Matthew Kent in Anyway Anyhow Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958-1978, another suggestion was a shot of an extra-large bare lady, her genitalia coated by The Who’s faces.

The plethora of additional materials on the Super Deluxe reissue of Who’s Next/Life House is an enchanting window into the inventive course of. In that 2003 Billboard interview, Townshend displays on the expertise of turning Life House into the concentrated Who’s Next: "I used to be actually pleased with it. Proud of the way in which it sounded. … I knew that there was a little bit of depth there in case you wished to look." This new assortment greater than confirms that.—Robert Baird

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November 14, 2023 at 03:42PM

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