Re: The Who Mailing List Digest V3 #607

At 10:53 PM 11/11/96 -0800, Dana wrote:

>But anyways, does anyone out there no why Pete 
>is being so slow to jump on the Metropolitan 
>Opera Company's offer to help him reconstruct- 
>and perhaps embellish (as with the Broadway Tommy)- 
>the great Lifehouse?

     Given that Lifehouse celebrates a rebellion
*against* "staged events" it would seem a bit
incongruous for an Opera Company to "reconstruct"
it. As for "embellish" in the operatic sense?  
Ohmygawdno ...

>I would at first suspect that he is actually 
>opposed to the idea as he had said in the past, 
>but in a semi-recent interview, Pete indicated that 
>he had been considering the idea for quite a while 
>now. Why so slow to act?

     The story has had 2-3 attempts over 25 years
depending on how one characterizes Psychoderelict.
In his interview with Ira Robbins, Pete says it's
a "continuing" project and indicates there have
been two stumbling blocks -- his emotional fear of
working with The Who, and his inability to finish 
what he considers to be a viable story for the music
that's already written. Check it out at "Cleveland
Live" -- http://www.cleveland.com

>If Pete does get around to reconstructing Lifehouse, 
>I wonder if the Who ... will be involved in the 
>performance of it. 

     Anything less would be an abomination. IMO, 
of course ...

>Wouldn't it be cool if Pete decided to go with his 
>original idea of taking a captive audience and
>locking them in with the ensemble for a number of 
>weeks/months? Hm... Then again, such an attempt 
>could be downright cheesy. 

     Besides being prohibitively expensive, IMO
it would fail for the same reason the first effort
failed -- "Lifehouse" celebrated personal spontaneity 
over regimentation at the "society" level. It's 
inherently impossible to structure something 
spontaneous, to the extent of determining its outcome 
in advance. Thus, a storyline with a conclusion -- 
like Mary's "One Note" -- is simply a snapshot and 
any audience "spontaneity" is contrived. To finish 
the Lifehouse, IMO, Pete needs to decide whether he 
wants an ending, or an abstraction like the movie
"Tommy" and Quadrophenia. That determines whether the 
project is his view of a solution, or merely the 
beginning of an individual search for one.

>Oh well. Does anybody out there have any knowledge 
>of or interesting speculation upon the subject?

     "I can't pretend there's any meaning here,"
but FWIW ...

Bob