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Lifehouse: The Independent article



Here's the original article from The Independent

	-Brian in Atlanta

TOWNSHEND’S NEW EPIC SAW THE FUTURE 30 YEARS AGO
by David Lister - Media and Culture Editor - The Independent (July 26, 1999)

The Who’s Pete Townshend calls it the story of "a vast global network."  Begun
in 1971 it would have foretold the coming of the internet and world-wide web.

But Townshend took nearly 30 years to complete it; a longer conception than any
other work in rock history.  Not it can be revealed, the piece, entitled
Lifehouse, is to have its premiere.

A performance of the work was in fact given in 1971 to a small audience at the
Young Vic Theatre in London, which I attended.  Townshend had intended it to be
the successor to his massively successful rock opera, Tommy.

But he then discarded the ambitious project which demanded ‘creative feedback’
from the audience, and returned to conventional music making.

The completed project will surprise Who fans and non-fans alike.  For it is
clear now why it seemed so baffling in 1971.  Townshend, in a particularly
visionary phase, had foreseen the worldwide web.

The basic storyline, unchanged for the past 29 years, addresses the spiritual
consequences of a move away from a physical, human community to digital
networking and the power of music.  At the heart of the drama is an 11-year old,
a visionary, full of daring ideas and dreams.

Perhaps reflecting Townshend’s ascent to the arts establishment in the
intervening period or rock’s now classical status, its premiere in December will
be on Radio 3.

Kate Rowland, head of BBC radio drama, said yesterday: "I feel sure that
Lifehouse will be greeted as a contemporary classic.  It’s extraordinary when
you think about what he was writing in 1971.  It was like he was projecting
ahead.  He didn’t use the words net or web.  He called it ‘grid.’  But he was
hitting the nail almost right on the head."

Townshend, who has been adding to the original Lifehouse concept over the 29
years, has been working secretly with BBC drama executives on the project, and
rehearsing a cast that includes Geraldine James, David Threlfall, Kelly
Macdonald who appeared in Trainspotting, and 11-year-old primary school pupil
Phillip Dowling.

Explaining the genesis of the piece in typically idiosyncratic fashion,
Townshend says: "At the end of the Sixties I was wary of growing tension between
entertainment and commerce.  My experience was salutary.  Rock music was a
bastard art form, and many in society tacitly approved the corruption of it
exponents.  Many Sixties rock artists and their cronies were Utopian
visionaries, or bed-sit revolutionaries.  However, their peaceful post-war
middle-class upbringing instilled in them an innate belief in democracy, rather
than direct action.  My corollary ran thus: show business was corrupt and
exploitative; the Establishment colluded.

"What made this bearable was the fact that rock had passed through its infancy
and was occasionally generating spiritual uplift only matched in the classical
arts.  Technology and rock were hand in hand, marching to the future like a
modern salvation army.  Rock was a mirror to society, and reflected spiritual
hunger.

"In the midst of all this uneasy anticipation, I wrote a play.  If, in the
future, life itself ever had to be experienced through art – let’s say because
of a necessary curfew to avoid the effects of radiation or pollution – a vast
global network would be required.

"Would rock have a place or not?  Was rock’s particular brand of spiritual
uplift – its main claim to be regarded as art – confined to live events before
masses of people?"

Ms. Rowland says that Lifehouse is more like a play with music than a rock
opera.  Townshend will sing the music himself, reworking most of the well-known
Who numbers for the two-hour performance.  The score includes several Who songs
such as "Won’t Get Fooled Again," "Baba O’Riley" and "Behind Blue Eyes," which
were originally intended for Lifehouse.  There will also be unheard songs by The
Who’s composer and lyricist.

For rock chroniclers, the completion of Lifehouse after its inordinately long
gestation will be a major landmark, coming as it does from such a pivotal figure
in contemporary music.

Townshend’s most cherished project has taken on near mythic status over the
decades and has been discussed by rock historians and Who biographers alike.

It is mentioned in the encyclopaedic Rough Guide To Rock, which describes the
birth and apparent death of the project that it – like almost everyone else –
thought had been abandoned.  It notes how the music for Lifehouse set the tone
for the coming decade.  It says: "The band embarked (at the start of the
Seventies) on a film/music project called Lifehouse which involved the band
living with some of its fans, in the hope of creative feedback…Retreating to the
studio, The Who attempted to make something from the material they had got. 
Perversely, although Lifehouse was a major league failure, the resulting album
Who’s Next was probably their best.  A remarkable collection of crunching riffs,
power chords and anthemic lyrics – most notably ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ – it
virtually defined Seventies hard rock."

Townshend’s 1969 rock opera Tommy, about a messianic deaf, dumb and blind boy,
was eventually followed by another concept project in 1973, Quadrophenia, a hark
back to the Mod era.  But it is now clear that the project really intended to be
Tommy’s successor was, in it musical content and its prophetic storyline, a lost
classic.