Re: Lifehouse

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

Here's some interpretations I got out of the new Lifehouse while
transcribing it, if anyone cares:

1) Pete said in his introduction to the remastered "Who's Next" that he was
a child when he wrote the original.  Therefore, Rayboy represents Pete when
he wrote the original and Ray is Pete (or Pete's generation) now.

2) Ray's daughter says that Ray agrees with what The Hacker is saying.  His
crime is that he doesn't get up off his ass and make it happen.  For this
crime he is left alone on the ruined earth screaming for Mary (his lost
ideals).  One would imagine Ray could have said at the end "whatever
happened to all that lovely hippy shit" just as well.

3) Who is The Caretaker that both promises protection and inspiration for
Ray but also doles out injury and who Ray must abandon now that he's an
adult?  Kit Lambert?  Keith?  Pete's parents? Rock & Roll?

4) Around the midpoint Ray destroys his vehicle in a crash.  Remind anyone
of another Pete work that has at its midpoint the hero losing his vehicle in
a crash?

5) Does Rayboy's drawing The Lifehouse and then scribbling it out in grey
crayon because he can't capture the beauty of the sound represent Pete's
repeated failures to stage Lifehouse?

6) The implication that everyone in The Lifehouse gets blown into the sky
seems more than a bit ominous.  I wonder if they've gone "off to meet the
comet" like those people who committed suicide in California a couple of
years ago.

7) Pete with this work and his recent remarks about how he accepts "full
responsibility" for the failure of his generation to realize its ideals
seems a bit excessive to me.  At least his generation dreamed of finding an
answer.  At least they held out hope even if they turned out to be naive.
That beats the hell out of the cynical "realistic" acceptance of our present
ultramaterialistic world.  Maybe it's time to dig through that "lovely hippy
shit" and find the things worth salvaging for the future.  I don't see any
reason yet to get drunk with Ray in a burned out building and scream at the
sky.

My two cents,

        -Brian in Atlanta