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October ICE stuff...




BARGAIN: The ongoing series of upgraded and
expanded catalog CDs by The Who continues
on November 7 with the issuance of a special
collector's version of Who's Next, arguably the
group's most popular album ever. For this CD,
the 43-minute record has been expanded to 78
minutes, with the addition of seven bonus tracks
that relate closely to the album's recording.
As most Who fans know, Who's Next actual-
ly started out as an ambitious Pete Townshend
project, along the lines of Tommy and Quadro-
phenia, titled Lifehouse. The Who recorded
enough material at the time to be well on the
way to a two-LP set, but then thought better of
it and scaled the project down to the single-LP
Who's Next. Given the popularity of that album,
Who fans have ever since been trying to discov-
er and recreate the original overblown concept,
much like Beach Boys fans have chased after
the legendary Smile album for decades.
Attempting to recreate legendary, lost
albums is usually a fruitless endeavor, however;
the Beach Boys have all but shelved attempts to
patch together a Smile set (see separate item this
issue), and producer Alan Douglas gave up on
trying to piece together the album Jimi Hendrix
was working on when he died (ICE #96). Like-
wise, Pete Townshend chose to avoid resurrect-
ing Lifehouse 25 years after the fact, and instead
has opted for a generous Who's Next CD with
the best of the appropriate bonus tracks.
On the new CD, after Who's Next plays-
with such classic album-rock-radio staples as
"Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Won't
Get Fooled Again"-the bonus tracks kick in,
consisting of: "Pure And Easy," an unreleased
version that is "shorter and faster" than the one
found on the Who's Odds And Sods album,
recorded at the Record Plant in New York 3/71;
"Baby Don't You Do It," an unreleased studio
version also recorded at the Record Plant 3/71
with Leslie West on guitar; "Naked Eye," record-
ed in London 6/71, the same version found on
Odds And Sods; "Water," recorded live at the
Young Vic in London 4/71; "Too Much Of Any
thing," recorded in London 4/71, the same ver-
sion found on Odds And Sods; "I Don't Even
Know Myself," the B-side to "Won't Get Fooled
Again," recorded sometime in 1970; and an unre-
leased, altemate version of "Behind Blue Eyes,"
recorded at the Record Plant 3/71, with Al
Kooper on organ.
As usual, the Who's Next reissue was assem-
bled primarily by Townshend, Jon Astley, and
Chris Charlesworth, with engineering by Andy
Macpherson. We asked Astley if they had ever
seriously considered putting together a Lifehouse
album. "That was the idea to begin with," he
tells ICE, "but anything we found that was half-
decent, that was supposed to be from Lifehouse,
had already been released on Odds And Sods:
'Pure And Easy' and 'Naked Eye.' I didn't want
to release 'Pure And Easy' yet again, so l started
thinking about B-sides from the period.
"Then I dug out the New York session tapes,
done with Leslie West at the Record Plant. I
found a great version of 'Baby Don't You Do It,'
played it for Pete, and he said 'God, that could
easily be a single.' He was knocked out by it.
"Then I asked Pete, 'What about mixing live
material with the studio material found on
Who's Next?' Because I don't think that works.

But he said it would work if we explained it. So
Pete wrote up a three-page piece about how
Lifehouse was set up, and the fact that the three
recordings took place at the Record Plant in
New York, at Olympic Studios [in London]
with Glyn Johns, and at the Young Vic in Lon-
don with Andy Johns." (The Who performed a
live show at the Young Vic-a theater in Lon-
don-before an invited audience, and recorded
the proceedings for possible usage in Lifehouse.)
Adds Chris Charlesworth, "Pete more or
less goes into the background of Lifehouse, and
why it didn't materialize how he originally saw
it, like Tommy and Quadrophenia did. And John
Atkins, editor of a Who fanzine called Genera-
tions, has written some explanatory notes as
well. So it's full of text, well over 5,000 words."
As Astley tells it, it was the album's produc-
er who decided to put the brakes on the bigger
project: "At the time, Glyn Johns said 'We
shouldn't really go for another double record,
because Tommy just came out. You should go
with the best of what you have here, call it
something different [than Lifehouse] and just go
for an ordinary record.' So, at that point, they
put their heads down and did the nine tracks
that became Who's Next. But, of course, all this
other material was recorded."
Not only does the new CD contain bonus
tracks, but four of the album's original songs have
been newly remixed for greater clarity. "I remixed
'Baba O'Riley,' 'Goin' Mobile,' 'My Wife' and
'Love Ain't For Keeping'," Astley says. "The only
reason I didn't remix more is that I can't find all
the tapes; the multi-tracks are missing. To make
up for that, I've remastered the existing quarter-
inch [stereo master tape] about three or four
times." Will the four remixed tracks audibly stand
out against the others? "They're just slightly
cleaner," Astley says. "There's no harmonic dis-
tortion going on, and there's a little less tape
hiss." Adds remastering engineer Andy Macpher-
son, "We've kept the same bassy, loose feel...
pretty much identical [to the other tracks].'

Many Who collectors already have a taste of
what the new Who's Next CD sounds like,
because there's a famous bootleg CD called From
Lifehouse To Leeds which contains some of the
material ("Behind Blue Eyes" and "Pure And
Easy"). In fact, remarkably, the producers used
the exact same tape that the bootleggers used...
because they procured it directly from the boot-
leggers. Charlesworth tells the tale, which may be
unprecedented: "We actually retrieved the master
tape from which that bootleg was made. That was
a tape of the Record Plant sessions in New York.
[At the time of the recording], it was brought
back to England and left at Olympic studios; I
guess the Who played it once and just left it
there. It stayed at Olympic until there was a
clear-out sometime in the early '80s, and it was
thrown in the rubbish. It was rescued from the
garbage and ended up being sold to the bootleg-
ger; we don't quite know how.
"Late last year, Pete asked me to try and
retrieve it, implying that he'd be willing to buy it
back for a reasonable sum, with no questions
asked. I put the word out, and although it was a
bit of cloak and dagger, I got a call four months
later from someone saying he knew where it was,
and all I had to do was send a messenger to this
address, and l'd get it back. So I got it back, and
gave it back to the Who. The bootleggers didn't
charge us; they just...gave it back to us."

Also, there's a new boot on the Hiwatt label called "Pure Rock Theater"
that's supposed to be 'a must.' The tracks are from American and British
dates in '69 and '70.

PLUS:

Empty Glass and ATBCH Chinese Eyes are scheduled for re-release on
24 October as "Atlantic Remasters." I have no idea what this
means.

PS Hats off to Svante for the excellent recap!