Re: MARSH ON LIFEHOUSE

[Quad <quadimages@yahoo.com>]

Marsh is one of those critics years ago who thought
that The Who should have stopped after Tommy. 

Roger was very critical himself of Marsh on a couple
of interviews after the release of "Before I Get Old".
He's stated that Marsh never attempted to contact
Roger, John or Pete during the writing of the book.

Then again Roger strongly dislikes and objected to
Tony Fletchers "Dear Boy" which was a brilliant book,
something that "Before I Get Old" is not.

Best,

Dave...

--- PellegrinoLand@aol.com wrote:
> TO THE LIFEHOUSE
> Dave Marsh
> 4/20/01
> 
> It's a blessing that so many records today describe
> the painful
> realities of our society; it's a double blessing
> that so many describe
> the pleasurable ones; and a joy and a relief that so
> many musicians
> refuse to allow our musical past to be erased. 
> 
> But right now, no musician that I'm aware of dares
> to dream about a
> future. As fundamental relations change in our
> global society, you'd
> think somebody would at least speculate. Maybe the
> sort of future that
> the architects of globalization make seem inevitable
> is just too
> terrifying. Maybe when Johnny Rotten sang "No
> future, no future, no
> future for you," he slammed the door.
> 
> Such a vision exists, all right, but everything
> conspires against
> finding out about it. In the first place, it doesn't
> seem new-it seems
> old, because it's Pete Townshend's Lifehouse, the
> storied rock opera
> that he never was able to complete but which gave
> the Who the great
> songs on Who's Next, released 30 years ago this
> summer. Second, you
> can't buy Lifehouse in stores, only at Townshend's
> website
> (www.petetownshend.com) and then only as part of a
> six record box set. 
> 
> The final two discs of the box set offer the three
> hour radio
> dramatization of Lifehouse that the BBC ran in 1999.
> The show is a
> revelation, even just as music, incorporating all
> those Who's Next
> songs, such lost Townshend gems as "Pure and Easy,"
> and even the Who's
> last burst of glory, "Who Are You." This is some of
> the greatest music
> Townshend ever made. 
> 
> Lifehouse always had that music, but it never had a
> coherent story.
> Thirty years later, with the aid of some skilled
> collaborators,
> Townshend has finally told the tale in a way that
> anyone can grasp it.
> The BBC broadcast it just before the millennium and
> Pete was hailed for
> having predicted the Internet (which he did, as  the
> Grid) and virtual
> reality (which came in the form of "experience
> suits"). Partly, the
> story has become intelligible because Townshend's
> dreams are now our
> everyday experiences.  
> 
> But there's another side to Lifehouse. It is a very
> dark story, about a
> world gone gray as people withdraw from one another,
> to blindly consume
> and waste their lives while a world of waste and war
> thunders on.
> "Teenage wasteland!" here is anything but the
> triumph Roger Daltrey made
> it sound like-it is the baldest description of that
> future. 
> 
> Nevertheless, Lifehouse is not a story of despair.
> Hope presents itself
> in the form of hackers, the equivalent of radio
> pirates, who cut through
> the state-sanctioned Grid programming to offer an
> alternative vision, in
> which people gather their forces and try to
> transform the world back
> into a bright, colorful place. 
> 
> This is to be achieved, in part, by creating a
> gigantic musical
> composition that uses the Grid to subvert the system
> that runs it-a
> composition based on the unique personalities of
> those who've rebelled.
> The aim is to create music so "pure and easy" that
> it explodes the false
> gratifications to which we've become addicted,
> re-opening a sense of
> human possibilitiy. 
> 
> In the radio drama, this vision turns into a
> spectacular failure, not
> because it has to be, but because it is itself
> subverted, partly because
> people who could have made a difference withhold
> themselves. Yet again,
> this isn't a story about failure; Lifehouse creates
> a clear sense of
> what needs doing and why. What matters most is that
> sense of an opening,
> and that Townshend doesn't take succumbing for
> granted. It's a brave,
> hopeful, powerful vision, rock'n'roll to its core. 
> 
> It needs to find a much larger audience. Please seek
> it out. I sure
> don't want to live in the future Townshend describes
> and I can't think
> of a better way to begin figuring out how to avoid
> it than by listening
> to his dream, even if the part of it that's a
> nightmare.
> 


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