Guardian review of Who's Next Deluxe

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

On line at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,951587,00.html

Adam Sweeting
Friday May 9, 2003
The Guardian

The Who's catalogue seems to go through more recycles
than an old sock stuck behind the drum of a washing
machine, but rumours about the new "Deluxe Edition" of
Who's Next (Universal, 2CDs, ***) have been
circulating among Who completists for several months.
The last rehash of Who's Next was in the mid-1990s,
when it reappeared with a clutch of bonus tracks. The
2003 reissue groans under an enormous tonnage of extra
material - its running time is almost three times the
length of the original album. The most significant
addition is an extra disc of the Who performing live
at London's Old Vic Theatre in April 1971, previewing
Who's Next alongside material originally intended for
Pete Townshend's problematic and never-finished
Lifehouse project. 

The way Townshend explains it, Lifehouse contained
ideas vaguely foreshadowing the coming of the internet
and the kind of totalitarian artificial reality
portrayed in The Matrix. Thirty years ago it all
proved far too complicated to cram on to a mere rock
album, with Townshend commenting: "I blamed the
frustration it caused me on its innate simplicity and
my innate verbosity - one cancelled out the other."
Eventually, Who's Next scrapped the grand thematic
design altogether and became merely a powerful batch
of songs. Powerful enough, in fact, for many to
consider it the band's finest achievement, even though
it omitted Pure and Easy, which Townshend regarded as
pivotal to the Lifehouse concept. It appears here as
one of six extra tracks from some exploratory New York
sessions glued on to the end of the original album. 

As for the Old Vic material, it's in jarring contrast
to the steely professional polish that characterised
Who's Next. Several performances sound little better
than rehearsals, with Roger Daltrey's voice ragged and
struggling to maintain pitch, and the band blundering
along behind Keith Moon's drumming, hoping they'll all
reach the end at roughly the same time. The version of
Won't Get Fooled Again uses the same repeating
synthesiser line as the studio recording, but the
group were obviously still figuring out the live
arrangement. It all throws light on the Who's Next
period, but not a very flattering one. 


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com

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