“The song ‘Pure and Easy’ was the fulcrum song for Lifehouse just as ‘Amazing Journey’ had been for Tommy.”

There once was a note
Pure and easy
Playing so free
Like a breath
Rippling by

“I knew there was a manic-depressive element to my personality, a seasonal swing in my psyche between periods of emotional bleakness (forced hibernation) and the dynamic creative activity (the Lifehouse).” – Quotes by Pete Townshend

Wikipedia: Lifehouse was a science fiction rock opera by the Who intended as a follow-up to Tommy. It was abandoned as a rock opera in favor of creating the traditional rock album Who’s Next, though its songs would appear on various albums and singles by the Who, as well as Pete Townshend‘s solo albums.

Townshend: “I’ve seen moments in Who gigs where the vibrations were becoming so pure that I thought the whole world was just going to stop, the whole thing was just becoming so unified.” He believed that the vibrations could become so pure that the audience would “dance themselves into oblivion,” Their souls would leave their bodies and they would be in a type of heaven; a permanent state of ecstasy.

“These ideas were directly linked to the writing of philosopher Inayat Khan, a Sufi musician who had written about the connection of vibration and sound with the human spirit. Another source of inspiration for Townshend was Meher Baba, (hence “Baba O’Riley”) who claimed to be an Avatar of Brahman.”

Townshend: “I conceived the idea of Lighthouse in August 1970 in my big new camper bus, in which I stayed for a few days after playing the third Isle of Wight Festival. … It was essentially one of a dystopia, a nightmare global scenario, a modern retelling of Brave New World. My hero … would be a good man, an advanced soul who would make a bad mistake and suffer the karmic repercussions.

Humanity would survive inevitable ecological disaster by living in air-filtered seclusion in pod-like suits, kept amused and distracted by sophisticated programming delivered to them by government. As with Tommy, people’s isolation would … prove the medium for their ultimate transcendence. … Only through submission to a police state would we survive.” (Gotta hand it to Pete – he thinks big. Weird, but big. His description of The Grid sounds a lot like the Internet and one could easily confuse grid sleep for virtual reality.)

He continues: “It’s a fantasy set at a time when rock ’n’ roll didn’t exist. The world was completely collapsing and the only experience that anybody ever had was through test tubes. In a way, they lived as if they were in television programs. Everything was programmed. The enemies were people who gave us entertainment intravenously, and the heroes were savages who’d kept rock ‘n’ roll as a primitive force and had gone to live with it in the woods. (“Out here in the fields …”) The story was about these two sides coming together and having a brief battle.

“Everybody would be snapped out of their programmed environment through a rock and roll-induced liberated selflessness. The Lifehouse was where the music was played, and where the young people would collect to discover rock music as a powerful catalyst — a religion as it were. ..

People from everywhere would be drawn to the Lifehouse where each person would sing their own unique song to produce the music of the spheres, a sublime harmony that would become what I called the ‘one perfect note.” (“There once was a note, pure and easy.”).

Around this same time, Townshend started getting his hands on synthesizers. He envisioned the band playing along to pre-recorded synthesizer music and marveled at how comfortably Keith Moon took to this. He then realized that Moon had always followed rather than led the tempo of the band.

But his explanations to the band about how they were creating ‘one note’ in communion with the audience didn’t go down well with his bandmates who may as well have been just as happy to do “Can’t Explain” or “I Can See For Miles” again. He could not communicate his ideas to Daltrey, Moon, and Entwhistle.

Townshend: “I was nearly ready with Lifehouse by the end of 1970. I had overworked, was paranoid, short of ready money and despite my family’s support I felt lonely.” He recorded all the demos in early 1971.

The Who were planning on staging a residency at the Young Vic theater where they could develop the material in front of an audience. “Individuals would emerge from the audience and find a role in the music and the film. When the concerts became strong enough, they would be filmed along with other peripheral activity from the theater.”

“Townshend worked out a complex scenario whereby a personal profile of each concert-goer would be compiled, from the individual’s astrological chart to his hobbies, even physical appearance. All the characteristics would then be fed into a computer at the same moment, leading to one musical note culminating in mass nirvana that Townshend dubbed ‘a kind of celestial cacophony.’

This residency, like so many things, didn’t go quite as planned. The guys in the band still didn’t know what the hell to make of it. John Entwistle believed that the band were to actually stay at the Young Vic with the audience in a sort of commune. The Vic’s artistic director quickly realized this whole thing was about as well planned as the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.

The small – less than thirty – audience had no access to instruments. “Audiences at the Young Vic gigs were not interested in interacting with the group to create new material, but simply wanted the Who to play “My Generation” and smash a guitar. (We’re not that sophisticated Pete, we’re really not – ME.) Townshend pretty quickly realized his (largely underfunded) dreams were going up in smoke.

The band went to the Record Plant in New York to do some recording and perhaps even salvage the proposed film. A lot of the great tunes we know and love were recorded there and wound up either on Who’s Next or some of Pete’s other solo stuff. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Let’s See Action,” “Pure and Easy,” But Pete’s manager Kit Lambert – so instrumental in helping Pete pull Tommy together – had fallen into a substance dependency problem and was of no assistance.

Every article you read says that Pete suffered a nervous breakdown over this endeavor but he himself never uses that term (and for the record, there is no such clinical diagnosis.) That said, he may have alluded to such a thing in liner notes for the remastered Who’s Next.

According to Pete’s autobio Who I Am, Townshend went up to Kit’s hotel room to talk to him. “Kit is calling me “Townshend” now? I loved him and felt terribly betrayed.  Anya (Kit’s assistant) had opened both sash windows to their limit and the park stretched out like a green lake into the distance. .. I walked to the window and looked out. I had a sense of weightlessness and at that moment whether I lived or died seemed of no consequence. As I started to fall forward between heaven and hell Anya was suddenly by my side, grabbing my sleeve.”

Pete went back to London and enlisted producer Glyn Johns who – like pretty much everybody else – could make no sense whatsoever of the story. Pete wanted whatever album they released to serve the story; Glyn wanted it to serve the music. Pete decided – reluctantly – to make it a single album and salvage what they could. That album, of course, was Who’s Next which I’ll talk about more in the next post.

Townshend has never really fully given up on the idea of releasing Lifehouse in one form or another. He revisited it somewhat in his (believe it or not) last solo album to date, Psychoderelict (1993). He later published an Internet novella called The Boy Who Heard Music which had some of the themes of Lifehouse. That novella evolved into an EP which became 2006’s Who album Endless Wire.

In 1998, the BBC approached Townshend with the idea of developing Lifehouse into a radio play. The play, just under two hours in length, was transmitted on BBC Radio 3 on 5 December 1999.

And if all that weren’t enough, in April 2019 it was announced that a graphic novel based on the Lifehouse concept was in production, with a scheduled release date of July 2020. This is to be published by an online tome called Heavy Metal but I could find nothing about it on their website. 

In 2000, Townshend released The Lifehouse Chronicles, a box set consisting of demos, synthesizers, radio plays, orchestrations and for all I know, Townshend’s therapy sessions.

Lastly, The Lifehouse Method was an Internet site where applicants could sit for an electronic musical portrait made up of data they enter into the website. The website was discontinued in July 2008, having generated over 10,000 pieces of unique, customized music.” (Pete – maybe it’s time to hang this fucking thing up. Just sayin’)

And that is the Lifehouse saga. And having read this, you’ll never listen to Who’s Next quite the same way ever again. We’ll genuflect to that one in the next post.

Below is a live recording of the band doing “Pure and Easy” at the Young Vic in 1971. A lot of Lifehouse got bootlegged at the time so my guess is this slipped out as well. Historical. Pure greatness.

“We all know success when we all find our own dreams.”