Life House Everlasting
THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO
Finally, The Who’s legendary, abandoned 1971 concept piece is built! Townshend explains all.
The kids’ toys are alright: Pete Townshend with his dog Towser and friends, Twickenham, 1971 – “I was pretty exhausted by it all at the time.”
Barrie Wentzell
IT’S THE HOTTEST day of 2023 so far and Pete Townshend is sat in the study of his Oxfordshire home, wearing a woolly stevedore’s hat. MOJO gets the sense that he’s decompressing after the recent The Who Hits Back! world tour. But Townshend is here to discuss Life House, the abandoned concept album/story/movie behind The Who’s 1971 LP, Who’s Next. Both are commemorated in a
50th anniversary box set, which, in contrary Who fashion, has arrived two years late to its own party.
The thoughts of Chairman Pete will always have an outlet via Life House. “There’s a documentary being made about it,” he divulges, “and the researcher has found – wait for it, because I know I exaggerate – one thousand interviews I’ve done about Life House.”
Life House was written about a polluted world sometime in the future. The repressed population were joined together by virtual reality-style suits, plugged into a central, computerised system, ‘The Grid’, which serviced them with ready-made life experiences and entertainment. Changes in society, technology and the planet continue to highlight aspects of the story. When Townshend oversaw a previous box set, 2000’s Lifehouse Chronicles, the music industry was still grappling with the Grid/internet.