Pete Townshend had a vision. In 1970, in between writing Tommy and Quadrophenia, the then 25-year-old guitarist and songwriter started work on a rock opera set in a Britain suffering ecological collapse. With pollution choking the air, an autocratic government keeps the population docile with a constantly streaming entertainment network known as “The Grid”. Townshend called this ambitious project Lifehouse, but when plans for a movie version fell through and it became clear that even his bandmates were struggling with the convoluted plot, he admitted defeat and repurposed the bulk of the music for a conventional rock album, Who’s Next. Bookended by a pair of indelible anthems, “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, the record, born of compromise, is often considered The Who’s finest work.
Now, over half a century later, the band have released an expansive 11-disc box set, showcasing not just the majesty of Who’s Next but also a trove of Townshend’s home demo recordings that sketch out what Lifehouse – now called Life House – might have been. The timing seems apt. On the day Townshend and I speak over video call, the prime minister has just announced the rollback of a swathe of key environmental policies across the UK. As miserable as the news is, I can’t help but ask whether Townshend gets some sense of vindication from knowing he saw this future coming all those years ago.
“Fuck!” he replies, gloomily. He’s at home in the English countryside, wearing a black beanie and some serious-looking headphones. His white goatee is neatly cropped, and he has the air less of a veteran rock star than of a particularly curmudgeonly academic. “I don’t know about Rishi Sunak,” he continues. “I don’t know about the Tory party, per se. They say, when you get older, you drift from being on the left to on the right. I suppose there was a gentle drift with me. I’m 78, and between 60 and 70 I think I was starting to drift slowly to the right, but… fuck!” That expletive is followed by a reckless outburst of anger: “I would line them all up and shoot them.”
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 