WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE WHO? LIFE HOUSE

Pete Townshend’s abandoned Life House project, which started in 1969 as a follow-up to The Who’s Tommy, will be released as part of a massive Who's Next/Life House set that UMR will release on 9/15.

Featuring 155 tracks, of which 89 are previously unreleased and 57 feature fresh remixes, the set features all of his songs in their many stages of development. Life House is as famous for never seeing the light of day as it is for Townshend’s predictions in the work—the invention of the Internet and virtual reality, along with a pandemic-style lockdown.

As Townshend writes in the liner notes, “Some wonderful music came from the project, and the idea has always held me in thrall, partly because so many of the strands of the fiction seem to be coming true.”

The Super Deluxe edition of Who’s Next/Life House will contain 10 CDs, all remastered from the original tapes by longtime Who engineer Jon Astley, plus a Blu-ray audio disc with newly created Atmos & 5.1 surround mixes of Who's Next and 14 bonus tracks by Steven Wilson. The 155-track edition includes Townshend’s demos for Life House; The Who's 1971 session recordings at the Record Plant in New York; sessions at Olympic Studios in southwest London from 1970-1972; and, for the first time, two newly mixed and complete 1971 concerts from London’s Young Vic Theatre and San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium.

The box set also contains a 100-page hardback book and Life House—The Graphic Novel, a newly commissioned 170-page hardback book.

The album will also be available as limited-edition four-LP and three-LP sets, featuring, respectively, the first-ever complete release of the San Francisco concert from 1971 and vinyl replicas of Townshend’s original Life House. The original Who’s Next album will also be available as a single-LP half-speed remaster completed at Abbey Road Studios, and in other exclusive single vinyl versions.

More details are here.