How The Who Crafted a Masterpiece Out of an Abandoned Rock Opera

Following the release of Tommy, The Who had finished the 1960s as an arena band. Then they released Live At Leeds, the ear-bleeding live masterwork that showcased the ferocious collective energy of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle.

Then Townshend decided to answer Tommy with an even more ambitious rock opera called Lifehouse. Exhausted and anxious from his band’s growing fame and endless touring, Townshend centered his sci-fi project on the importance of music and what happens when it goes away.

A Dystopian Tale That Sounds Familiar

Set in the future, Townshend’s dystopian tale describes humans wired into a central grid. Once connected, they’d be fed a steady stream of entertainment, information, and propaganda.  

“In Lifehouse, humanity would survive ecological disaster by living in pod-like suits, amused and distracted by sophisticated programming delivered to them by the government,” Townshend said. Meanwhile, rock music would be banned to avoid stirring the population into open rebellion.

Teenage Wasteland

However, Townshend’s bandmates didn’t understand the concept, and soon, it was scrapped. But eight songs did survive, including standards like “Baba O’Riley”, “Behind Blue Eyes”, and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

Don’t cry,
Don’t raise your eye,
It’s only teenage wasteland.

Though it’s not a rock opera and contains only fragments of Townshend’s ambitious project, Who’s Next (1971), in its edited form, is a masterpiece. It also features The Who at their highest powers.

Moon’s drumming is thunderous and utterly unhinged. And Daltrey’s screams were only outdone by his own later wailing on “Love, Reign O’er Me”. The lone non-Lifehouse addition to the album is Entwistle’s witty “My Wife”, with the bassist’s deep groove anchoring, as always, Moon’s impeccable chaos.

For Townshend, apart from predicting a freedom- and attention-destroying future, Who’s Next finds him experimenting with synthesizers. On the opening track, “Baba O’Riley”, he fuses the avant-garde compositions of Terry Riley with the guru vibes of Meher Baba, resulting in arguably The Who’s greatest song.

The lonesome “Behind Blue Eyes”, written from the perspective of a Lifehouse villain named Jumbo, arrives near the end of the album. But detached from the larger plot, the sentiment remains eternally sad.

An Edited Masterpiece

Who’s Next ends as it begins, with a synth-oriented banger that helped define 70s rock music while also pushing it into the future. The album survived a failed rock opera. But Townshend’s anxiety forced him to condense it into a concise masterpiece.

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