Who – Who’s Next - 50th Anniversary 10CD+Blu-ray Box Set

The Who – Who’s Next - 50th Anniversary 

10cd + Blry Ltd. Edition Boxset. Atmos/5.1 Mix/Stereo, Life House Graphic Novel (172 Pages)

Following recent super deluxe editions and multi-format releases of classic Who albums – The Who Sell Out, My Generation, Tommy and Quadrophenia, we follow with Who’s Next – considered by many to be the band’s greatest album. The album was a ground-breaking musical achievement and raised the bar for other artists to follow and continues to inspire to this day.

At the start of a new decade The Who, and in particular their main song writer Pete Townshend, faced an unenviable dilemma. How do you follow up on an international sensation called Tommy?

The response was an ambitious, futuristic but prescient project named Life House.

The ideas contained in Life House predicted a dystopian world which seems all too familiar today. Themes of environmental change, all too powerful corporations and technology, such as the internet, which the public knew nothing of at the time. Here are Pete Townshend’s own words describing Life House…

Life House was a double-barrelled project. One part film script, the other part the plan for a live musical experiment to be carried out at the Young Vic Theatre to be filmed and incorporated into the fictional movie.
After the success of Tommy, providing The Who with a very powerful and uplifting concert piece as well as a hit album, I tried to create an audacious music project that would replace it musically for stage and album. I hoped too for a movie. I framed Life House as a portentous polemic about the coming of a nation beaten down by climate issues and pollution. In a sci-fi setting an opportunist and autocratic government enforce a national lock-down in which every person is hooked up to an entertainment grid, provided with solace, food, peace, and spiritual succour. The population could enjoy this Grid safe at home, using virtual reality experience suits. Life experience programmes would be provided by a co-opted entertainment industry and piped down tubes and wires to every home.

Music is discovered to be a very real distraction to the subjugation of the population in suits. Slowly it is removed from the programming. Rebels and renegades who refuse to be compliant ride around in crude converted buses and vans, listening to rock ‘n’ roll. It is the rebels who begin to hear rumours of the “Life House,” a place somewhere in London where live music is being performed, and an outlandish experiment was taking place.

One aspect of both the story and the hopeful plan for the Young Vic live music experiment was for me as a composer to act as a computer to create tailor-made compositions for selected audience members who attended a series of workshops at the Young Vic. Two good examples of the kind of music I hoped to compose are the electronic music backing tracks of “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” In the story a new leader (partly based on myself, and partly based on several technical advisors I was working with at the time) put on a series of concerts, where such tailor-made music is created, and eventually would be piped into the government Grid to allow the oppressed population to break free.

A side bar of the fiction is that many participants in the government Grid project begin to advance spiritually, partly because of the sheer number of lifetimes they can enjoy squeezed at high-speed into every moment they remain incarcerated. When the Life House experiment does reach its target, and music is secretly piped into every individual’s experience suit, a universal uprising with immense spiritual and congregational impact takes place. In the Life House itself, down at the Young Vic, the participants all disappear to a higher level.

Earlier, I used the adjective ‘audacious’ to describe my plans. In fact, the fiction and the experiment were both flawed, and neither were properly realised. But 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.

Tracklist
CD 1: WHO’S NEXT (Remastered)
Baba O’Riley
Bargain
Love Ain’t for Keeping
My Wife
The Song Is Over
Getting In Tune
Going Mobile
Behind Blue Eyes
Won’t Get Fooled Again

CD 2: PETE TOWNSHEND’S LIFE HOUSE DEMOS 1970 – 1971 – PART 1
Teenage Wasteland (Demo)
Too Much (Demo)
Going Mobile (Demo)
There’s A Fortune in Those Hills (Demo)
Love Ain’t For Keeping (Demo)
Bargain (Demo)
Greyhound Girl (Demo)
Mary (Alternate Mix) (Demo)
Behind Blue Eyes (Demo)
Time Is Passing (Demo)
Finally, Over (Demo)
Baba O’Riley (Original Demo)

CD 3: PETE TOWNSHEND’S LIFE HOUSE DEMOS 1970 – 1971 – PART 2
Pure And Easy (Home Studio Mix) (Demo)
Getting In Tune (Alternate Mix) (Demo)
Nothing Is Everything (Let’s See Action) (Demo)
Won’t Get Fooled Again (Demo)
Baba O’Riley (Demo)
Song Is Over (2021 Remix) (Demo)
Pure And Easy (Olympic Studios Mix) (Demo)
Mary (Original Mix) (Demo)
Baba O’Riley (First Editing Demo)
Song Is Over (Original Demo)

CD 4: RECORD PLANT, NYC SESSIONS MARCH 1971
Don’t Do It (aka Baby Don’t You Do It) [Take 2, Unedited, March 16, 1971]
Won’t Get Fooled Again [Take 13, March 16, 1971]
Behind Blue Eyes (Version 1) [Take 15, March 16, 1971]
Love Ain’t For Keeping [Take 14, March 17, 1971]
The Note (aka Pure and Easy) [Take 21, March 17, 1971]
I’m In Tune (aka Getting in Tune) [Take 6, March 18, 1971
Behind Blue Eyes (Version 2) [Take 10, March 18, 1971}

CD 5: OLYMPIC SOUND STUDIOS, LONDON SESSIONS 1970-72
Pure And Easy
I Don’t Know Myself [B-side with Unreleased Count-in]
Time Is Passing [Stereo Mix]
Too Much of Anything [Original 1971 Vocal]
Naked Eye [1971 Remake]
Bargain (Early Mix)
Love Ain’t For Keeping (Unedited Mix)
My Wife (Unedited Mix)
Getting In Tune (Take 1 with Jam)
Going Mobile (Alternate Mix)
Song Is Over (Backing Track) [with Nicky Hopkins]
When I Was a Boy
Let’s See Action (Unedited Mix)
Relay (Unedited Mix) [Alternate Vocal]
Put The Money Down [Remix with Original Vocal]
Join Together [Unedited Remix]

CD 6: SINGLES & SESSIONS 1970-72
The Seeker (Original Single Mix)
Here For More [Original Single Mix]
Heaven And Hell [New Stereo Mix]
Water [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]
I Don’t Know Myself [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]
Naked Eye [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Unedited Mix]
Postcard [Eel Pie Sound Studio – Original 1970 Mix]
Now I’m A Farmer [Eel Pie Sound Studio – New Remix]
The Seeker (Unedited Version)
Water (IBC Version)
I Don’t Know Myself (IBC Version)
Let’s See Action (Original Single Mix)
When I Was a Boy (Original Single Mix)
Join Together (Original Single Mix)
Relay (Original Single Mix)
Waspman (Original Single Mix)
Long Live Rock (Original Olympic Mix)

CD 7: LIVE AT THE YOUNG VIC, LONDON – APRIL 26, 1971
Love Ain’t for Keeping
Pure And Easy
Young Man Blues
Time Is Passing
Behind Blue Eyes
I Don’t Even Know Myself
Too Much of Anything
Getting In Tune
Bargain

CD 8: LIVE AT THE YOUNG VIC, LONDON – APRIL 26, 1971
Pinball Wizard
See Me, Feel Me
Baby Don’t You Do It
Water
My Generation
(I’m A) Road Runner
Naked Eye
Bony Moronie
Won’t Get Fooled Again

CD 9: LIVE AT THE CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SAN FRANCISCO – DECEMBER 12, 1971
Introduction
I Can’t Explain
Substitute
Summertime Blues
My Wife
Baba O’Riley
Behind Blue Eyes
Bargain
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Baby Don’t You Do It
Magic Bus

CD 10: LIVE AT THE CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SAN FRANCISCO – DECEMBER 12, 1971
Introduction To Tommy
Overture
Amazing Journey
Sparks
Pinball Wizard
See Me Feel Me
My Generation
Naked Eye
Going Down

BLU-RAY AUDIO: Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48kHz 24-bit)** Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (48kHz 24-bit)** Steven Wilson Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)* Original 1971 Stereo Mix (96kHz 24-bit)
Baba O’Riley
Bargain
Love Ain’t For Keeping
My Wife
The Song Is Over
Getting In Tune
Going Mobile
Behind Blue Eyes
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Bonus Tracks: Steven Wilson Atmos Mix (48kHz 24-bit) Steven Wilson 5.1 Mix (48kHz 24-bit)
The Seeker (Unedited Version)
Here For More
Now I’m A Farmer
I Don’t Know Myself (Eel Pie Sound Version)
Water (IBC Version)
Naked Eye (Olympic Sound Version)
Pure And Easy
Too Much of Anything
Let’s See Action
When I Was a Boy
Join Together (Unedited Version)
Put The Money Down
Relay (Unedited Version)
Long Live Rock

Label: Polydor
Released: 1973/2023