Who's Next At 50

It should have been a double album. That's what they recorded for Lifehouse, Pete's sci-fi rock opera follow up to Tommy. For some reason, he couldn't get the plot or libretto right and ended up paring it down to a single album.

They didn't waste a track. Like Sticky Fingers, IV, and others, it is one of those 1971 albums that dominated AOR FM into the '80s and classic rock channels to this day.

While I'll usually change stations when a couple of the tunes come on....again....I still listen to some of the tacks that don't get much play anymore.

Most of the other material came out as singles, Townshend solo tracks, cuts on the Odds & Sods compilation, or bonus tracks on one of the several expanded definitive deluxe reissues of Who's Next.

The version of "Greyhound Girl" is a live track included on Endless Wire. Here is Pete's demo:

The songs here are not all part of the Lifehouse plot, but they either are from those sessions or were originally part of the concept. Moon's "Wasp Man" was the b-side to "The Relay", and its riff was recycled into "In a Hand or a Face" on The Who by Numbers.

Also appearing on Who by Numbers was "Slip Kid", a song written and demoed for Lifehouse but not recorded at the time. The volume pedal guitar solo quotes the melody that the fiddle plays in "Baba O'Riley" and that the synthesizer or harmonica plays in "Join Together".

Quadrophenia, on the other hand, would've made a great single.

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