For the 2005 album by the band Lifehouse, see Lifehouse (Lifehouse album). Lifehouse is an alternative band from the United States, popular with mainstream audiences. ... Lifehouse is the eponymous third album by the group Lifehouse. ...

Lifehouse was a science fiction rock opera by The Who intended as a follow-up to Tommy. It was abandoned as a rock opera in favor of creating the traditional rock album, Who's Next, though its songs would appear on various albums and singles by The Who, as well as Pete Townshend solo albums. In 1978, the Lifehouse project was revisited by The Who including new science fiction related songs by John Entwistle with a slightly changed plot on Who Are You. In 2000, Townshend revived the Lifehouse concept with his set The Lifehouse Chronicles and the sampler Lifehouse Elements. On May 1, 2007, Townshend released an online software called the The Lifehouse Method in which any "sitter" could create a musical "portrait". Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... The Whos Tommy, the first album explicitly billed as a rock opera A rock opera or rock musical is a musical production in the form of an opera or a musical in a modern rock and roll style rather than more traditional forms. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ... Alternate cover Deluxe edition cover Tommy is the first of The Whos two full-scale rock operas (the second being Quadrophenia), and the first musical work explicitly billed as a rock opera. ... Singles from Whos Next Released: 1971 Released: 1971 Whos Next is an album by The Who. ... Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. ... Year 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1978 Gregorian calendar). ... John Alec Entwistle (October 9, 1944 – June 27, 2002) was an English bass guitarist, songwriter, singer, and horn player, who was best known as the bass guitarist for rock band The Who. ... Who Are You is an album by British rock band The Who. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... The Lifehouse Chronicles is a CD box set released in 2000 by Pete Townshend. ... This single CD set is a sampler of the 6 CD Box Set The Lifehouse Chronicles released by Pete Townshend in 2000. ... is the 121st day of the year (122nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... The Lifehouse Method is an Internet site where applicants can sit for an electronic musical portrait made up from data they enter into the website. ...

Original concept

By 1969, in the aftermath of Tommy, Pete Townshend had started writing more meaningful songs and concepts. "Lifehouse" story was inspired by his experiences on the Tommy tour: "I’ve seen moments in Who gigs where the vibrations were becoming so pure that I thought the whole world was just going to stop, the whole thing was just becoming so unified." He believed that the vibrations could become so pure that the audience would "dance themselves into oblivion". Their souls would leave their bodies and they would be in a type of heaven; a permanent state of ecstasy. The only reason this did not happen at Who gigs was because there was a knowledge in the listener's mind that the show would end and everyone would wake up and go to work the next morning. These ideas were directly linked to the writing of philosopher Inayat Khan, a Sufi musician who had written about the connection of vibration and sound with the human spirit. Another source of inspiration for Townshend was Meher Baba, who claimed to be an avatar of Brahman (God). This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Hazrat Inayat Khan (July 5, 1882 – February 5, 1927) was the founder of Universal Sufism and the Sufi Order International. ... Sufism (Arabic تصوف taṣawwuf) is a system of esoteric philosophy commonly associated with Islam. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The ten avatars of Vishnu, copyright BBT In Hindu philosophy, an avatar (also spelt as avatara) (Sanskrit: , ), most commonly refers to the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of a higher being (deva), or the Supreme Being (God) onto planet Earth. ... Brahman (nominative ) is the concept of the supreme spirit found in Hinduism. ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ...

What Townshend was aiming to achieve in Lifehouse was to write music that could be adapted to reflect the personalities of the audience. To do this he wanted to adapt his newly acquired hardware, VCS3 and ARP synthesizers and a quadraphonic PA, to create a machine capable of generating and combining personal music themes written from computerized biographical data. Ultimately, these thematic components would merge to form a "universal chord". To help this process, The Who would encourage individuals to emerge from the audience and find a role in the music. The VCS 3 (from Voltage Control for Studio with 3 components) is an oscillation effects musical analog synthesiser, initially made in 1969 by EMS. The VCS 3 was smaller and less cumbersome than the Moog Taurus and similar early synthesizers. ... ARP Instruments, Inc. ...

The Lifehouse concept

Lifehouse began as a story written around several songs. Pete Townshend: "The essence of the story-line was a kind a futuristic scene…It’s a fantasy set at a time when rock ’n’ roll didn’t exist. The world was completely collapsing and the only experience that anybody ever had was through test tubes. In a way they lived as if they were in television programs. Everything was programmed. The enemies were people who gave us entertainment intravenously, and the heroes were savages who’d kept rock ‘n’ roll as a primitive force and had gone to live with it in the woods. The story was about these two sides coming together and having a brief battle."

Under those circumstances, a very, very, very old guru figure emerges and says ‘I remember rock music. It was absolutely amazing—it really did something to people.’ He spoke of a kind of nirvana people reached through listening to this type of music. The old man decides that he’s going to try to set it up so that the effect can be experienced eternally. Everybody would be snapped out of their programmed environment through this rock and roll-induced liberated selflessness. The Lifehouse was where the music was played, and where the young people would collect to discover rock music as a powerful catalyst — a religion as it were. "Then I began to feel ‘Well, why just simulate it? Why not try and make it happen?’"

The plan was for The Who to take over the Young Vic theatre with a regular audience, develop the new material on stage and allow the communal activity to influence the songs and performances. Individuals would emerge from the audience and find a role in the music and the film. When the concerts became strong enough, they would be filmed along with other peripheral activity from the theater. A storyline would evolve alongside the music. Although the finished film was to have many fictitious and scripted elements, the concert footage was to be authentic, and would provide the driving force for the whole production. The Young Vic is a theatre in the South Bank area of central London, which specialises in giving opportunities to young actors and directors. ...

Pete went wild, working out a complex scenario whereby a personal profile of each concert-goer would be worked out, from the individual’s astrological chart to his hobbies, even physical appearance. All the characteristics would then be fed into a computer at the same moment, leading to one musical note culminating in mass nirvana that Townshend dubbed ‘a kind of celestial cacophony.’ This philosophy was based on the writings of Inayat Khan, a Sufi master musician who espoused the theory that matter produces heat, light, and sound in the form of unique vibrations. Taking the idea one step further, making music, which was composed of vibrations, was the pervading force of all life. Elevating its purpose to the highest level, music represented the path to restoration, the search for the one perfect universal note, which once sounded would bring harmony to the entire world. Despite Pete’s grandiose plans, the project had its problems. The theater had its own schedule of drama productions, and wasn’t available on a regular nightly schedule that Townshend insisted was necessary for the band to sustain a "euphoric level" of performance. Pete: "The fatal flaw…was getting obsessed with trying to make a fantasy a reality rather than letting the film speak for itself." Eventually Pete had to let go of Lifehouse for his own sake.

Pete’s inability to translate the ideas in his head to those around him eventually led to a nervous breakdown. "It was a disaster." No one apart from himself actually understood the whole concept of Lifehouse. Kit Lambert, an integral part of the communication between the members of The Who, was missing. Pete had rejected a Tommy film script written by Lambert. Kit, dejected, frustrated and hurt, had moved to New York. With Tommy, Lambert had served as Townshend’s "interpreter," explaining "to the willing but befuddled people around me what I was on about." The film was indefinitely postponed until the album had been issued. The band went to Glyn Johns to produce their collection of songs, intended for a double album. They decided to shelve most of the songs in favor of a single album, hoping that it would have "a sharper focus and greater impact" than the concept of Lifehouse had become.

Elements of the Lifehouse concept predated and resembled virtual reality and The Matrix movies. This article is about the simulation technology. ... The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving. ...

Townshend also revisited the concept, in modified form, in his radio play and recording Psychoderelict, which incorporated outtakes from the Lifehouse/Who's Next sessions and demos. In the plot of Psychoderelict, a reclusive rock star named Ray High is lured out of retirement by a fan-letter hoax between his manager and a gossip columnist, ultimately staging and broadcasting a virtual reality concert similar to the Lifehouse climax. He continued discussion of these themes in his later opus The Boy Who Heard Music. Psychoderelict was a concept album written, produced and engineered by Pete Townshend. ... The Boy Who Heard Music is a internet novella written by Pete Townshend. ...

Plot summary

Lifehouse has three variations in its storyline:

Who's Next version

In the album, pollution is so bad that the populace are forced to wear Lifesuits, suits that could simulate all experiences in a way that no one would have to leave home. It has been suggested that Pollutant be merged into this article or section. ...

The suits are plugged into a huge mainframe called the Grid, similar to today's Internet, but which also contains tubes for sleeping gas, food, and entertainment; supposedly, someone could live out tens of thousands of lifetimes in a very short period within the Grid. The Grid is controlled by a man named Jumbo.

The story begins when a farming family in Scotland hear of a huge rock concert called Lifehouse occurring in London, a sort of post-apocalyptic Woodstock. Their daughter, Mary, runs away to join the concert. They don't wear Lifesuits because they are supposedly out of the pollution's range and they farm the crops that the government buys to feed the Lifesuiters. Bobby is the creator of Lifehouse; he is a hacker who broadcasts pirate radio signals advertising his concert, where the participants personal data are taken from them and converted into music, quite literally "finding your song". At the climax of the album, the authorities have surrounded the Lifehouse; then the perfect note rings forth through the combination of everybody's songs, they storm the place to find everybody has disappeared through a sort of musical Nirvana, and the people observing the concert through their Lifesuits have vanished as well. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... It has been suggested that Post-holocaust be merged into this article or section. ... The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was a historic event held at Max Yasgurs 600 acre (2. ...

Who Are You version

Set two hundred years after the events in the Who's Next version, this tells the story of another attempt at a Lifehouse concert. The concert holders are helped by "muso", a cult that worships music, and are hated by Plusbond, the group that runs the Grid and the Lifesuits. This article does not discuss cult in its original sense of religious practice; for that usage see Cult (religious practice). ...

Lifehouse Chronicles version

Main article: The Lifehouse Chronicles

Ray and Sally are farmers who grow, as Sally said, "dead potatoes". Their daughter, Mary, runs away from home to visit a hacker who has fascinated her with pirated radio advertisements. Ray goes to try to find his lost child and along the way he meets his childhood self, Rayboy, and his imaginary friend, the caretaker. The Lifehouse Chronicles is a CD box set released in 2000 by Pete Townshend. ...

Intended Track Listing

Main article: Songs from the Lifehouse Project

Below is the Track Listing of the Lifehouse Chronicles as shown on Pete Townshend's website. In parentheses is the original album by the Who (if any) that the song appeared on. Those songs that the Who have never performed have the "†" symbol next to them. Those songs that were originally a non-album single have the "±" symbol next to them. All songs were composed by Pete Townshend. Under Construction These tracks were at various times, part of the Lifehouse Project written by Pete Townshend for the Who. ... Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. ...

1. Teenage Wasteland (†)
2. Going Mobile (Who's Next)
3. Baba O'Riley (Who's Next)
4. Time Is Passing (Odds & Sods [Remastered])
5. Love Ain't For Keepin' (Who's Next)
6. Bargain (Who's Next)
7. Too Much Of Anything (Odds & Sods)
8. Music Must Change (Who Are You)
9. Greyhound Girl (Encore Series 2006)
10. Mary (†)
11. Behind Blue Eyes (Who's Next)
12. Baba O'Riley (Instrumental) (†)
13. Sister Disco (Who Are You)
14. I Don't Even Know Myself (Who's Next [Remastered])
15. Put The Money Down (Odds & Sods)
16. Pure And Easy (Odds & Sods)
17. Gettin' In Tune (Who's Next)
18. Let's See Action (Live At The Royal Albert Hall)(±)
19. Slip Kid (The Who By Numbers)
20. Relay (Live At The Royal Albert Hall)(±)
21. Who Are You (Who Are You)
22. Join Together (±)
23. Won't Get Fooled Again (Who's Next)
24. The Song Is Over (Who's Next)

Singles from Whos Next Released: 1971 Released: 1971 Whos Next is an album by The Who. ... Odds and Sods is a compilation album by British rock band, The Who. ... Who Are You is an album by British rock band The Who. ... Encore Series 2006 is a series of recordings from The Who Tour 2006-2007. ... Live at the Royal Albert Hall was the second live album by English acoustic roots duo Show of Hands. ... The Who By Numbers (1975) is an album by British rock band The Who. ... Live at the Royal Albert Hall was the second live album by English acoustic roots duo Show of Hands. ...

Intended personnel

• Pete Townshend - songwriter, guitar, keyboards, banjo, vocals
• Roger Daltrey - vocals, harmonica, guitar, percussion
• John Entwistle - bass guitar, trumpet, French horn, saxophone, tuba, sousaphone, vocals
• Keith Moon - drums, percussion

Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. ... A songwriter is someone who writes the lyrics to songs, the musical composition or melody to songs, or both. ... For other uses, see Guitar (disambiguation). ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... For other uses, see Banjo (disambiguation) The banjo is a stringed instrument of African American origin adapted from several African instruments. ... A backup vocalist is a vocalist that sings in harmony with the lead vocalist, with other backup vocalists, or alone but in the background of a song. ... Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE (born 1 March 1944) is a rock vocalist, songwriter, and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. ... In music a singer or vocalist is a type of musician who sings, i. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Guitar (disambiguation). ... Percussion instruments are played by being struck, shaken, rubbed or scraped. ... John Alec Entwistle (October 9, 1944 – June 27, 2002) was an English bass guitarist, songwriter, singer, and horn player, who was best known as the bass guitarist for rock band The Who. ... The electric bass guitar (or electric bass) is a bass string instrument played with the fingers by plucking, slapping, or using a pick. ... The trumpet is the highest brass instrument in register, above the French horn, trombone, baritone, euphonium, and tuba. ... The horn is a brass instrument consisting of tubing wrapped into a coiled form. ... The saxophone (colloquially referred to as sax) is a conical-bored instrument of the woodwind family. ... For other uses, see Tuba (disambiguation). ... Sousaphone player in Washington Square, New York City The sousaphone is a type of tuba often used in a marching band. ... A backup vocalist is a vocalist that sings in harmony with the lead vocalist, with other backup vocalists, or alone but in the background of a song. ... Keith John Moon (August 23, 1946 – September 7, 1978) was the drummer of the rock group The Who. ... A drum kit (or drum set or trap set - the latter an old-fashioned term) is a collection of drums, cymbals and other percussion instruments arranged for convenient playing by a sole percussionist (drummer), usually for jazz, rock, or other types of contemporary music. ... Percussion instruments are played by being struck, shaken, rubbed or scraped. ...

Related albums

• The Lifehouse Chronicles released by Pete Townshend
• Lifehouse Elements released by Pete Townshend
• Odds & Sods released by The Who
• Who's Next released by The Who
• Who Are You released by The Who
• The Who By Numbers released by The Who
• It's Hard released by The Who

The Lifehouse Chronicles is a CD box set released in 2000 by Pete Townshend. ... Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. ... This single CD set is a sampler of the 6 CD Box Set The Lifehouse Chronicles released by Pete Townshend in 2000. ... Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer. ... Odds and Sods is a compilation album by British rock band, The Who. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ... Singles from Whos Next Released: 1971 Released: 1971 Whos Next is an album by The Who. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ... Who Are You is an album by British rock band The Who. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ... The Who By Numbers (1975) is an album by British rock band The Who. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ... Its Hard is the 10th studio album by British rock band The Who and the second album after drummer Keith Moon died. ... The Who are an English rock band that first formed in 1964, and grew to be considered one of the greatest[1] and most influential[2] bands in the world. ...

External links

• Ear Candy Magazine article
• The Lifehouse - web site devoted to The Who and Pete Townshend's "Lifehouse" Project
• Crawdaddy Magazine - interview with The Who, with focus on the "Lifehouse" project
• The Lifehouse Method - Townshend's official online "Lifehouse" creation project