The Who –
Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock
(soniclovenoize
reconstruction)
Side A:
1. Relay
2. Long Live Rock
3. Is It In My Head?
4. Put The Money Down
5. Join Together
Side B:
6. Cut My Hair
This is the
final entry in a series of alternate Who albums, a reconstruction of the
unreleased album Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock, a project scrapped in 1972 for
sounding too much like Who’s Next.
Intended as a concept album about The Who themselves, the idea was
further developed the following year into their seminal double album
Quadrophenia. Rather than simply
emulating Pete Townshend’s original demo sequence for Rock is Dead – Long Live
Rock, this reconstruction attempts to replicate what The Who had intended for
the album just before abandoning it during their European Tour in August 1972:
standalone singles on Side A and a rock opera occupying all of Side B. All the best and most dynamic masters were
used and all tracks volume adjusted for continuity.
1971 was a
landmark year for The Who, releasing Who’s Next—born from the ashes of the
aborted Lifehouse album—and achieving some of the band’s greatest hits
throughout the year. After a brief but
much-deserved break after the Who’s Next Tour was completed, the band slowly
began to regroup in the spring of 1972 to plot it’s follow-up. Although creative mastermind Pete Townshend
swore to the media that he would never tackle another long-form concept album
after Tommy’s success and Lifehouse’s demise, he had a jumble of concepts
bouncing around in his head, waiting for the opportunity to use them. Drawing from several alleged
unrecorded Lifehouse leftovers and additional newer compositions, Townshend
recorded demos that charted out the entirety of this next Who album,
provisionally titled Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock. A final 40-minute compilation tape of Townshend's demos contained:
“Relay”; “Get Inside”; “Love Rein O’er Me”; “Woman’s Liberation (Riot in the Femail Jail)”; “Long Live
Rock”; “Is It In My head?”; “Put The Money Down”; “Can’t You See I’m Easy”; and
“Join Together”.
Heading into
Olympic Studios with Glyn Johns in May 1972 to properly record band versions of
Pete’s Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock demo album, the band tracked suburb versions of
“Join Together”, “Relay” and “Is It In My Head?”. The following month, three more of the songs were
tracked: “Long Live Rock”, “Put The Money Down” and “Love, Reign O’er Me”. At this point in time, a conceptual theme
emerged and was applied to the project: an autobiographical history of The Who
themselves. Early brainstorming included plans to musically represent the various eras of The Who:
from early-60s Mod to late 60s neo-psyche to early 70s stadium rock.
This idea was quickly discarded and the band instead stuck with a jumble
of songs vaguely about themselves or their rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, particularly
in “Join Together” and “Long Live Rock”.
While The
Who seemed to have a good start on a new album, the band themselves were not so
sure. Reviewing the six songs properly
tracked—as well as the remaining songs from Townshend’s Rock is Dead demo that
still needed to be recorded (the flimsy faux-Eastern “Can’t You See I’m Easy”, the
meaningless whimsy of “Get Inside” and the abysmally dismal “Woman’s
Liberation”)—the collection seemed as a pale imitation of Who’s Next. Wanting an album of more substance,
Townshend told Johns that he wished to write another rock opera to at least
occupy one whole side of the album, with the best of the material from the
Olympic sessions occupying the other.
Needing more time to write the opera, the album’s release date was
postponed from August to December and “Join Together” was released as a single
in June, an apparent preview of the upcoming album. After tracking a throw-away Keith Moon
original entitled “Wasp Man” for future B-side use, the band embarked on a brief
tour of Europe in August, debuting both “Join Together” and “Relay” and touting
them as a part of their upcoming album.
While promoting the tour, Townshend dropped hints of the rock opera he
was in the process of composing, claiming it was about teenage adolescence and reminiscent of earlier mid-60s-era Who singles, and was to be called “Cut My
Hair”.
By the end
of the tour in September, Townshend began to have doubts about the intended
Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock album. Most
of his thoughts centered on the rock opera provisionally titled “Cut My Hair”;
as he added new sections to it, the piece began to outweigh the collection of
songs recorded at Olympic in the spring.
It is at this point when Townshend’s plan changed: instead of having one
side of standalone songs vaguely about the history of The Who with a mini rock
opera about adolescence on the other side, Townshend combined the two concepts
into one. Going as far back as 1971, Townshend had always wanted to
make a single album that embodied the character of each individual member of The
Who, so this was woven into “Cut My Hair” and
expounded into the length of one whole album.
Now, the adolescent protagonist of the rock opera became a schizophrenic, harboring
the four personalities of The Who: Townshend (the “good boy”), Daltrey (the “bad boy”),
Entwhistle (the romantic) and Moon (the madman). That autumn, Townshend continued writing new
pieces for the opera, with Rock Is Dead – Long Live Rock’s own death signaled
by the single release of “Relay” b/w “Wasp Man” in November 1972, a stopgap as
Townshend bought time to polish off this song cycle.
Early 1973
saw The Who build their own 16-track recording studio out of an old church,
dubbed Ramport Studios. By March Townshend had
completed demoing his new song cycle and The Who convened at Ramport in June to
record their opus. Aside from “Is It In
My Head?” and “Love, Reign O’er Me”, nothing from the previous year’s Olympic
session was used. The resulting
album—now titled Quadrophenia—became what many hail as the band’s masterpiece,
a seamless double album with a concept more comprehensible than Lifehouse but
musically more impressive than Tommy.
While Quadrophenia is certainly the last great work of The Who, is it
the real album it could have been? Can
we join together the castaway material and revive Rock is Dead?
The most
obvious way to reconstruct Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock is to simply gather
the six songs from the 1972 Olympic sessions and pair them with Pete’s demos of
“Get Inside” (found on the Quadrophenia box set), “Woman’s Liberation” and
“Can’t You See I’m Easy” (found on bootlegs), and sequence them as per his demo
reel—and possibly even throw on “Wasp Man” for good measure! The problem is that this assemblage becomes a
very weak album and one can understand why The Who scrapped it. As a more interesting and musically fulfilling experiment, we will instead attempt to construct Townshend’s August concept
of having the “Cut My Hair” rock opera filling an entire side of the album and
leaving the best of the Olympic sessions to their own side. But what exactly would have the mini rock
opera “Cut My Hair” consisted of?
Luckily, recording
dates for Pete Townshend’s demos are stated in the Quadrophenia box set. Plowing through the data, Townshend had
essentially demoed the album over two distinct periods, separated by The Who’s
August 1972 Tour (roughly spanning April-July 1972 and October 1972-March
1973). Based on this, it is reasonable
to believe that any material demoed during that first period was meant for the
“Cut My Hair” mini-rock opera, since it occurred before Rock Is Dead’s death in
September. These would include:
“Drowned”, “Anymore”, “Joker James”, “Cut My Hair”, “Four Faces”, “We Close
Tonight”, “You Came Back”, “Dirty Jobs” and “Doctor Jimmy”. Using a supposed imaginary timeline, this
reconstruction assumes The Who wrapped Side A of Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock
before the tour, but required additional time to properly record Side B’s mini
rock opera; thus any material recorded the following year in the Quadrophenia
sessions proper is fair game.
Side A (the standalone
singles half) begins as Townshend’s demo of Rock is Dead does, with “Relay”,
here the full-length version taken from The Who Hit 50. This is followed by the title track, “Long
Live Rock”, taken from the 2011 SACD remaster of Odds & Sodds. “Is It In My Head?”—here considered its own
song separate from any concept, as was originally intended in 1972—follows,
taken from the 2012 SACD remaster of Quadrophenia, the original 1973 mix of the
song. “Put The Money Down” from Odds
& Sodds is next, with Side A concluding with “Join Together” from The Who
Hit 50.
Side B (the rock opera
half) consists of an edit of “Dirty Jobs”, “Cut My Hair”, “Doctor Jimmy” and “Love,
Reign O’er Me”, all taken from the 2012 remaster of the original mix of
Quadrophenia. Much like “A Quick One
While He’s Away”, all four tracks are crossfaded into one 20-minute continuous
piece, more or less about adolescence. We will hope for a suspension of disbelief from the listener and request to set aside the knowledge of Quadrophenia's plot. Here, the "Cut My Hair" mini opera describes a teenage protagonist who works a dead-end job and receives guff about his hair and clothes from his elders. He laments his self-destructive nature and at it's conclusion, has an epiphany that only love can save him.
This
resultant Rock is Dead – Long Live Rock becomes a midpoint between Pete’s
scrapped nine-song demo reel and the eventual Quadrophenia album. It becomes a much better listen minus the
atrocious “Women’s Liberation/Riot In The Female Jail”, and including what
could be thought of as a condensed Quadrophenia itself on Side B. And with that, let love reign o'er you. Special thanks to Jon Hunt for his original
artwork, found on his blog.
Sources
used:
The Who - Quadrophenia
(2012 SACD remaster – original mix)
The Who - Odds & Sods (2011 SHM remaster)
The Who – Hits 50!
(2014 Geffen Records)