Lifehouse (rock opera)
Lifehouse's story was inspired by Pete Townshend's 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."
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.
[1] To do this he wanted to adapt his newly acquired hardware, VCS3 and ARP synthesisers and a four-channel quadraphonic PA system, to create a machine capable of generating and combining personal music themes written from computerised biographical data.
According to 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 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 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.
[4] Townshend went wild, working out a complex scenario whereby a personal profile of each concertgoer would be compiled, 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.
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.
They decided to shelve most of the songs in favour of a single album, hoping that it would have "a sharper focus and greater impact" than the concept of Lifehouse had become.
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.
[7] Lifehouse has several variations in its storyline: In the world in which the album is set, pollution is so bad that the populace are forced to wear Lifesuits,[1] suits that could simulate all experiences in a way that no one would have to leave home.
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.
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 Rapture, and the people observing the concert through their Lifesuits have vanished as well.
It features a far more apocalyptic storyline, where a tyrannical government is overseen by Jumbo 7, who bans music and plans to use a "silver child" named Valentina to weaponize sound.
Mary awakens from "grid-sleep" and finds the Lifehouse, where she learns about music from a guru-like musician and hacker named Bobby and leads the concert.
