Standing before an open window on the twenty-fourth floor of New York City’s former Navarro Hotel, Pete Townshend fell into the throes of what he calls “a classic, extreme, psychotic New York anxiety attack”. It was March 1971, and The Who had come to the city on the recommendation of their manager, Kit Lambert, in a last-ditch effort to record a musical project that had been plaguing the guitarist. Lifehouse, as he called it, was the concept album that would surpass 1969’s Tommy, The Who’s groundbreaking rock opera.
Since 1966, Townshend had been developing the format, first with his nine-minute mini-opera A Quick One, While He’s Away, and then with the musical suite Rael on 1967’s The Who Sell Out, an album of songs presented as an afterthought, in the…
