1970–1971 In September 1970, Townshend penned a song called "Pure and Easy", about the One Note, the first song written specifically for
Lifehouse. In the following two months he wrote approximately 20 additional songs, recording intricate home demos of each. Rather than attempting to tell the story through the lyrics, as he had done with
Tommy, the songs were stand-alone pieces, meant to be elucidated by the movie and detailed sleeve notes to be included with the album. Most of those songs were recorded by the Who in two sessions in the winter of 1970/1971, as well as several "rehearsals" accompanied by guitarist
Leslie West of the band
Mountain and an impromptu live concert at the
Young Vic Theatre in London in April 1971. While Townshend had high hopes for the project, others were skeptical.
Universal Studios, which had recently inked a two-film deal with the Who for the rights to a film version of
Tommy, was not impressed by the screenplay Townshend offered them. A series of spontaneous concerts the Who had held in London failed to produce usable material, and it soon became apparent that the project was doomed to failure. Though many of the songs written for
Lifehouse came to be released on the Who album ''
Who's Next, Lifehouse'' was to remain unfinished for nearly thirty years.
1971–1998 Townshend never abandoned hope that
Lifehouse might someday become a reality. He continued to write songs for the project throughout the '70s, and in 1980 worked together with bandmate
John Entwistle to produce a new screenplay with a new story. Negotiations to produce this film, however, fell apart when Townshend found himself infatuated with the wife of the film's director (a story recounted in the song "
Athena", to be found on the Who album ''
It's Hard''). It was not until 1992 that Townshend again began work on the project. In that year, Townshend recorded the solo album
Psychoderelict, a semi-biographical story told in the style of a
radio play. The hero of this piece, like Townshend, is an aging rock star labouring tirelessly on a 20-year-old rock opera, called "Gridlife Chronicles" in the story, who finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal that jeopardises the future of the project. Several of the synthesizer pieces Townshend recorded in 1970 make their first official appearance on this album. In 1998, Townshend's dream of bringing
Lifehouse to a wide audience finally came true, when BBC Radio approached him with the idea of developing a radio play based on
Lifehouse and incorporating the original music written for the project. The play, just under two hours in length, was transmitted on
BBC Radio 3 on 5 December 1999. ==The box set==