First off, I wanted to preface this by saying that I did not finish the book. In fact, I read very little of the book, but it is such a funky book that i wanted to give it a full review anyways. My father LOVES Pete Townshend, and when I told him about the book, he sat down and started reading my copy right then and there. He loved it and kept pointing out fun tidbits to me. I did not get the book, but it is clearly a big hit with Pete Townshend fans.

I’m sorry but what is this

A mega-convoluted story about music being illegal

Reads like Pete was trying to make his Yellow Submarine or The Wall, but it was just too nonsensical and boring. Some of the visuals are cool, but the story starts off being very confusing and doesn’t make much more sense as time goes on? The concept is really cool - a world where music is banned, people are forced to sleep their lives away to give benefits to the wealthy and powerful. I don’t know. I don’t really listen to The Who so maybe the point is lost on me.

The book was wild. The art was good, and I enjoyed the almost-simplistic colors throughout the book.

I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are my own

Life House was exactly what I thought it would be. Semi confusing story plot that makes sense in the end accompanied by amazing illustrations. I enjoyed my time reading this illustrated novel.

Lifehouse was an abandoned Who concept album / film from the mid seventies, songs of which turned up on a Who's Next and a bunch of latter albums. Some of their best known CSI themes start with this project. This is a comic reimagination of the concept, and aspects of the abandoned screenplay (partially abandoned because Townshend got obsessed with Theresa Russell, his directors wife - see Athena on It's Hard). But partially abandoned because, well, its bobbins.

The comic tries to draw together its fundamental theme around music as a universal force, by creating a dystopian world where music has been banned for centuries and there's an underground resistance trying to bring it back to create the one note to save all humanity. Weird;y the visuals for much of this probably would have looked great in a film, though creating the ultimate music of the spheres will always hit the Bill & Ted problem of playing the ultimate song that clearly isn't. Lifehouse has already had a number of iterations - radio play version in a box set reissue - so all the narrative problems here are set in stone. And there are some decisions made here which feel very post-facto, in particular the line of despotic leaders Jumbo 1-7 have clearly been retooled to reflect Thatcher. Its good looking and interesting but if you tried to do an original comic with this plot you'd never get funding.

I wasn't a super huge fan of this book. It was interesting, I guess, and the characters were fine. It did get kind of confusing and convoluted after a while.

An eco post-apocalyptic dystopian 200 years into Britain’s fascist regime who has banned all music. Citizens of London are tethered day in day out to the government’s dreamy technology. This story follows fight of the underground resistance group and the Londoners’ plight under the fever dream of the regime. Life House has a classic vintage sci-fi feel, quintessentially British characters and, of course, jam packed with Who Easter eggs. The art is wonderful and this would make a fantastical animation. There’s a lot of fascinating parallels to today’s world and I cannot wait to see what the vinyl sized printing of this comic looks like when it releases!

Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Project has been around for over fifty years. Some of its music became Who's Next in 1971, and sporadic tracks appeared on later albums, singles and solo projects. Around twenty years ago Pete revisited Lifehouse, delivering a box set of related material including a radio play which went part of the way to explaining the narrative at its core.
In 2023 a huge and expensive box set arrived which gathered everything related to Lifehouse, including all the band recordings, Townshend's demos and comprehensive sleeve notes. It also included a graphic novel which finally depicted the storyline and ideas that the writer was attempting to convey. This graphic novel is now released separately.
It is an impressive work of art delivering disturbing visions of a dystopian future where music has been outlawed and it brings the complex thoughts that Townshend tried to express to life in vivid colours and images, with a cast of powerful characters helping to explain his cultural and moral ethos. Finally the world may appreciate the depth of the writer's visionary genius - in 1970/71 he foresaw the internet, music streaming, corrupt capitalism, and the commodification and manipulation of human emotions. The depth of its ambition is startling. Ideally the book should be read in conjunction with the music to appreciate Lifehouse's full impact but it is an amazing journey on many levels and well worth the effort needed to fully appreciate its worth.

Pete Townshend’s Life House is finally coming to light, more than 50 years after he first conceived the idea of a sci-fi rock opera as a follow up to Tommy. Ultimately abandoned, some of the songs were used in Who’s Next and also his first solo album. Who’s Next has now been reissued with a slew of demos from Life House Chronicles, and a graphic novel of Life House is to be published December 19, 2023.

The Who have always been in my musical pantheon. While Townshend’s music has, for me, withstood the test of time, the Life House concept, as portrayed in the forthcoming novel, has not. It’s yet another dystopian setting, this one in a Matrix type environment (I give him credit for that idea). Music has been banned, and of course there are underground revolutionaries seeking to bring it back and cause the downfall of the repressive regime. His belief that music holds a special power in our lives has always resonated with me, but the way this idea is expressed in the book just made me want to cringe. The writing was sophomoric and the artwork, while at times stunning, was pedestrian for the most part.

This was, for this fan of The Who and of Townshend’s, a huge disappointment.

My thanks to Netgalley and Image Comics for providing an advance copy of Life House.

My thanks to both NetGalley and Image Comics for this graphic novel adaptation of a lost work by one of the most visionary and loudest musicians of the twentieth century.

Most artists have works that are unfinished, a half page of scribbled lines that just didn't seem to go anywhere. Sometimes these are used to build other works. Some are just sent out unfinished. The poem Kublai Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was interrupted while Coleridge was writing it. Getting back to it later, Coleridge was at a loss to where he was going with it. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys had the infamous Smile album, a work that broke him for years. Pete Townshend of the Who had Life House a multi-media planned follow-up to Tommy, that would work on film, stage, album and in the mind. Ideas keep being added, songs changed, plans made, but one day Townshend knew it was all for naught. Townshend just didn't have it in him. Many of the songs were adapted for the Who's Next album, with themes used later on solo albums. In celebration of this lost project Townshend has released a large music package and worked with new creators to make a graphic novel of the story. Pete Townshend's Life House is based on the screen plays by Pete Townshend adapted by writers James Harvey and David Hine, with artist Max Prentis inker Mick Grey and lettered by Micah Myers, and comes in a 12.25 x 12.25 just like a vinyl album size.

The story begins in a future, of maybe even a dream. Almost 200 years after the pollution and he climate begin to poison the Earth, and humans began to battle over the same things human battle over all the time England is under totalitarian rulership with no freedom, responsibilities and more importantly no music. Instruments and music have destroyed, and the only release that people get is spending their days on the Grid, a social system that uses dreams to power the nation state. Some people still roam free, and to this is added a young woman, who is older than she looks, with a gift for music and knowledge that all she knows is wrong. Following the sounds of the world the river, the polluted streams she finds a duo on the way to a show. A concert, held by a guru who walked away from the government, built a force field and with his followers is putting on an underground show, headlined by the recently defrosted Who, with the band getting some cybernetic additions to help them play. And then the story really gets weird.

A wild story with a strong European and Heavy Metal art feel, though done by an Australian that asks a lot of questions, with a lot of philosophical thought and well hippie ideas. Sort of if Rush's 2112 was influenced more by Michael Moorcock books and not Ayn Rand. There are a lot of questions on the role of music, the importance of art, and the power of playing in front of people, questions that Townshend seems to have struggled with most of his career. Actually much of what the band was going through is reflected in the story. Once one gets the feel the story is quite interesting, a little trippy and a bit again hippy, but good. The artwork is extraordinary, the larger format giving the pages a lot of room to fill, with huge trucks, a nice Rolls-Royce, creatures and lots of biomechanics and wires. Familiarity with the works of the Who will be helpful, knowing ideas, and when songs are being quoted will help readers understand the plot better. However the book does stand well on its own, and the pages are really gorgeous.

Recommended for fans of the Who, or fans of European comics, and 1970's science fiction. Townshend was right on many things when he wrote this, The Grid seems very much like social media, the Earth is dying and people seem comfortable having leaders tell them what to listen too, and how to act. Humans seem real easy to fool again.