Artist	Song

Comment:

We’re gonna take a leap and presume you already know the “real” versions of these Who songs; if not, stop what you're doing, click over to our [i]Who[/i] Essentials, and listen. Now we’re pulling back the curtain on the versions [i]behind[/i] those versions — Townshend’s demos of soon-to-be Who classics. You couldn’t strip the Who’s unofficial anthem, “The Kids Are Alright,” down to a more essential pairing — a 20-year-old Townshend double-tracking his heart out, Rickenbacker in tow, on a home tape recorder. Seven years later, it was an entirely different story: on his solo debut, [i]Who Came First[/i], he gives his fans their first-ever listen to a Who demo: an early yet fully fleshed-out version of “Pure and Easy,” the spiritual core of their never-finished rock opera/movie/stage show, [i]Lifehouse[/i]. And when it came to “Love, Reign O'er Me,” the soul-baring climax to [i]Quadrophenia[/i], Pete’s mere [i]sketch[/i] is so riveting that producer Glyn Johns elected to drop its piano riff, unaltered, into the final album mix. Some granite-rough, others mirror-polished — these career-spanning demos give you a chance to peek inside the head (and heart) of one of rock’s true geniuses.

Feedback: