As Pete Townshend admits in the foreword to the 28-page booklet that accompanies this lavish collection, he never really intended to have a solo career. His debut album, 1972’s beautifully serene and heartfelt Who Came First, was compiled from demos recorded for The Who’s aborted Lifehouse project (namely Pure And Easy, Let’s See Action and Time Is Passing) plus some songs he’d donated to a couple of limited edition tribute albums to his guru Meher Baba.
Much softer, gentler and more introspectively spiritual than anything he’d ever ask Roger Daltrey to sing, they would only make sense to the listening public if Townshend released them under his own name. And so Pete Townshend, Solo Artist, was born.
The seven albums of original material he released during various sabbaticals from The Who are all here: Who Came First; Rough Mix; Empty Glass; All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes; White City: A Novel; The Iron Man: The Musical By Pete Townshend; and two versions of Psychoderelict, one with the interlinking ‘radio play’ dialogue intact and one with the music only.
Taken as a whole, this collection embodies both the best and worst of Townshend the artist and arch conceptualist. It’s no coincidence that his strongest solo albums – the first three – are more or less unencumbered by any overarching conceits; they’re ‘just’ a selection of songs by one of rock’s greatest ever songwriters.
Things start to go awry whenever he gets embarrassingly pretentious or embarks upon a cumbersome concept album/ rock opera. While one can’t fault The Seeker’s restless, if occasionally overreaching, ambition, there is nothing on the last five discs to match the monumental heights of Tommy or Quadrophenia. And that’s putting it mildly.
Still, as well as Who Came First, it’s nice to become reacquainted with the country-folkish rock of Rough Mix, Townshend’s warm and friendly collaboration with great mate Ronnie Lane, and 1980’s new wave-adjacent Empty Glass, which includes the effervescently poptastic US top 10 hit Let My Love Open The Door and the raucously homoerotic Rough Boys – wouldn’t you just love to hear Daltrey belt out that one? A sadly missed opportunity.
