‘Relay’: The Who song that predicted the future
By the time The Who reached the end of the ‘60s, Pete Townshend had done the impossible. After working his way through different types of rock song formats, his invention of the rock opera took on a new meaning for audiences who started to see rock music as more than just a spectacle. Townshend’s desire was to tell stories every time he picked up his guitar, and the original plan was to do it all over again.
During the massive success of Tommy, Townshend was already halfway towards another huge concept entitled Lifehouse, which would feature a new protagonist named Bobby and his journey through a world that has made him deaf, dumb and blind. As Townshend worked away on the concept, the song ‘Relay’ was made to encapsulate the everyday world that the protagonist was living in. With lyrics that read like the instruction manual to a futuristic lifestyle, Townshend made his new lead numb to life because of how separated he is from society.
When speaking about the song’s lyrics, Townshend mentioned wanting to take a normal person like Bobby into his little bubble, telling BBC: “It takes place in about 20 years, when everyone has been boarded up inside their houses and put in special garments called experience suits, through which the government feeds them programmes to keep them entertained. These suits are interconnected in a universal grid, a little like the modern internet, but combined with gas-company pipelines and cable-television-company wiring”.
The goal would be to effectively make Bobby live this brainwashed life until he finds solace in music, with the song ‘Pure and Easy’ representing the massive power that only one note of expression could have on someone in this futuristic world. The entire premise was certainly interesting, but Townshend would never be able to see it through.
After the rest of the band struggled to grasp the concept, Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown trying to get the album made, leading to the band scrapping the album to make Who’s Next instead. Although the concept of Lifehouse was left behind, some pieces remained, with ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Baba O’Riley’ serving as pieces of what the album was supposed to be.
Even after abandoning his vision and moving on to future projects like Quadrophenia, Townshend kept plugging away at the Lifehouse, making it more realistic as technological advancements became more prevalent in the modern age. Although Townshend may have struggled to get the band on board, the rest of the rock scene quickly caught up to what Townshend was talking about. Considering the subject matter, it’s hard to see an album like Radiohead’s Ok Computer as the realised version of what Townshend was about all the way back in 1972 finally brought to life 25 years later.
Regardless of the storyline about a dystopian future, Townshend’s melodies are still as timeless today as they were when they were first released. It must have been exhausting for the rest of the band not to grasp the concept, but Townshend made a masterpiece a few decades too early.
