The Top 10 Reissues of 2023, including Bob Dylan (who appears twice), Elton John, the Who and Neil Young.
The reissue that tops our list missed its silver anniversary by a couple of years, but the hefty box set finally traces the path from one of rock's most mythical shelved recordings to one of the most acclaimed works of the '70s with demos, outtakes, leftover sessions and live tracks. the list was compiled by rock magazine UCR
10. Bob Dylan, 'Shadow Kingdom'
9. Elton John, 'Honky Chateau (50th Anniversary Edition)'
8. Drive-By Truckers, 'The Complete Dirty South'
7. Elvis Costello, 'The Songs of Bacharach & Costello'
6. The Replacements, 'Tim: Let It Bleed Edition' t Bleed Edition'
5. Neil Young, 'Chrome Dreams'
4. Bob Dylan, 'Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17' , 'Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17'
3. Various, 'Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos'
2. Joni Mitchell, 'Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years 1972-1975'
1. The Who, 'Who's Next/Life House'
Have you seen The Who on the Tube?! The London Underground is populated with Who's Next | Life House posters featuring the iconic artwork across major stations in the London Underground network. Keep an eye out! I’m going mobile. Beep beep! pic.twitter.com/NhI5yAqKhU
— The Who (@TheWho) September 18, 2023
Who's Next set feature 89 previously unreleased tracks — including songs from the unfinished Life House project.
The Who announced the release of multi-format Who’s Next/Life House on September 15 — the massive set will feature 155 tracks, of which 89 are previously unreleased and 57 include new remixes. Price $305.98
A press release touts the project as a “complete picture” of Pete Townshend’s songwriting, promising to captivate a new audience with his “visionary description of a future that has, in many ways, come true.”
The Super Deluxe edition of Who’s Next | Life House will contain 10 CDs, all remastered from the original tapes by longtime Who engineer Jon Astley, plus a Blu-ray Audio disc with newly-created Atmos and 5.1 surround mixes of Who’s Next and 14 bonus tracks by in-demand artist and producer Steven Wilson.
Highlights of the 155-track format include Townshend’s demos for Life House; The Who’s 1971 session recordings at the Record Plant in New York; sessions at Olympic Studios in southwest London from 1970-1972; and, for the first time, two newly mixed and complete 1971 concerts from London’s Young Vic Theatre and San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium. Timeless highlights of those sessions and performances include ‘Baba O’Riley’, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, on which Daltrey created the most awe-inspiring scream ever heard. Those classics continue to illuminate Who concerts to this day.
The box set also contains a 100-page hardback book with Townshend’s aforementioned introduction and new sleeve notes by Who experts and compilers Andy Neil and Matt Kent. Also included is Life House – The Graphic Novel, a newly commissioned, 172-page hardback book overseen by Townshend that tells the story behind the project. Completing the set are a 20” x 30” poster of a Who gig in Sunderland, England, on 7th May, 1970; a 25.5” x 34.25” poster of a date at Denver Coliseum, Denver, CO on 10th December, 1971; a 20-page concert programme from the Rainbow Theatre in London on 4th November, 1971; a 16-page programme from the band’s October/November 1971 tour of the UK; a collectible four pin button set; and an 8” x 10” colour photo of The Who with printed autographs.
Watch the making of Who's Next -The Who’s fifth album, had its roots in the futuristic rock opera Lifehouse project
The Who recorded Who's Next with assistance from recording engineer Glyn Johns. After producing the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they relocated to Olympic Studios to record and mix most of the album's remaining songs.
They made prominent use of the synthesizer on the album, particularly on "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley", which were both released as singles. The cover photo was shot by Ethan Russell and made reference to the monolith in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as it featured group members having urinated against a concrete piling protruding from a slag heap.
According to the sleeve notes of the expanded CD reissue of Who’s Next, the script of Lifehouse was set in the near future and concerned a totalitarian society devoid of rock music, in which the oppressed youth discover that rock had a purifying, liberating effect upon themselves. The ‘Lifehouse’ was the place where the music was played and where the young people would collect to discover rock music as a powerful, almost religious cult.
While it was still being considered as a film project, Pete Townshend planned to 'workshop' the process, in front of an interactive audience to demo up the material for and with the band. Accordingly it was arranged to book the Young Vic theatre in Waterloo, London, and an audience was assembled, but the process didn’t really work.
After all of the above, Glyn Johns took the reins and marshalled The Who at Olympic Studios in Barnes, south London, from 12th April 1971, building some tracks on the New York sessions and starting others from scratch. Although the Lifehouse album as a concept had been abandoned, much of the project remained present
Townshend later claimed in an interview that, at least in part, Baba O' Riley was about what he witnessed during the Who's performance at Woodstock - that Baba O' Riley was about the absolute desolation of teenagers at Woodstock, where many of the audience were incapacitated by LSD or other drugs. The contradiction was that it had become a celebration: ‘Teenage Wasteland / We're all wasted!’
