Pete Townshend: Who Came First — 45th Anniversary Edition

Pete Townshend
Who Came First — 45th Anniversary Edition
(UME)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Who fans have a lot to be happy about this week. Not only is the band’s 1968 live album getting a belated release but Pete Townshend’s first solo project from 1972 receives the deluxe re-issue treatment.

Considering that the songs on Who Came First were never meant to be heard by the public, this double disc with a 24-page booklet, including new notes from Townshend, is a classy and expansive package. At the time, Townshend was following the teachings of Meher Baba. He recorded tracks for Baba on two private pressing, limited edition albums titled Happy Birthday and I Am. Those were heavily bootlegged. To thwart that, his label took some of those tunes, added demos meant for Lifehouse (the notoriously aborted follow-up to Tommy), and cobbled together a 38-minute compilation that became Townshend’s official solo debut.

It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, albeit a charming one. Townshend didn’t write three of the nine selections, contributed only music to two others and doesn’t even appear on one (“Forever’s No Time at All” is sung by Billie Nicholls, with instruments played by Caleb Quaye). But with tunes as strong as “Pure and Easy,” arguably one of his finest compositions, “Nothing is Everything (Let’s See Action),” both later released in full-blown Who versions, a lovely, heartfelt rendition of the Jim Reeves country hit “There’s a Heartache Following Me,” with a rare Townshend piano solo, and the pretty great Ronnie Lane penned — and sung — “Evolution,” the patchwork collection succeeds on its own modest terms, as long as expectations are kept low. Townshend’s music to Baba’s writings are turned into the closing “Parvardigar,” a spiritual paean whose clunky lyrics are saved by one of the guitarist’s more passionate recordings. The overall tone is far more rustic, subtle and laid back than Townshend’s acerbic approach with his full-time band.

Who Came First has been reissued with extra tracks twice before, but the 17 that appear on the second platter up the ante. Eight are previously unreleased; songs or edits of material totaling 73 minutes, nearly double the running time of the initial disc. It’s a mixed bag with keepers such as the ballad “There’s a Fortune in Those Hills,” but a batch of filler including nearly 10 interminable minutes of the instrumental backing track to “Baba O’Reilly,” (twice the Who’s Next version), and a sprightly live solo performance of Quadrophrenia’s “Drowned” recorded in 1976 which seems to have no connection to this venture.

Crisply remastered audio is from the master tapes and this 45^th Anniversary Edition is likely (hopefully) the last word on this pleasant, generally enjoyable but hardly essential set.