Which Albums Was Pure and Easy on

October 05, 2022 Post a Comment

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This might be a quick and obvious and answer to die-hard Who fans, but the only version of Who's Next that I've ever owned is the 1995 CD that had 16 songs on it that I picked up as a teenager.
This version of Who's Next includes "Pure and Easy" which, as far as I understand was the first song Pete Townshend had written for Who's Next's precursor, Lifehouse, and had been recorded during those sessions.

While I knew that there was 'bonus material' on the Who's Next CD that I had, as a teenager just getting into the group and it being the dark ages of the 90s I thought that the 'bonus' material started with track 11, a cover song "Baby, Don't You Do It". It wasn't until a year or so later when I found the gold CD at the store when I saw that the original Who's Next had only nine songs on it that ended at "Won't Get Fooled Again".

I believe both Pete and Roger Daltry mentioned in the Classic Albums documentary on Who's Next that "Pure and Easy" was something of a lynch-pin for the Lifehouse project. And yes, I know that Lifehouse ultimately became Who's Next (best. failure. ever.) but every song that Pete wrote on Who's Next had been intended for Lifehouse anyway, so if it had already been written and recorded during these sessions why was "Pure and Easy" left off of Who's Next?

This version is excellent. Was it not completed in the 70s? Did Pete/Roger/John Entwistle do some additional recording on this in the 90s?
9la Forum Resident

Musically "Pure and Easy" is very similar to "The Song Is Over", except that it's guitar based rather than (Nicky Hopkins's) piano based. But it's different enough that it makes a great bonus track.
The answer is: Only so much music can fit on a vinyl record. There was no anticipation of a format that would exist 20 years later. Some songs just don't make the cut. Stevie Nicks is probably still not happy that Silver Springs got cut from the Rumours album.
And I think Silver Springs is a fine song, but doesn't belong/fit/make sense on Rumours. I feel the same about Pure and Easy.
Pure and Easy was also on Pete's solo album Who Came First.
I always thought that Who's Next should have kicked off with Pure & Easy and ended with The Song Is Over.
That solo LP (1972) came out a year after Who's Next (1971). And I'm not sure if Pete purposefully held the song back so that he could use it on his solo album. Maybe he only put it on Who Came First because it was cut from Who's Next and he didn't want the song to go to waste.

Dog Ear and WhoTapes1 like this.
And "Blind Wille McTell" didn't make it on Infidels either.
An what should have been removed to make room? Something has to give.
I still think the band should have just put out all the basic Lifehouse songs along with My Wife and When I Was a Boy as a double album and called the thing Lifehouse. No one would have cared about the failed concept except PT. Or just keep the name as Who's Next.
Likewise "Red River Shore" on Time Out Of Mind.
I will say the song titles for side two are rather curiously lined up on the back of Who's next.

I've always assumed "Pure and Easy" lasted long enough to make the artwork than when it was pulled, it was scrubbed from the track listing as well.
EDIT: You'll have to excuse the picture quality; I found it on 45cat.
Hmmm. That may have been the case. Interesting....

funknik and mBen989 like this.
I'm sure Lifehouse would have been like this.
I read recently that was the original thought but either management or the label nixed the idea as they thought another double album so soon after Tommy was asking too much of their fan base. It was a fruitful period for Pete; my understanding is he used some of that material for many more albums (Who Came First, By Numbers & Who Are You to name a few). Disc 3 on Thirty Years of Maximum R&B brings some of it back together in a way I really enjoy. And the sound of that collection is stellar IMHO.
I could imagine Pete thinking that if the concept album was not going to be realized in full, it would be best not to include a song that was central to that concept.
Wes_in_va Trying to live up to my dog's expectations

I love the extended version of Who's Next, but to my ears Who's Next is perfect. It needs nothing changed.
I'm super excited that we have new formats that allow us to hear all the tracks that weren't chosen for the original album but in the end, for what the original needed to be it is as prefect an album as there is, again, to me.
I've listened to it probably thousands of times and I just never tire of it. Probably the only record I can say that about.
dee Senior Member

Pure and Easy was completed as a band performance in April '71 live on stage at the Young Vic.
A version of the song in the studio was eventually released in a complete, but edited form different in content from the demo, and from that '71 live performance, in 1974 in which it was already a finished recording and likely mix from June? of '71. When no one could understand Pete's explanations of Lifehouse, it seems Pure and Easy, as you note, perhaps THE integral song of the project, went by the wayside when Glyn Johns and perhaps and eventually others suggested to scrap the script, movie, and double album entirely and thus deliver an attempted unconnected but nevertheless diluted and more adumbrated edition of Lifehouse. Townshend's more expansive 'vision' of what kind of work should be 'next' and one that would offer a completely new stage show for band and audience was part of the Lifebouse idea as well. But hence no Pure and Easy, a song to this day that Townshend laments not being on 'WN' as he has says it should have been. More accurate info is available than mine as well as different perspectives but fwiw did the best I could at this time trying to answer your question. Yes, great song, edited, or complete, on Who Came First, at the Young Vic, at Stargroves or was at Olympic I'm sorry I don't remember for sure, the version at Record Plant in NY, just about any incarnation of the song is at least a good one. Hope something in there was of some use to your question. Great tune.
dee Senior Member

Yes, the above was at least speculated or spelled out in Marsh's book if not elsewhere but then again it was 2+ years since Tommy. Plus the single Leeds and the single MBBAB albums had successfully filled in that gap of time.
In all my years on this site, first as a lurker and eventually an occasional contributor, this is the first post on that has sent me to the dictionary
dee Senior Member
I love having it on "Odds and Sods". I really enjoy this hodge-podge of an album!
There wasn't enough room on the album?
They wanted to give Odds and Sods some more weight.