Pete Townshend - Sacred Animal (1980)

Pete Townshend released his second studio album, Empty Glass, in April 1980 through Atco Records. His first studio album of original material, as opposed to a collection of demos, it was recorded in late 1979 in between The Who's touring commitments. At the time, the band was undergoing their first tour after drummer Keith Moon's death and the remaining member's controversial decision to carry on as a band. That of course means that right after recording his solo album, Pete would be encumbered with the task of writing the next Who LP, with him being the band's chief songwriter. Undaunted, he spent the first two months of 1980 writing and recording demos of new material intended for his band, all while having just recorded an album and completed an American tour mere months before. Overworked and increasingly unreliable due to his ever-worsening substance abuse issues, Townshend presented the other three Who members with a nine-song demo of new material intended for their upcoming album. Once they heard it, they were less than excited with the material, especially lead singer Roger Daltrey. Although singling out some of the songs for praise, the band, in general, seemed to think the material didn't suit their style or strengths very well, even claiming material from Empty Glass such as "Rough Boys" to be more befitting of the Who than what had been given to them.

With that, a frustrated Townshend was left to keep working on new songs for the band until July, when recording would begin in earnest for the next Who album since Who Are You two years prior. When the album did eventually come out in 1981, it still had many of the faults seen on that February 1980 demo: the songs simply weren't suited for the band. For sure, the record's production and the fact that it was the band's first release after Keith Moon's death didn't help, but Pete's suspicion he couldn't write for the band anymore couldn't help but grow after Face Dances' failure. With that in mind, the central question to today's reconstruction is: What if The Who had broken up in 1978? By taking the inverse route to my previous Empty Glass reconstruction, we will be imagining a world where Pete Townshend released a follow-up to his solo Empty Glass instead of working on Face Dances with The Who. As far as rules go, considering Pete was working at an absurdly fast pace, this album is limited to early 1980, meaning songs from late 1980 such as "Popular" or "Somebody Saved Me" aren't going to be included. Having roughly the same ten tracks as Empty Glass would also be ideal, to maintain consistency, and we will only be considering songs with Pete on lead vocals, for obvious reasons. With that out of the way, here's what Pete's second solo album of the eighties could have looked like:

Teresa (Scoop 3)

It's in You (Scoop 3)

How Can You Do it Alone? (Scoop 3)
Daily Records (It's Faces Demos)

You're So Clever (Scoop)

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You Better You Bet (Another Scoop)

Dirty Water (Scoop)

Don't Let Go the Coat (Another Scoop)

Dance it Away (Chinese Eyes)

What is Love (It's Faces Demos)

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Pete Townshend - Sacred Animal (1980)

Pete Townshend in a London pub, sometime in 1980.

When putting this album together, the nine-song demo assembled for The Who on February 18th, 1980 consisting of "Teresa," "It's In You," "How Can You Do It Alone," "Daily Records," "You Better You Bet," "Dirty Water," "Don't Let Go The Coat," "Dance It Away" and "What Is Love" will be used as a base tracklist, with us avoiding having to sequence this from scratch. These were mostly recorded in London, at AIR Studios and Eel Pie, as well as Pete's home studio in Soho, with further recording and assembly done in Los Angeles, with the song "Teresa" being entirely written and recorded in one night. Not to say that we didn't change anything from the original demo, we will add Pete's demo of "You're So Clever" in between "Daily Records" and "You Better You Bet". Since the Empty Glass album had Who Are You rejects such as "Keep on Working" and its title track itself, it's only fair we should include an Empty Glass reject to pad out this album and make it ten tracks long. And that's how the strange "You're So Clever" ends up as the fifth track on side one, with "You Better You Bet" now opening side two. Finally, since this is not just a collection of demos but an imaginary studio album, any of the songs with a studio version can be upgraded. That's the case with "It's in You", "Dirty Water" and "Dance it Away", with the first two being studio rehearsals and the last being a fully-fledged studio recording.

Sacred Animal was apparently one of the working titles for the Empty Glass album, while it was being recorded. I liked it a lot, so I decided to use it for this album, as Face Dances would be too obvious and it's always good to reuse a good title, isn't it? Accompanying it is a cover, which edits Face Dances' cover to only feature the paintings of Townshend's. As an album, the best songs on it are great, but the lesser songs are considerably weaker than the ones on its predecessor, making this into what is overall a less concise album than Empty Glass. The songs do benefit considerably from being outside the Who context, however, so even if the songs aren't fantastic, they sound more at home on a Pete Townshend solo record than they did on Face Dances. As far as side length goes, things are pretty unbalanced, with side one being a lot longer than side two and coming close to the 25-minute mark. However, since the exact same thing happened with Empty Glass, we'll allow it. Maybe Pete doesn't care much about side length! And as for the lead single, "You Better You Bet" coming hot on the heels of "Let My Love Open the Door" would be interesting to see, with the possibility of having two top 10 hits in a row. This just goes to show that Pete's songs would be much better suited by his solo career, especially since with his previous album, he'd already proved that he could do it alone.

Sources:

- Pete Townshend - Scoop

- Pete Townshend - Another Scoop

- Pete Townshend - Scoop 3

- Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes

- The Who - It's Faces Demos [Bootleg]

- The Who This Month! 1980