The Who - 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car (1970)

The Who released their fourth studio album, Tommy, through Track Records in May 1969. Their first rock opera, it was the culmination of songwriter Pete Townshend's ambition to create an album-long narrative out of his songs. It was something he'd experimented with in the past, and even hinted at with songs such as "A Quick One While He's Away" or "Rael", but this was the first time he'd managed to do it at such a scale. The album was also The Who's breakout hit in America, where it cemented the band's status among the elite of 60s rock groups and saw them perform their biggest concerts yet, performing Tommy in its entirety as the centerpiece of their set. Given its importance for their career, one question stayed on the band's mind: how the hell do you follow that up? Well, the easy way out is to release a live album, which they did, recording a live show at Leeds University in February 1970 and releasing it as a stopgap, to buy some time before needing to deliver product again. Thankfully, little by little Pete was starting to write new songs, taking a live jam the band played after "My Generation" in 1969 and turning it into "Naked Eye". Shortly thereafter, he wrote the ode to spiritual yearning "The Seeker", which became the first song to be recorded in the studio after Tommy that January at IBC studios, alongside b-side "Here for More", with both being released as a single that March.

The band then relocated to Pete's garage, repurposed and renamed Eel Pie Sound Studios, where they recorded five new songs, including the aforementioned "Naked Eye" and other new tracks such as "Now I'm a Farmer" and John Entwistle's "Postcard". Due to the very idiosyncratic location where they were recording, drummer Keith Moon jokingly came up with the title 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car, which became the working title of an EP. For whatever reason, that didn't happen, and those five, alongside live staple "Heaven and Hell" which had been recorded that April at IBC Studios, remained in the vault. Undeterred, the band keeps touring, playing the Isle of Wight and other gigs, and garage songs such as "Water" and "I Don't Even Know Myself" are premiered live. However,  Pete still seemed obsessed with the idea of coming up with a new rock opera, as he didn't think simply releasing a collection of new songs would be good enough to follow up what many (himself included) considered his magnum opus. So it was good timing, when in September 1970 he wrote the song "Pure and Easy", the stepping stone of the Lifehouse concept, the concept he was searching for all year. He then abandoned this batch of songs and started anew with Lifehouse, writing 15 songs for it before it also was abandoned, unfinished. But what if they had made an album out of their 1970 sessions?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to my "7ft. Wide Car, 6ft. Wide Garage" post from March 2018. The release of the Who's Next Super Deluxe Edition last month has finally given us the complete, unedited '70s Eel Pie studio sessions, which means we can finally recreate the most accurate possible version of this lost album. But besides that, most of the rules remain the same. No overlap with Who's Next is allowed, and likewise with Lifehouse, with the only exception being made for songs that were written for the 1970 album and only later retrofitted into Lifehouse, such as "I Don't Even Know Myself". Also, only studio recordings are allowed, so as great as the Isle of Wight versions of "Water" and "I Don't Even Know Myself" are, we'll be sticking with the studio takes of them. The same goes for covers, so their medley of "Shakin' All Over/Spoonful" the band recorded for the BBC and frequently played live will sadly be omitted here. The new remixes found in the Deluxe box set will take preference over the old Odds and Sods released versions as I believe they're the closest to what would actually have been released in 1970. So we'll be using those unedited versions, and only editing or fading out when time constraints are affected, or when the take of a song simply runs too long for our taste. With all that out of the way, here's what our revamped version of this lost Who album looks like:

Heaven and Hell (New Stereo Remix)

Drowned (March 1970 Demo)

Now I'm a Farmer (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

I Don't Even Know Myself (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

Water (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

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The Seeker (Unedited Version)

Postcard (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Original 1970 Mix)

There's a Fortune on Those Hills (September 1970 Demo)

Here For More (Original Single Mix)

Naked Eye (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

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The Who - 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car (1970)

Entwistle, Daltrey, Moon, and Townshend performing at the Isle of Wight, August 1970.

Coming back to the studio for the first time since finishing Tommy, The Who recorded "The Seeker" and its b-side "Here for More" in January 1970 at IBC Studios in London. Customary show opener "Heaven and Hell" was recorded shortly after that, during an April 1970 session meant for broadcast at the BBC alongside some other material, but ended up being released as the b-side to the "Summertime Blues" single from the Live at Leeds album. And finally, between March and May 1970, The Who recorded five songs meant for the unreleased 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car EP at their own Eel Pie Studios: "Water", "I Don't Even Know Myself", "Now I'm a Farmer", "Postcard", and "Naked Eye". With that alone, we already have eight songs and 30+ minutes' worth of vintage 1970 Who, with five Townshend originals, two Entwistle songs, and a rare Daltrey composition. We can even give it a sequence, with customary show opener "Heaven and Hell" as the leadoff track, encore classic "Naked Eye" as the album closer, and hit single "The Seeker" opening up side two, and all the other songs being distributed accordingly where I felt they'd fit best, with four on each side. However, we still need at least one or two more songs to fill out an album, as ten songs and more or less 40 minutes is what they'd aim at during this period. Now our goal is to find two sensible additions to our reconstruction.

The first of those will be Quadrophenia's "Drowned". Demoed in March 1970 as an ode to Pete's spiritual guide Meher Baba, but seemingly forgotten or set aside until it was shoehorned into the Quadrophenia narrative with mixed results, it's featured here in its original demo version from 1970. It's a fantastic song, one of Townshend's best, and works much better away from any rock operas or concept albums, as a sign of Pete's growing spiritual concerns. The second would be "There's a Fortune in Those Hills", which was demoed in mid-1970 at roughly the same time as the first Lifehouse demos, but was never meant for the rock opera. It was, however, mentioned in a Rolling Stone article from the same period as being a song "meant for a post-Tommy studio album which got shunted aside for Lifehouse", which means the album we're trying to reconstruct here, making for a natural fit. With that, we can add those two tracks to our preliminary sequence, one to each side, and consider ourselves satisfied. "Drowned" becomes the second song on side one, making for a great one-two punch with "Heaven and Hell", while "There's a Fortune in Those Hills" fits quite snugly in the middle of side two. Also, I do believe that 1970 studio band versions of the two songs would have Roger sing lead on "Fortune" and Pete sing lead on "Drowned", as he did the better job with it out of the two in my opinion.

A 44-minute album with one 23-minute and one 21-minute side, 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car is a very strong album, surely not as great as Who's Next but certainly good enough to stand up on its own among The Who's discography. A nice transitional album from Tommy to Lifehouse, giving Pete the time to develop the latter at his own pace, as the task of following up Tommy would have already been taken care of by this album. There's also no need for a lead single, as "The Seeker" already served that function, and the album's title is simply the title of the proposed EP that never got released, which I got backward in 2018. To go along with that, the artwork is an updated take on my old cover from back in the day, using the same picture but a different font and colors. The entire album, including "Drowned" and "There's a Fortune in Those Hills" was recorded in early to mid-1970, well within the constraints of this reconstruction and before Lifehouse existed, making it as consistent as it possibly can get. Speaking of which, "Drowned" could be replaced in Quadrophenia by material that's lesser in quality but which fits much better in the narrative, such as "We Close Tonight". Given the many great songs featured in this album and how easy this was to put together, it really is a shame such a record didn't come out when it was supposed to, as we missed out on the Who's very own version of Garage Rock.

Sources:

- The Who - Who's Next [Super Deluxe Edition]

- The Who - Quadrophenia [Super Deluxe Edition]