Pete Townshend - Praying the Game - Non-Album Tracks (1977-1979)

It's been a while since I've posted any of Pete Townshend's solo material, but I've got a lot more to post. This album finishes of his demos from the 1970s. All the songs are from 1977 or 1978, but most of them were recorded late in 1978, after the release of the Who's "Who Are You," so I figure if this was a released album, it would have come out in 1979.

The songs here represent an unusual bunch, fairly different from what he did before and after. I found some quotes from the book "Before I Get Old - The Story of The Who" by Dave Marsh to help explain things. Glyn Johns, producer of the 1978 album "Who Are You," speaks of the demos that Townshend brought to the Who around 1977:

"The demos were not really reproducible by the band. In other words, he's written grooves and certain sound ideas which were not really the Who - not with Keith Moon in 'em, anyway. Pete's preparation was good, the amount of material was as much. But he'd gone into a different musical thing - which I, for one, was tremendously impressed with. Unfortunately, a lot of it didn't really suit the Who as the Who saw themselves. ... I would have loved to see the Who go in the direction those demos went. They certainly, all of them with the exception of Moonie, had the ability, and I liked the idea of a slight change. But it wasn't to be."

Marsh explains that, "in the wake of the punk upheaval [in 1977], Townshend felt liberated from having to fly the flag of rock and roll. He wanted to turn once again to extended and more 'mature' forms of music."

The songs generally had an acoustic feel. But there also was a large classical influence, with strings featured prominently on many songs. Clearly, this was way out of step with the kind of music the Who usually put out, as well as what was popular in the late 1970s. So the Who took the most "Who-like" songs from the bunch and made the "Who Are You" album out of it. The rest was fully developed on these demos here, but Townshend's solo career hadn't really started yet (his first "real" solo album would come in 1980 with "Empty Glass), so he never released any of these at the time.

Eventually, all but one of these songs would come out in his "Scoop" archival releases, but piecemeal. By putting the songs together chronologically, one can see the musical consistency of what he was trying to do in the late 1970s.

By the way, the song "No Road Romance" came out as a bonus track on the Who album "Who Are You." But that clearly is a recording of a Townshend demo, not a full Who performance. So I'm treating it as such and not including it on a Who collection. (Another "Who Are You" bonus track is "Empty Glass," which is also another Townshend demo. But I'm not including that since the song would end up on his "Empty Glass" solo album.)

01 Never Ask Me (Pete Townshend)
02 Brooklyn Kids (Pete Townshend)
03 Football Fugue (Pete Townshend)
04 I Like It the Way It Is (Pete Townshend)
05 The Ferryman (Pete Townshend)
06 Love Is Wine (Pete Townshend)
07 No Road Romance (Pete Townshend)
08 Broken Nails [From Six Thousand Miles] (Pete Townshend)
09 Praying the Game (Pete Townshend)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ebpff

Thanks to The Lighthouse for the album cover art.