Who’s Next on Rock Band? Not The Who…

Rumor has it that much of the long lusted-for Who’s Next album will never make it to Rock Band. Someone unearthed a February 2008 interview in which Pete Townshend casually mentions that half of the master tracks for Who’s Next have been stolen, which has led to speculation that classic songs like “Baba O’Reily” and “Bargain” will never grace Rock Band’s proverbial teenage wasteland.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (July, 2007), Harmonix made the undershorts of gamers and rockers everywhere just a little tighter when they announced that not only were they going to provide a steady stream of downloadable new tracks, but they were also going to open the festivities with one of the greatest albums of all time: Who’s Next.

In the February interview, The Who’s original guitar superhero makes it clear that many of the master tracks are gone, and that neither he nor anybody else will be able to re-master Who’s Next any time soon. “Who’s Next, it turns out, is no longer a complete set of masters,” Townshend said. “An entire side has been stolen from our vaults at some point. These things happen.”

I’m not getting sucked in by the doom and gloom quite yet. The whole thing’s a bit heavy on the speculation at this point. Before you lapse into a deep depression and smash the living hell out of your Rock Band kit (a la Keith Moon), ask yourself the follow questions:

Is it really possible that in an age where we’ve got enough computing power to sequence the human genome that we don’t have the technology to “un-master” and Rock Bandify a couple of the greatest classic rock songs of all time?

Would The Who really have only one master copy of one of their best-selling albums? And would they really keep that one single priceless album somewhere where it could be stolen? I mean, the original copy of “Baba O’Reily” isn’t really something you accidentally leave sitting on the front seat of your unlocked car while you’re picking up a gallon of milk, is it?

Do they really need the originally mastered version? The Who have performed those tracks over the course of nearly two decades. I’m pretty sure that they must have another recording of those tracks somewhere.

And finally, is it really all that important to have a pitch-perfect reproduction of the original? The Who are getting a little crusty, but the band is still alive and kicking. Ninety percent of us are just going to screw up all the notes anyway.