- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Who is one of the greatest British rock bands of all time, pegged below the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to be sure, but not by much.
The Who – The Who Sell Out (1967): The Who is one of the greatest British rock bands of all time, pegged below the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to be sure, but not by much. Pete Townshend (guitar) and John Entwhistle (bass) met in high school and began playing in a Dixieland jazz band – called “trad jazz” in the U.K. – and the two later moved to the Detours, a more hard-edged band that featured Roger Daltrey (lead vocals) on lead guitar; he became the vocalist when Townsend was added. The Detours gained a reputation for their ferocious covers of American R&B songs, plus one classic song “Shakin’ All Over” that was originally recorded by a British band called Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. Once the Beatles arrived on the scene, the band realized that they needed a name change, so they took the quizzical name the Who. Just before they started to work on their first record, Keith Moon (drums) joined up.
Unlike most rock bands, Pete Townshend is talented enough to play both lead guitar and rhythm guitar, so the Who is essentially a power trio plus lead vocalist, with posters proclaiming their music as “Maximum R&B”. Pete Townshend accidentally damaged his guitar when it struck the ceiling at one gig; in frustration, he smashed the guitar to bits and finished the show with another guitar that he had recently acquired. After he found that many people came to the concert just to see his guitar be destroyed, that became a part of their act, with Keith Moon also attacking his drum set. While the Who had four Top Ten U.K. hit singles in a row by early 1966, they barely penetrated the American record charts. Even their #2 single “My Generation”, featuring Roger Daltrey’s faux stuttering during the verses, only made it to #74 on the Billboard singles chart. With the release of “Happy Jack”, the Who’s first Top 40 hit in the U.S. (the song reached #1 in Canada), the Who began to get more exposure in the States. After an appearance at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, the Who landed a spot in the landmark concert event Monterey Pop, where the Who and their label mate Jimi Hendrix tried to outdo each other to see who could be more outrageous – Hendrix used a cigarette lighter on his guitar before smashing it. For their third album The Who Sell Out – the studio album that precedes their legendary rock opera Tommy (1969) – the band and their record label pulled out all the stops; and Pete Townshend put together a concept album that mimicked a pirated broadcast, complete with fake commercials and jingles, as a loving tribute to U.K. pirate radio stations. Unbeknownst to us in the USA, where the marvelous songs and albums by the British Invasion bands were selling at a record-breaking pace, BBC Radio was not broadcasting that music in their home country. As portrayed in the movie Pirate Radio (2009) – called The Boat that Rocked in the U.K. – and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, and Kenneth Branagh, pirate radio stations were located on boats in the North Sea and broadcast the forbidden rock music into homes throughout Great Britain, as the authorities tried to shut them down. The Who Sell Out includes their classic song “I Can See for Miles” (the only single released from the album), a barely contained explosion of sound with all four bandmembers at the absolute top of their game. In order to create that big sound, the Who went to three different studios, including Gold Star Studio in Los Angeles. The song proved so difficult to perform in concert that “I Can See for Miles” is their only hit song that the Who quit playing live. Pete Townshend was certain that “I Can See for Miles” would be the first single by the Who to hit the top of the charts; while not quite reaching that level, the song is the biggest hit single by the Who in the U.S., reaching #9 in the Billboard Hot 100, plus #10 in the U.K. and #4 in Canada. As to the cover photographs, Heinz Baked Beans and Charles Atlas are well-known in the U.S.; and the other two products pictured on the front and back covers, Odorono and Medac are real European companies. While the other songs on The Who Sell Out are not particularly well known, they are among the best work by the Who, potently mixing power pop and psychedelic rock. The album opens with a strained listing of days of the week with a burst of music in the background and has other radio announcement blurbs elsewhere on the album; I heard this kind of thing (and maybe some of these actual recordings) regularly during promo spots on local radio stations when I was growing up. The commercials corresponding to the cover photographs are shown as separate tracks, with the exception of the one for “Charles Atlas” that opens Side 2. Other great songs on The Who Sell Out include “Armenia City in the Sky”, “Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand”, “Our Love Was”, “Can’t Reach You”, “Relax”, and “Rael”. According to Wikipedia, two of the instrumentals on Tommy, “Sparks” and “Underture” expand on a theme introduced in “Rael”. The Who Sell Out is widely regarded as one of the Who’s best albums; it is certainly their cleverest. While it is the Who’s lowest charting album in the U.K., at #13 The Who Sell Out is a hit record by anybody’s standards; the album made it to #48 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.