Spirit of radio
Five CDs with 108 tracks, two 7-inch singles, a lavish booklet and memorabilia: the ultimate Who box set. By Jon Savage.
The Who ★★★★★
The Who Sell Out: Super Deluxe Edition UMC/POLYDOR. CD+LP/DL
IN 1967, THE WHO were being pulled in several different directions at once: away from the hit single treadmill, away from smart Mod pop into psychedelia and heavy rock, away from the UK hit parade into the laborious process of breaking America. Released at the end of that year, The Who
Sell Out was a brilliant album that both contained and developed all these contradictory impulses within a concept that caught the post Sgt. Pepper mood and, with its pirate radio theme, plugged into the social history of the time.
This new Super Deluxe box doubles the 2009 reissue: a total immersion into the world of The Who in 1967 and 1968. The story of the album begins, as Townshend tells it, with him being summoned to Chris Stamp’s “really quite unpleasant” Soho office in late summer and being told that the label needed a Who album by Christmas. What existed was a ‘ragbag’ of singles, songs written by all four of the group, and tracks like Relax and
Armenia City In The Sky that caught the psychedelic lightning.
After a mooted collection called ‘Who’s Lily’ was rejected, Townshend needed to come up with an idea. The pivotal song was Odorono – recorded in October – that revealed the path forward: an album tied together with the spirit of the newly outlawed pirate radio stations. With new songs like Tattoo, a sequence of PAMS/Radio London jingles, and original Who adverts for Rotosound Strings, the Speakeasy et al, the result was a winning mix of pop, psychedelia, Hendrix/Cream heaviness and pirate radio flash.
The original LP should be familiar to most readers, but this new edition adds a whole disc of studio sessions that are a pleasure: it’s great to hear The Who in their pomp working things out. It also pulls the story forward to 1968 – a strange year of odd but fascinating singles like Dogs and Magic Bus, and their B-sides. Opening with the Pop Art of Glow Girl and containing the extraordinary Melancholia, Disc 4 hints at the path
Tommy took, as well as a road untravelled. Closing with a disc of 14 Pete Townshend demos – including Beach Boys pastiche Inside Outside USA – this box illuminates the difficult but inspired gestation of a major statement. Straddling surface and spirituality, naked commerce and psychological acuity,
The Who Sell Out still remains fresh 53 years after its original release, and is thus worthy of this lavish and careful archive treatment.