The Who Sell Out - A Look Back

Pick up the new copy of MOJO Magazine with its full-on coverage of The Who Sell Out LP of 1967.

MOJO Blog writes... "1967 was not looking like Pete Townshend's year. Already bored of psychedelic drugs, and scared to death by fellow Track Records recording star Jimi Hendrix, he fretted about the way forward. January saw music press reports that Townshend was planning an opera set in 1999 about China invading the world, while March saw the release of Pictures Of Lily, an elephantine single narrated by a wanking sexual cripple.

"I suppose what I wanted was to rescue the pop song," he later recalled, "which seemed to me to be in serious trouble in the late '60s, partly because of the post-psychedelic wetness that seemed to be everywhere. You could write a song that went, Weee love you, weeeee love you, and it would get to Number 4 in the charts. I was outraged and desolate because I knew I was too much of a cynic to ever be able to do that."

Between May and November, amid punishing touring commitments and Who-ish mishaps (Entwistle broke a finger punching a picture of a "a well-known pop star" backstage at the Stevenage Locarno; Moon suffered a hernia recording Melancholia at Advision studios in London), an album's worth of moody, contemplative songs were recorded. While The Who Sell Out would make the odd concession to psychedelia (Armenia City In The Sky, written by Townshend's pal "Speedy" Keen, remains a bad-trip counterpoint to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds), it countered that "wetness" in the air with lashings of sardonic humour and a defiantly unhippyish preoccupation with consumer culture."