The Who Sell out

Bruce Beatlefan (February 26, 2008)

The Who Sell Out has been inexplicably overshadowed by other Who albums (Tommy, Who's Next, Quadrophenia) and by other iconic 1967 albums (Sgt Pepper, Disraeli Gears, Are You Experienced, Days of Future Passed, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn). Perhaps it's hard to take seriously an album cover of Roger Daltrey submerged in a tub of baked beand and Pete Townshend applying an oversized deoderant stick to his scrawny bod. Maybe the album suffered by sounding a little like all of the above albums without fitting into one particular sound...but as the years go by my feeling grows stronger that The Who Sell Out may be the best of all the aforementioned albums!

The songs of this album definitely present an impressive array of sounds and attitudes, many of this familiar to Who fans and some which are unique to this album (for instance, is there another love song from The Who as radiant as "Our Love Was"?). Like the other 1967 icons, The Who Sell Out offers psychedalia ("Armenia City in the Sky", Relax"), zany humor ("Tattoo", "Medac"), sizzling guitars ("I Can See For Miles", "Jaguar"), and aching sensitivity ("Sunrise", "I Can't Reach You"). Here you can find a bit of despair ("Melancholia"), patriotism ("Rael"), naughtiness ("Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand"), a moral lesson ("Silas Stingy"), a cool horns arrangement (Someone's Coming), groupies ("Girl's Eyes"), a plane crash ("Glow Girl") and Heinz Baked Beans. You can even find a top ten single with "I Can See For Miles" (The Who's only American Top Ten song).

Tying together all this superb music is a series of fake-advertisements and station-identifications which make the collection sound like a pirate radio station (which England outlawed in the summer of 1967), most of which were assembled by the Wayne's World style of goofy humor from bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon. The entire package is especially attuned to the tastes and feelings of teenagers, who spend a most of their time laughing at their deepest fears, worrying over things like pimples and tattoos, and memorizing nonsensical advertising jingles.

Even in its original form, The Who Sell Out (which ended at the track "Rael 1") was a classic; with the additional tracks in the expanded CD version, an already great album is now on the short list of the greatest rock and roll albums ever made.