The Who Sell Out [Digipak]

Performer: The Who
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: This 1995 reissue of THE WHO SELL OUT includes songs and jingles not available on the original version. The Who: Pete Townshend (vocals, guitar, piano); John Entwistle (vocals, bass); Roger Daltrey (vocals); Keith Moon (drums). Additional personnel: Al Kooper (organ). Producer: Kit Lambert. Reissue producer: Jon Astley. Recorded in 1967 & 1968. Originally released on Track (612002/613002). Released in the U.S. on Decca (4950/74950) in 1968. Includes liner notes by Dave Marsh. One of the Who's classics, THE WHO SELL-OUT found the band following the Beatles' lead into concept territory while slyly commenting on the new direction as overtly commercial via its title, its cover art, and the inclusion of many fake advertisements between its tracks. Ironically, the group were involved with real advertisements--some of which are included in this box--at the time of the SELL-OUT sessions. The album has held up over the years--certainly meriting mention with other behemoths of British concept psych like SGT. PEPPER'S, DISRAELI GEARS, and THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN. The record consistently finds footing in the upper reaches of critical all-time best lists. Geffen reissued the album in 2009 as 55-song box set featuring the complete sequenced album in stereo and mono mixes and two discs worth of album-related odds and sods--many of them previously unreleased. "Odorono" appears with its final chorus intact as do an excellent take on Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues" and many versions of "Rael," Pete Townshend's first stab at full-blown rock opera. The set also features a 28-page booklet with liner notes by Dave Marsh and Andy Neill and a poster first included in the album's original pressing. Only three albums into its recording career, the Who had already begun to distance itself from its proletarian R&B beginnings. Here, songwriter Pete Townshend follows up on the rock-opera idea he had introduced on A QUICK ONE with the extended, multi-part composition "Rael" and would later expand upon with TOMMY. The band had also begun exploring the form of the concept album. The songs are connected by bits of fake radio commercials and brass fanfares, and there's a little of everything thrown into the mix. All-out rockers like the vengeful "I Can See For Miles" vie for the listener's attention with the romantic declarations of "Our Love Was" and the soft, folky "Maryanne With The Shaky Hand" on this impressively eclectic album.

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.124) - Ranked #113 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "[I]t was a send-up of consumer culture, and the band's first stab at a concept album." Rolling Stone (10/28/99, p.107) - 4.5 stars out of 5 - "...SELL OUT is the most successful concept album ever...To hear these 13 tracks is to be transported to the wistful, alternatingly painful and joyous territory that was the Who's...adolescence." Melody Maker (7/22/95, p.36) - Bloody Essential - "...a masterpiece. A glorious celebration of pop as useless commodity and a commercially corrupted art form....it crosses art-school intelligence with pop flash with neither being cheapened or degraded, and is, as such, a stupendous achievement..." Q (Magazine) (p.112) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Revisiting it now, you can hear a hint of the monolithic rock that would make The Who a stadium act in the '70s, and the knowing humour that would inspire the best of such Britpop disciples as Pulp and Blur." Mojo (Publisher) (p.117) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[W]hat truly defines SELL OUT is its deference to the well-rehearsed language of pop. Kinks-like character vignettes and PET SOUNDS-parroting textures are the dominant influences." NME (Magazine) (7/22/95, p.49) - 9 (out of 10) - "...Townshend finally free of shackles....a stream of brittle, spangly pop songs...which are simply otherworldly....Like all truly great albums, SELL OUT isn't overrated. It's simply that you might not be ready for it yet." Record Collector (magazine) (p.87) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "'I Can See For Miles' was the powerhouse....'I Can't Reach You' and 'Rael' both strayed beyond the previous template of the accepted notions of pop, rich in motifs that would return more fully-formed on TOMMY."

From the youthful arrogance of their early 1960s recordings to their ambitious rock operas and the more introspective FM rock staples of their mid-1970s albums, the Who raged like a rock & roll inferno. Pete Townshend's guitar fireworks and Keith Moon's larger-than-life drumming combined with the busy basslines of John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey's vocal roar to create one of rock's mightiest noises. The band reconvened numerous times following the hard-living Moon's death in 1978, and even continued to play for several years following the death of Entwistle in 2002.

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