Coming on March 26th is the “Super-Deluxe Edition” of The Who Sell Out in a massive box set, with a total of 112 tracks over five discs. The collection includes never-before-heard outtakes and Pete Townshend demos — along with a heaping dose of replica memorabilia from the era.
The Who Sell Out, which was originally released on December 15th, 1967, was the pinnacle of the group's pop art period and featured tracks interspersed with original radio spots, commercials and public service announcements in an effort to ape England's then pirate radio stations.
The album included the band's sole Top 10 hit — “I Can See For Miles” — along as the instant concert staple, “Tattoo,” along with such fan favorites as “I Can't Reach You,” “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand,” “Sunrise,” “Relax,” and “Our Love Was.”
Roger Daltrey told us that the Who always prided itself on being able to nail every genre they tackled: “We were very proud of our pop history. We're a pop group. We're a rock group now — but we started as a pop group, and there's nothing wrong with pop. Pop's got a very valuable place in music history. And a three-minute single, they're all gems, usually, and they still stand up. A good song, is a good song, is a good song.”
In the Who documentary Sensation: The Story Of 'Tommy,' Pete Townshend shed light on how he played into the interest of the burgeoning counter culture to help drive Tommy into the blockbuster it eventually became: “We’d had a very strange time. We’d had a terrific two-year run of hit singles in the UK, and I’d kind of run out of steam, I’d just written myself out. The final song that I wrote for the Who’s single was, that was successful, was ‘I Can See For Miles,’ and after that, I felt I had nowhere to go. But I felt if we could achieve anything — If I could achieve anything — if it had a spiritual subtext, it would straddle the word of pop from which we’d come and this new hippie world, which seemed to be about new age values, and well, we all know what hippies stood for.”
