There's no way I can quantify or express how much The Who affected my pimple-faced adolescence. The first time I heard them, it was like grabbing onto an electric fence with both hands. I remember pirating a cassette of Live at Leeds from my cousin David. Buried in my sleeping bag, I pressed my Walkman's cheap styrofoam headphones against my ears, my developing brain sponging up "Substitute," "My Generation" and their explosive cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues." I must have played the cassette over and over until 4 a.m., each consecutive play injecting just enough adrenaline to keep my eyelids open.Up to that point in my life, it was as close to a spiritual experience as I had ever had.
From then on, until my senior year of high school, I would insatiably consume nearly every Who album I could find...except The Who Sell Out. I would actually listen to the abysmal It's Hard, before I would finally give Sell Out a chance. I guess, something about Sell Out scared me. Maybe it was the cover adorned with Pete Towshend (I would call him Town'SH'end for three years before a friend tactfully corrected me) applying an oversize stick of deodorant, and Roger Daltrey curiously relaxing in a tub full of Heinz Baked Beans.
I didn't want a jokey Who, I wanted a Who that would twist and wring out every last drop of teenage alientation that moistened my soul.
Finally in my late 20's I would give it a listen, and in retrospect, I'm glad I waited so long. The brilliance of that record would have been lost on me. Reading John Dougan's mini-commemoration of the record from Continuum's brilliant 33 1/3 series only confirms that the Who's most ambitious and paradoxical record is better heard apart from the rest of the Who's discography.
While some of the 33 1/3 books read like extended liner notes and other's play out like fawning memoirs, this one opts to mine historical context with traces of the author's remembrance of the era. Dougan shines a light on Townshend's infatuation with Pop Art and how Sell Out is as much an artifact of Pop Art as Pop music. Townshend's debts are to Warhol and Peter Blake as much as they are to the Beatles and American R&B.
Dougan also gives nearly a quarter of the book to pirate radio that would flood the U.K. with Rock n' Roll while the stiff-necked BBC transmitted milquetoast crooners and classical music. The book rambles on the subject and loses some focus here, but the subject is necessary, particularly for American readers who don't understand the effect of the pirate radio's attack on the effete BBC and how that was instrumental in preparing the way for the British Invasion.
The book isn't all history though. Dougan tours through each song on the record, as well as its b-sides, jingles and other songs that would be included on Sell Out's 1995 remastered and expanded edition. I was shocked to find out that John "Speedy" Keen, a friend of the band, composed and sang lead one of my favorite tracks on the album, the psychedelic-tinged "Armenia, City in the Sky."
Like most of the 33 1/3 books, Dougan's The Who Sell's Out, appeals to the hardcore fans, liner-note fiends and pop connoisseurs.
Thanks to Bree for the book!
