The Who – The Who Sell Out (Vinyl 2 X 7″ + 5CD Box Set) * * *

Super Deluxe Box Set Collecting 112 tracks (46 Unreleased) including 14 Unheard Pete Townshend Demos Plus 80-Page Hard-Back Full-Color Book and Memorabilia Galore!

Initially released in December 1967 and described latterly by Rolling Stone as “The Who’s finest album” The Who Sell Out reflected a remarkable year in popular culture. As well as being forever immortalized as the moment when the counterculture and the ‘Love Generation’ became a global phenomenon and ‘pop’ began metamorphosing into ‘rock’. The Who Sell Out was originally planned by Pete Townshend and the band’s managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, as a loose concept album including jingles and commercials linking the songs stylized as a pirate radio broadcast. This concept was born out of necessity as their label and management wanted a new album and Townshend felt that he didn’t have enough songs. The ground-breaking original plan for The Who Sell Out was to sell advertising space on the album but instead the band opted for writing their own jingles, paying tribute to pirate radio stations and to parody an increasingly consumerist society.

The homage to pop art is evident in both the advertising jingles and the iconic sleeve design created by David King, then art director at the Sunday Times, and Roger Law who later created the Spitting Image TV show. The sleeve features four advertising images, taken by renowned photographer David Montgomery of each band member: Odorono deodorant (Pete Townshend), Medac spot cream (Keith Moon), Charles Atlas (John Entwistle) and Roger Daltrey, Heinz Baked Beans. The story goes that Roger Daltrey caught pneumonia from sitting in the bath of cold beans for too long.

The Who Sell Out is a bold depiction of the period in which it was made, the tail-end of the ‘swinging 60s’ meets pop art mixed with psychedelia and straight-ahead pop. It’s a glorious blend of classic powerful Who instrumentation, melodic harmonies, satirical lyrical imagery crystallized for what was only the group’s third album. The record’s ambition and scope is unrivalled by The Who, or any other act from that period. Within the bold concept, were a batch of fabulous and diverse songs. “I Can See for Miles,” a top ten hit at the time, is a Who classic. “Rael,” a Townshend ‘mini-opera’ with musical motifs that reappeared in Tommy and the psychedelic blast of “Armenia City In The Sky” and “Relax” are among the very best material anyone wrote during the ’60s. One of the most extraordinary albums of any era, The Who Sell Out is The Who’s last ‘pop’ album. Two years later came Tommy – a double concept album about a deaf, dumb and blind kid.

The new Super Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out features 112 tracks, 46 of which are unreleased, an 80-page, hardback full-color book, including rare period photos, memorabilia, track by track annotation and new sleeve notes by Townshend with comments from the likes of Pete Drummond (Radio London DJ), Richard Evans (designer) and Roy Flynn (the Speakeasy Club manager). The Super Deluxe package also includes nine posters and inserts, including replicas of the 20″ x 30″ original Adrian George album poster, a gig poster from The City Hall, Newcastle, an eight-page program from The Who’s October ’67 show at the Saville Theatre, a business card for the Bag o’ Nails club, Kingly Street, a Who fan club photo of the group, a flyer for Bath Pavilion concerts including The Who, a crack-back bumper sticker for Wonderful Radio London, Keith Moon’s Speakeasy Club membership card and a 1968 Who Fan Club newsletter.

Features:
• Super Deluxe Edition 2 x 7″ vinyl + 5CD box set
• 112 tracks, 46 of which are unreleased
• CD 1 – original mono mix, mono As & Bs and unreleased mono mixes
• CD 2 – original stereo mix and stereo bonus tracks
• CD 3 – Studio out-takes, ‘fly-on-the-wall’ versions of early takes of songs from the album sessions, ‘studio chat’ etc. – previously unreleased
• CD 4 – ‘The Road To Tommy’ will contain stereo mixes of the studio tracks recorded in 1968 – some previously unreleased – plus 1968 As and Bs mono mixes (all tracks remixed from original 4 and 8-track session tapes in The Who vault)
• CD 5 – 14 of Pete Townshend’s original demos – previously unreleased & exclusive to this set…
• Bonus 7″ Discs: Track UK 45 repro and Decca USA 45 repro
• 80-page, hard-back full-color book, including rare period photos, memorabilia & track annotation and new liner notes by Pete Townshend
• Nine posters & inserts