“I was always under the gun”: The Who album Pete Townshend never wanted to write
Regardless of whether you’re a fan of The Who, you have to respect their commitment to their craft. When the band were writing songs, they were all in. They would spend elongated periods of time fixated on the same thing, changing different aspects and experimenting with various effects and styles in order to make sure they were proud of what they were making.
The same applies to their live shows, as the band were always keen on putting together the greatest live shows that audiences have ever seen. It’s well-reported by previous attendees that The Who would never play encores, and when asked about it, Roger Daltrey said that it was because they left everything they had on stage the first time around, so there was no need for an encore.
There was a period in the 1960s when The Who were fixated on playing live. They had done a string of shows with Herman’s Hermits and played the likes of the Monterey Pop Festival. During this period, because of their commitment to delivering the best shows that onlookers had ever seen, hardly any members of the band were focused on writing songs.
They released a track called ‘I Can See for Miles’, which ended up being one of their most popular songs in the US, and their label, which had since had a change in management, wanted to capitalise on this newfound momentum. So naturally, they did so by asking Townshend for a new album, something he hadn’t even begun to think about yet, given he was too busy on the road, but some of the new bigwigs at his label were insistent.
Townshend told the newer people that it would be a good idea to release ‘I Can See for Miles’ and then re-release some of their older singles. They would essentially be putting out a greatest hits record, but one where they could remix some of the songs in stereo and give them a slightly different twang. It was hardly the most exciting idea, but he would have preferred putting out a greatest hits over a mix of half-hearted, poorly written songs.
His label insisted that the album had to consist of new songs. It turns out, they had agreed on a deal with their parent company which stopped them from releasing compilation records of existing singles. “Those singles were to be gathered on special greatest hits records, which came in different shapes and forms,” recalled Townshend, “So there was a huge sense of panic.”
The musician searched the far corners of his brain in a bid to find ideas he could extrapolate, which is when he decided to make a record centred on commercials. “I think the idea of doing commercials was already knocking about in my head,” he said, “I’d already written two songs for Kit Lambert for the American Cancer Society, ‘Little Billy’ and ‘Kids! Do You Want Kids’.”
It was from this idea that the band’s divisive third album, The Who Sell Out, was made. It was a concept album of sorts, but where every track on the record was completely disconnected; they were just random songs the band had put together. These songs were all spread sporadically throughout the album, which was laid out as an hour on a pirate radio station. This meant that throughout the record, there were adverts for various products, different jingles and some spoken work as if delivered from a radio DJ. Some people loved the album, some people hated it.
You could argue that a lot of the more in-depth concept albums that Townshend worked on later in The Who’s career came out so layered because he had already had practice with The Who Sell Out. You could also argue this album sells The Who short, given it was made in such a rushed state. The only thing that remains certain is that the man was under a lot of pressure to make this album. “I can remember once Roger Daltrey saying to a newspaper that ‘Pete writes his best stuff on the road’, which was his dream and his fantasy,” said Townshend, “But I never, ever wrote on the road because I needed a studio, so I was always under the gun.”
