The fourth set guides us through the music that arrived as they began working on the record that would become Tommy. The third disc is a collection of related studio material: outtakes, alternate versions, isolated elements. The first two discs are your basic mono and stereo versions of the album, tacked with familiar addendum from previous reissues. The dark-horse favorite in their catalog, The Who Sell Out is the latest recipient of a Super Deluxe Edition, spanning five discs, two 7" singles, and a book of essays and ephemera. Even if the radio-broadcast structure mostly crumbles after side one, the songs form another landmark in the Who’s catalog: the moment before 1969’s Tommy solidified their place in rock history, when they were scrappy enough to laugh at themselves but strong enough to write the music that would define their career. As a result, the concept also worked as a loving tribute to the institutions where the Who first found an audience. Cobbled together by their manager Kit Lambert, the pop-art experiment was released in December 1967, just months after the BBC introduced Radio One to replace pirate stations like Radio London. Rewind the tape-that’s it! Pad out the tracklist with a few radio jingles, arrange some product placements for the cover art, and we’ll call it The Who Sell Out. And then there was… some other stuff: a cover of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” an instrumental called “Sodding About,” a story-song that slowly revealed itself to be a deodorant ad. (He even had the title to go with it: Who’s Lily.) There was “I Can See for Miles,” a sweeping anthem he imagined would be their next big hit. There was “Pictures of Lily,” a recent single he considered placing as the centerpiece. Exhausted and frazzled from a tour with Herman’s Hermits in summer 1967, he surveyed the material that he and his bandmates-drummer Keith Moon, vocalist Roger Daltrey, and bassist John Entwistle-had amassed while the label grew increasingly impatient awaiting their third album. He was also among the first artists to strike gold from a total lack of inspiration.
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