Who's The Who Sell Out, The

John Dougan

3.42

151 ratings by Goodreads

9781536634907: Who's The Who Sell Out, The

ISBN 10: 1536634905 ISBN 13: 9781536634907

Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio, 2017

Released in the U.S. in January 1968, The Who Sell Out was, according to critic Dave Marsh, a complete backfire...the album sold well, but not spectacularly, [and was] ultimately a nostalgic in-joke: Who but a pop intellectual could appreciate such a thing? Further rarifying its in-joke status was its unapologetic Englishness: 13 tracks stitched together in a mock pirate radio broadcast, without a DJ, with cool, anglocentric commercials to boot.

In the 36 years since its release, Sell Out, though still not the best selling release in The Who's catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans who regard it as the band's best work; one of the few recordings of the late 1960s that best represents the ambitious aesthetic possibilities of the concept album; without becoming mired in a bog of smug, self-aggrandizing, high art aspirations. Sell Out, powerfully and ecstatically, articulates the nexus of pop music and pop culture.

As much as it is an expression of the band's expanding sonic palette, Sell Out also functions as a critique of the rock-and-roll lifestyle. Not the cliched mantra of sex, drugs, and rock and roll but in the ways that commercial advertising fabricates a youth-oriented cultural reality by hawking pimple cream, deodorant, food, musical equipment, etc., and linking it with rock and roll. In this sense Sell Out is a reflective work, one that struggles with rock and roll as a cultural expression that aspires to aesthetic permanence while marketed as ephemera. From this conflict emerges a pop art masterpiece.

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About the Author:

John Dougan received a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William & Mary and is an associate professor in the Department of Recording Industry at Middle Tennessee State University.

The concept behind Sell Out – a collection of Who songs tied together with fake advertising and real promotional jingles simulating a pirate radio broadcast from offshore station Radio London – along with being timely and brilliant, indicated that significant cultural changes were in the offing. Not the least of which was the reality that the BBC, a corporation whose interest in youth culture was marked by diffidence and condescension, would again control British pop music radio. As for the Who, Sell Out signaled the beginning of the end of their career as a pop band, and spectacularly announced their transition into a world-conquering rock band, a metamorphosis made complete with the release of Tommy in 1969.

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