Yesterday, Peter Shapiro and I spent ten hours co-authoring a Broadway Musical that revolves around Meher Baba.
STOP THE PRESSES! At 10:00 AM, I googled “The Who and Radio London” and up pops an album by The Who titled ‘Radio London’. WTF!!!!?
When I lay in bed this morning I was thinking about Meher Baba’s BAN on starting a religion with his teaching, but, did he mean no radio stations that spread his message. The Who spread Baba’s message, and my late friend Ben Toney, played The Who. Ben was the director of Radio London. Ben is in the top pic on the right. Is Roger Daltrey in the control room. This is a huge spiritual religious permission to go – full steam ahead. No add the fact Herbert Armstrong broadcast his show on Radio London, and footed a large part of the bill. There is the word “copout” associated with this alum. I am yet to find an explanation, I tied to save KORE which was a Religious Act. I will text Peter with – The Good News!
The new album started to take shape at De Lane Lea studios in London. The Who created spoof promo slots for Radio London, Premier Drums and Rotosound Strings, recorded in the brash ad-speak of 60s pirate radio. Bassist John Entwistle came up with humorous, minute-long odes to Heinz baked beans and Medac spot cream; Townshend brought along the song Odorono, ostensibly about a brand of underarm deodorant.
“I think the idea of doing commercials was already knocking about in my head,” Townshend recalls. “I’d already written two songs for [co-manager] Kit Lambert for the American Cancer Society – Little Billy and Kids! Do You Want Kids? – and I had Odorono, about a girl who loses a record contract. It wasn’t meant to be a commercial, it was just a song about body odour.
“That’s the kind of thing I was writing at the time, totally off-the-wall. And it just came up when we brainstormed. Subsequently, Kit Lambert pulled it together and made one half of the album into an emulation of a pirate radio station. For me, that just saved it.”
The album, soon to be titled The Who Sell Out, also happened to be very timely. In August 1967, the British government had passed the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, which outlawed pirate radio in the UK. The offshore stations had been a lifeline for pop music fans over the previous few years, as well as providing crucial airtime for bands and artists including The Who. In what could be seen as a cynical move, the BBC now attempted to woo the same audience with the launch of their own pop station, Radio 1.
Bold and brilliant, The Who Sell Out was both a valedictory salute to a lost art form and a satirical take on 60s consumerism.
“It was really done as a tribute to those ships that used to beam that wonderful music,” says frontman Roger Daltrey. “We’d been raised on pirate radio for the last five years. For the first time ever we’d had DJs, these kinds of renegade people, who were just so happy to be playing the music they loved. It was really special.
“Although we’re one band playing all the music, the album sounds exactly like a pirate radio show with the jingles. To me it still sounds a lot better than modern radio. It’s one of my favourite Who albums.”
In memory of my Friend, Ben Toney, and Herbert Armstrong who broadcast WARNINGS about the Russian Menace. I talked with my man, Spooky Noodles, to get Meg Whitman to put a replica of Radio London offshore of her property in Dogpatch – two years ago!
“He argued that Russia should retaliate quickly and not rush to accept Biden’s summit offer.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Kosachev wrote. “I believe the saying is quite adaptable to a situation when we talk not about revenge but a due answer to aggressive action by an opponent.”
By Neil EarleRadio Caroline was the first of the offshore “pirate ships” beaming into Britain, though the idea had been tried off California and elsewhere in the 1930’s.
(Jingle) “Radio London reminds you: Go to the Church of your choice.”
(Pause)
(Announce, loudly): “THE WORLD TOMORROW! Garner Ted Armstrong brings you the plain truth about today’s world news with the prophecies of the World Tomorrow!
(GTA): “And greetings friends, this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. World leaders admit that they are frightened, that they are engaged in a fantastic nightmare. They’re scared. They don’t know what to do. They’re wondering what is going to happen in the future and none of them really know.”
This was a typical opener for a “World Tomorrow” radio show beaming down on millions of Englishman in the Greater London area between late 1964 and August 15, 1967. This period is now somewhat notable in British broadcasting circles as the heyday of the Pirate Ships. A fascinating tale, this, of how the Armstrongs, Herbert and Garner Ted (successful radio evangelists based in America) ended up in a curious roundelay involving Her Majesty’s government in London, the BBC, some of Britain’s elite publications and a host of over-the-top radio personalities – some of whom ended up as legends of British popular culture.
A Cable Series based upon a band that played at the Tribute to Doctor Strange Love, and thus were the pioneer group that promoted the use of LSD all over the world. After double-crossing members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, The Marbles move to England and become a famous British Gangster band that plays down in the docks.
Petie Tinselwitz falls in love with Bblond Dend who is the infamous singer, Fillononre – who is a closeted man-hater, and has offed about seven dudes. Ms. Dend is from the small country, Fritzlandia.
My friend Peter Shapiro was the lead guitarist for The Marbles who played at the Tribute to Doctor Strange (10-15-65) and then as The Loading Zone, who played at the Ken Kesey Acid Test at Longshoreman’s Hall. (1-21-66)
Peter told me the Zone came home with Niel Cassidy after one of these events. He commandeered a mattress on the floor, took speed, and talked non-stop for a week. Neil brought Mountain Girl to LaHonda where she met Ken Kesey. My friend, Nancy Hamren, lived with her brother on the Kesey Farm. Nancy took my daughter and I to dinner. I did not tell her Heather’s last name was Delpiano. She was told that Randall Delpiano was her father – after my child was stolen. Bogus Bobby is famous for impersonating Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead.
Hell In A Bucket: The man arrested a couple of years back for impersonating Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir has been at it again. Randall Delpiano was arrested in the East Bay community of Walnut Creek after his parole officer recognized his photo in a local newspaper. Delpiano was paroled from state prison last April after serving 15 months on fraud and theft charges stemming from a $5,000 robbery, and at that time had convinced a newspaper reporter and a radio DJ that he was the Dead’s rhythm guitarist.
In the pic of my daughter and my grandson, Tyler Hunt, my grandson won’t keep giving my friend, Michael Harkins, a hard stare. Nancy met Michael when he was fifteen. We had gone to his house to buy marijuana. Doctor James Harkins dropped LSD with his older son in 1965. Michael married Bruce Perlowin’s ex-wife, and had Bruce live with him and his mother after he got out of prison. Michael was a good friend of Jim Morrison. Peter played at my wedding reception. Mary Ann Tharaldsen was the mistress of Thomas Pynchon. We stayed with Peter in West Virginia when we went back East. My ex was good friends of Richard and Mimi Farina.
Below is a pic of Nancy with Ken Babbs at the dedication of the Kesey Mural. Babb’s built a sound control tower at the Trip’s festival which gives credence to his claim he built the improved sound system for the Dead. Pete took the pic of me and my truck. We are on the bridge with Tim O’Connor and Keith Purvis. Mary Ann was in John C. Lily’s isolation tanks. Altering our state of mind and perceptions is vital to surviving, and recovering from, the coronavirus.
Here is the letter I wrote Peter when I had seven months sobriety. I was living with the head of a famous Eugene Kalimba band in Eugene. Peter made Kalimbas in Oakland and Morgantown. He would plant gourds in all his friends backyards. He would harvest them and make his famous thumb gourd thumb pianos. When I lived with him in another house in Oakland, he bought me a quart of beer if I grinded keys for an hour. I did the painting of Rena here that inspired my sister to take up art.
The first band Peter formed in 1964, was Benny and The Boners. He was going to UC Berkeley and played at a lot of frat parties. This is pre-Animal House. He met Christine Wandel when they played at a mixer. She was attending Mills College in Oakland. It was a lark – a prank band.
I want my friend, Ginger Kuth to form a new Dead Cult based upon mushrooms and Kalimba players. With the passing of Oregon laws that make more recreational drugs, legal, and with the law that makes it legal to use psilocybin legal for therapeutic purposes, I want to help form a religion that will alas produce Equality! The Wanderers of The Way will forever be in search of….The Land of Goshen!
In August of 2021, my longtime friend, Peter Shapiro, and I began brainstorming ideas on how we can get our dear friend Christine Wandel’s roof fixed. We are both in our seventies. I suggested we do a Bohemian skit, that could be a Netflix series – or a musical hit on Broadway. I wrote Peter one of my new songs. Exchanging thousands of text words, we were going gangbuster, when Christine threw a monkey wrench into the works;
“Ruben Blades is Julie’s father!”
I was now doing a four plate on a stick balancing act. I had egos to contend with, including my own. Everyone vies for a starring role – accept Peter and me. Finally, Peter wrote me into the scrip, and himself. I knew then we had a hit on our hands.
I play rabbi Gregory MacChill a defrocked Cantor who started a Rap Band called AZZHOLE ZONE. After being hijacked by a jet full of Evangelical Anti-maskers, and flown to Jerusalem against his will, he has an epiphany on the jet for home. Sitting next to him is Christime;’s grandson a divinty student who asks if the Jews solved the riddle of the robe,
“Rabbis dont read the New Testement.”
But, taking a quick peek, Gregory gets hooked on the riddle as to why they threw dice for Jesus’ Robe. After exorcising the Three Demon’s in Christine Village apartment, it comes to him….
“Why didn’t Elijah kill the priests of the Asherah Poles as God bid him? Did this result in the delay of the Coming Kingdom of God? Did Asherah Priests gamble for The Robe, so the Roman soldiers would not own it? Was Jesus descended from the Asherah priesthood?”
MacChill identifies two of the ghosts in Wandel’s bathroom as Carrie Fisher, and, Victor Mature. There is another, a omnipresent voice, a haunting deep throat, that assures Gregory there is a Hollywood Heaven for Actors, Screenwriters – and their Muses!
God gave me Armstrong’s Radio Church that was broadcast at KORE. I own a special copyright owned by ministers in order to protect their sermons. MacChill is the back-story, the phantom moving in the shadows, driven by unseen powers. For many years, Gregory had pondered over the cloak Elijah tucked in his belt. He concluded it was – not his cloak! Then, there is that small cloud coming out of the sea that was…..the size of a hand? Makes no sense. Did a hand come out of that cloud? Was it holding something?
You will find my video about The Haunted Robe on my youtube page.
16 So Obadiah went to Ahab and told him where Elijah was. Then Ahab went to meet Elijah.
17 When he saw Elijah, he asked, “Is it you—the biggest troublemaker in Israel?”
18 Elijah answered, “I have not made trouble in Israel. You and your father’s family have made all this trouble by not obeying the Lord’s commands. You have gone after the Baals. 19 Now tell all Israel to meet me at Mount Carmel. Also bring the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”
Peter Townsend of the Who was/is a Baba Lover. No Baba Lover that I can discover knows anything about Jesus and the Parthian connection – but Baba said he was Jesus!
I just found out Rick Chapman has a nickname – and I laugh!
1. Chapman (nicknamed “Moochewalla” – means “the man with the mustache” )
Richard Powell, who played Jesus, also played Tommy’s father.
Jon the Nazarite
“In Love With Meher Baba”
by Pete Townshend – Rolling Stone, No. 71 (November 26, 1970)
I first heard about Meher Baba from Mike McInnerney in Autumn 1967. Mike later became very involved in the development of my own work on Tommy, and it was in the knowledge that he was a Baba lover; and able to grasp the needs of the evolving album, that I asked him to do the art work connected.
I was at his house with my lady (now my wife) and he and his partner were finishing the proofs for a shop window decoration for a Kings Road tea shop called The Dragon.
I was ranting and raving about, talking too much, and finding in Mike someone who talked just as much as I did (although he’ll never admit it. I had to make a tape to prove it). I was heavily into flying saucers, believing them to hold a key somehow to the future of humanity. At the time I sincerely believed I had seen several in the Florida area, today I don’t really care.
It seemed that between freaks at the discovery of my first John Fahey record and someone who could out-rap me, I was getting stabs of infuriating condescension from Mike.
Every time I came up with a world-wise theory that had taken me years of thought to get clear he would say, “That’s such a coincidence man, this guy Meher Baba said something similar to that in this book, The God Man.” After I had heard my very last precious revelation hit the dust at the sound of Mike’s voice declaring that Baba had already said it I just had to look at the book. What I saw apart from a photo in the front cover of a strange and elderly man, was shattering.
Sure enough, each theory that I had expounded, many to do with reincarnation and its inevitability when considered in the light of law of averages, were summed up in one sentence. (I know it will irritate most people when I say that I’ve forgotten the sentence.)
What was so sneaky about the whole affair was the way Baba crept into my life. At first his words were encouraging, his state of consciousness and his claims to be the Christ exciting and daring, later they became scary. I began to read his words, read of his astoundingly simple relationship with his disciples (Mandali) and of his silence for 40 years. It became clear that the party was over. If I read any more lines like “What I want from my Lovers is real unadulterated love, and from my genuine workers I expect real work done,” I would have to decide once and for all whether the whole thing was really for me or not.
JERUSALEM — On Saturday, the United States airdropped 38,000 meals into Gaza — a territory controlled not by a hostile foreign power but by one of its closest allies.
The remarkable scene of American aid bundles floating down to starving Palestinians was the starkest illustration yet of the rift that has grown between the Biden administration and the Israeli government over the Gaza war. For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Washington to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave, even as it relies on U.S. bombs and diplomatic support to carry out its punishing military campaign there.
In 2018 I began to have visions of the Grail Fleet that led to authoring my prophetic James Bond book ‘The Royal Janitor’ that I posted on in March – with this warning. I begged people to stop attacking me because is interferes with MY SIGHT! I was mocked and humiliated. Everything was taken from me – for kicks! Rena Christensen was…..My Vivian.
There are millions of people all over the world that are looking in their family trees to see who their ancestors, were, and, who their people – are! This morning, I did more research on the ancestors of my friend, Ben Toney. I found Godfey de Boulogne, the Crusader King, and his brother Baldwin, the first King of Jerusalem. His direct ancestor is credited with creating the Bayeux Tapestry. Here is Ben’s family tree. I missed the Kentucky Derby that ran at the same time I am looking at the knit horses of the Bayeux tapestry. Ben’s kindred were there, putting their warrior horses on boats, they queued up on the rail, looking out to sea……..wondering whither they are bound!
Putin is very interested in genealogies because he is restoring the royal houses of Russia. Some historians claim ‘Beatlemania’ toppled the Soviet Union. I concur. Russian soldiers were on…
Here is The Crux of my stories. My idea for a Netfix series is based upon Herbert Armstrong who helped fund Radio London, that was managed by my late friend, Ben Toney. Koreville Radio will look like a scene straight from ‘The Horses Mouth. There will be sheep and Gypsy wagons around a reconstructed KORE set. There will be clothes drying on the barbed wire. When talking with Michael Powell about the Ken Kesey cottage, I brought up the movie ‘The Horse’s Mouth’ with Alec Guinness. This story is based upon my kin (via Liz Taylor) the artist Augustus John. Kesey was how old? Liz grew up in his home and her uncle sold his art.
I posted this weeks before Ben Toney died. I wanted him to get a glimpse of how he was going to be remembered. I had come to realize I was involved in a real James Bond assignment which is to save the alliance between and the United States. I threw Holland into the mix, to only learn two days ago the Dutch had their pirate ship.
The making of Bond 25 is – cursed! The muses hate this movie. Violence and murder is not the message God wants to give in regards to solving world problems. In the name of kindred, Ian Flaming – I take over this production and legacy! I pirate it. I board this wreck and raise a United Flag that contains a musical note and a harp!
I was raised a Catholic was taught there were consequences for lying – for telling falsehoods! As Christmas music slowly took over my classical music station, I said to myself..
“Tis the season of The Creeping Lie’. Soon, the lying will be total. The Pope will speak, and not declare Donald Trump – A DAMN LIAR -because he held up a Bible in front of a church, and, Christians went crazy! Hot dog – 1984 is here. Time to hear – JINGLE BELLS! Time to – grease up and bend over – whie the BIG LIE is slowly inserted in the next seventy hours!”
I reasoned, it was THE SEASON OF LIES, and why not go along with it, even bring out MORE LIES, such as the Prophet Jeremiah brought two Jewish Princesses to Ireland – AND THERE REALLY IS A SANTA CLAUS – guarded by the Knight’s Templars of Rougemont! Wasn’t the famous Jewish philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein interested in the writing of Black Mask authors who hung with my grandparents, suggesting there are hidden truths in fantastic fiction?
Yesterday, I spent four hours on my phone Scrolling For Models and Actresses to play James Bond. I hereby lay a copyright on the APP…..’HUNTING FOR BOND’. A major casino should build The Bond Room’ where the Bond Wanna-bes can strut their stuff. There will be The Bond Singers.
Before I went to bed, I noted once again that Ramatamar, resembles Starfish (modeled after Yulia Rose) who I said would be killed-off, and thus she would not contend for the spotlight with Victoria Bond who is somewhat frail and mousy. I refrained from telling Rotem Sela – to put some more meat on those bones! I didn’t want to scare her off by suggesting she’s my – NEW MUSE – who is allot like Miriam Starfish.
I have claimed more than once that God is dictating my books. I think Spooky Noodles wants me to put God’s Word’s in red, and his THOUGHTS – in Irish green? The truth is, Israel stands to gain from my Religious Fables, verses the oppression of Jews by the Popes – and Martin Luthar. Here is the Genesis of ‘The Royal Janitor’.
Rotem means “desert plant” and Sela means “rock” Hmmm!
Mary Magdalene was used to portray Tea Tephi, an Egyptian princess. Sandys’ painting does not look very Egyptian, but for that matter she also does not look like the middle-Eastern that we know Mary Magdalene to have been.
The grandparents of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor were married at the Self-realization Temple in Los Angeles. I read Autobiography of a Yogi at the Victorian house at 13th. street when I lived with the Loading Zone. Peter Shapiro had a copy. James Taylor kept putting information on the Indian religion by my bed in the attic. I would become a follower of Meher Baba.
When John the Baptist was eight days old a group of priests came to name him. They were observing silence. I believe they served in the Holy of Holies where not utterance was allowed lest less divine words contaminate The Voice of God’s Messengers. I believe both parents were bid to take a vow of silence after an angel appeared to Elizabeth and told her son will be filled with the Holy Spirit while in her womb. These priests made HAND SIGNS to the child as to what name he would be called. The infant John spoke his name, then wrote his name. This told the priests THE ONE they longed for, was born. This nativity of John was wrongfully applied to Jesus in order to hide and silence the Prophecy of John – forever!
I suspect these priests were Nazarites who God ordained in order to prove His Voice dwelt in all His Children. From the ranks of the people, from even the lowest of the low, may be born a MESSENGER who can converse with the ANGELS OF THE ARK in the Holy of Holies. Today, that Democratic Voice speaks to you in regards to the Archie.
Yesterday I beheld the seal of Ambassador College at Brick Wood – America and Britain. There are two arches with two golden sheaves of wheat above him. This is a double rainbow the symbol of a New United Democracy
“This is Archie.”
This is a European boy standing between the Lion and the Lamb…..Britain and the United States. Armstrong’s KORE building and tower was meant to be a shrine to a New Day. I was not able to concentrate on saving this shrine, and Ken Kesey’s cottage due to the attack of anarchists, and my rapture-cult neighbors. These attacks, on the divine, forced me and God to dig deeper and prepare for the Day of Truth.
Below is a video of Herbert Armstrong speaking in England at Bricket Wood. He talks about the wonderful musicians he brought to perform at the Ambassador College in Los Angeles that make people jealous. It was ordained that I met Ben Toney and that we became great friends so I could discover the connection between Armstrong and Radio London. Together they fueled the British Invasion of Britain – and the United States.
In 1967 I became a follower of Meher Baba at 13th. Street. Baba took a vow of silence. It is in this Divine Silence that we hear the sound and the voices of our Muse. It is time to make This Sound a Worldwide Religion so as to promote Sanity and Beauty on Earth! The Kingdom had come.
I challenge Donald Trump to a debate. If he was chosen by God, and not leading Evangelical prophets, then God-Jesus will fill him with much political – and Biblical – wisdom. In God We Trust!
I sent the following message to Congressman Peter DeFazio.
Dear Congressman; My mother was in the WAVES and was stationed in the Northwest. Her job was to listen to Russian propaganda broadcast at U.S. Citizens. Since I was thirteen she told her children Roosevelt was making plans to invade Russia as soon as Japan and Germany was defeated. My late friend, Ben Toney, was in the Navy, and commanded Radio London, a pirate ship that was anchored off the coast of Britain. As I discovered, Herbert Armstrong funded about half the cost of broadcasting music because they broadcast his religious messages that emanated from KORE located in Springfield. I tried to save this radio station, but, it was torn down. This morning I read your fellow Congressmen have reached back into the Cold War to reborn such a program that I am very supportive of. The Open Translation and Analysis Center (OTAC) is an excellent idea. I would like to broadcast my own show. I was verbally harassed by my neighbors when I told one I am a prophet, and my posts on Toney and Armstrong, were prophetic. I am concerned about Christian groups taking part in the Insurrection. In 2000 I approached you while you were jogging near the Campbell Center, and offered by theological expertise in dealing with the rise of the Christian-right. You said this was a good idea, and suggested I contact your office. I wish I had.
Rosemary Rita Rosamond is on the far left of the group photo.
Springfield – Home of the Old World Order – Go Ducks!
by
John Presco
Copyright 2019
Treatment for a Cable Television Series aimed at thwarting the advance of the New World Order and crushing Fuzzy Bear along with the Russian Trolls who are hell bent on contaminating our National Elections. It is my hope Hollywood and HBO gets behind my effort to save the United States and Europe from the Orange Menace. I will be sending my idea to my Congressman, Peter DeFazio to see if he can procure funding.
When I awoke this morning I was in awe of the article about Putin’s oppression of his own people. The double eagle symbol appeared at the bottom of the photos of the Puppet Master, along with a crown. Is POTUS helping Putin become King of the World?
Then I saw the two women being manhandled by The Goon Squad. I gasped! Here’s agent 008, and, 009! Victoria Bond and Miriam Starfish Christling of the British Secret Service are on the job! Where are our people?
In looking at the video of KORE again, I noticed what looks like a meteor striking the earth near Salem (Jerusalem) Oregon. Then I saw it – THE BURNING BUSH!
Oh my God! This is it! The End Time Elijah has come!
John Ambrose was peddling his classic Schwinn he named ‘Blue Bird’ past Herbert Armstrong’s old radio station KORE, when he saw an old bearded man running for the gate of the cyclone fencing – with barbered wire. He was fumbling with the combination lock, and cursing. John pulled up.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes! Thank God. Hurry! I lost my glasses inside, and cant’ read the numbers. Here, let me slip the lock to you. Ready? Here’s the combo……….12………..22………19……….2. Got it? Hurry! They’re coming!”
“What was that last number?”
“Two! Two! – TWO!”
John shot the old man a hard glance. He was treating him like a moron.
“There. Your free!”
“Thanks!” the old man said, and glanced both ways down the street. He was very agitated as he opened the door to his old Cadiallac La Salle. Then, he stood there staring hard at Mr. Ambrose.
“Do you want a radio station?”
“What?”
“You heard me!” The old man threw his brief case on the hood of the Caddy and fumbled with another combo lock.
“Get over here! Ready?………..5……..8……9………3.”
The Old man began singing papers as fast as he could.
“Here! Sign here, and, here! Good! It’s all yours. Whatever you do, don’t sell it to anyone, no matter the price! The future of the world depends on it. Do you know your Bible?”
“Never read it!”
“Are you kidding me! How old are you?”
“Sixty-five!”
“Well, lucky you. Much has been altered. Let me write down the combo to Herbert’s safe. He’s got some old Bible’s in there. Read all of Luke! Promise me!”
“I promise!”
“That’s them! Got to go!”
John watched the old man fumble with his keys. Behind the wheel, he gunned it. Mr. Ambrose felt a sting on his cheek. A piece of gravel………had drawn blood.
To be continued!
In 1997 I acquired a special copyright made for ministers of churches that protects their sermons and their notes for sermons, and books. Everything in this blog is copyrighted.
The Who Sell Out is A Pop Art album of dazzling music interspersed with radio-style ads and jingles and released in an iconic sleeve: Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey spill the beans
The Who in ’67: (L-R) Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle (Image credit: Getty Images)
Inspiration can take many forms, but nothing stirs the creative juices quite like a looming deadline. Just ask The Who. In mid-September 1967 the band returned from an exhaustive tour of the US, a slog prefaced by an incendiary appearance at the inaugural Monterey Pop Festival, at which their gear-trashing performance left audience members open-mouthed. Rather than being allowed a breather back home, they were swiftly informed that new Who music was expected in the shops by Christmas.
“It was a surprise, and there are a couple of shades to that,” reflects guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend. “One was that our managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, were diverted to a great extent away from The Who to running Track Records, which featured Marc Bolan and Jimi Hendrix.
“There was also a contractual obligation to Polydor, the parent company. They just needed a Who album, and we didn’t have one ready because we’d been working so hard. We’d been all over the place, incredibly busy. And although I had a lot of material, I didn’t really feel much of it was appropriate for The Who. So it felt to me like: ‘Oh god, how am I going to rescue this?’ There was a huge sense of panic.”
The Who already had a tiny handful of standalone songs in the can, recorded at various US studios during rare breaks in the tour: Relax, Rael, I Can See For Miles. Townshend also had the seeds of other, equally disparate ideas. But the solution to the band’s immediate problem arrived via an ingeniously simple device that would link these songs together as a unified statement: the advertising jingle.
The new album started to take shape at De Lane Lea studios in London. The Who created spoof promo slots for Radio London, Premier Drums and Rotosound Strings, recorded in the brash ad-speak of 60s pirate radio. Bassist John Entwistle came up with humorous, minute-long odes to Heinz baked beans and Medac spot cream; Townshend brought along the song Odorono, ostensibly about a brand of underarm deodorant.
“I think the idea of doing commercials was already knocking about in my head,” Townshend recalls. “I’d already written two songs for [co-manager] Kit Lambert for the American Cancer Society – Little Billy and Kids! Do You Want Kids? – and I had Odorono, about a girl who loses a record contract. It wasn’t meant to be a commercial, it was just a song about body odour.
“That’s the kind of thing I was writing at the time, totally off-the-wall. And it just came up when we brainstormed. Subsequently, Kit Lambert pulled it together and made one half of the album into an emulation of a pirate radio station. For me, that just saved it.”
The album, soon to be titled The Who Sell Out, also happened to be very timely. In August 1967, the British government had passed the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, which outlawed pirate radio in the UK. The offshore stations had been a lifeline for pop music fans over the previous few years, as well as providing crucial airtime for bands and artists including The Who. In what could be seen as a cynical move, the BBC now attempted to woo the same audience with the launch of their own pop station, Radio 1.
Bold and brilliant, The Who Sell Out was both a valedictory salute to a lost art form and a satirical take on 60s consumerism.
“It was really done as a tribute to those ships that used to beam that wonderful music,” says frontman Roger Daltrey. “We’d been raised on pirate radio for the last five years. For the first time ever we’d had DJs, these kinds of renegade people, who were just so happy to be playing the music they loved. It was really special.
“Although we’re one band playing all the music, the album sounds exactly like a pirate radio show with the jingles. To me it still sounds a lot better than modern radio. It’s one of my favourite Who albums.”
Just as the Summer Of Love symbolised a seismic shift in the counterculture, The Who found themselves in transition in 1967. The band were still masters of auto-destructive chaos on stage, but they’d ditched the R&B and mod connotations of their early years.
Townshend’s songwriting had begun to deepen, as evinced on A Quick One, While He’s Away, the epic closing track from the previous year’s A Quick One, their second album. He’d also moved towards colourful character studies with recent songs like Happy Jack and Pictures Of Lily, a style that he began to perfect on The Who Sell Out gems such as Tattoo and the winking Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand.
Such creative evolution, Townshend suggests, “might have been inspired by the success of A Quick One, While He’s Away, which was a little song cycle that I’d done. What we used to call the mini-opera, which was maybe four or five very short thematic pieces strung together. It was quite clear that we’d hit on something really quite important and precious, the ability to tell stories and to go quite deep.
“I think A Quick One, While He’s Away is about child abuse and I think it’s about rape and I think it’s about women’s rights. But for me at the time, I wasn’t thinking of it in those terms. I was thinking just in terms of a story about somebody being deserted.
“It’s kind of an autobiographical story, I realised many years later,” he continues. “A child being deserted and being abused while the parents are away or the mother is away and then coming back and life being okay. I think the characters in the mini-opera were very real to me. I could see them and I could feel them. So when I started to go back to the idea, with the song Rael, I was on a mission to try to write a real opera. And I suppose I meant a rock opera.”
Townshend, who suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child, would go on to process the experience more fully on 1969’s multi-faceted Tommy. Meanwhile, on a formal level the striking Rael provided a platform for him to get there.
Daltrey cites Kit Lambert as an important figure in Townshend’s move away from conventional pop music. The son of composer Constant Lambert, Kit introduced The Who’s songwriting captain to the classical music of his godfather, William Walton, as well as to figures like Henry Purcell.
“Kit loved pop singles, he loved rock’n’roll,” Daltrey explains. “But he always thought that the music could actually do and say so much more than it was doing at the time. That was always his dream. He hated what classical music had become, the fact that it had become pompous for this overfed middle class with their noses in the air. Composers like Mozart wrote songs for the people and it was the pop music of its time. So Kit always wanted to give rock a bigger foundation.”
As a working unit too, as 1967 wore on The Who were moving away from standard convention. They’d flown to America for the first time that March, making their live debut on an old-school Murray The K theatre bill in New York. By mid-June they were sharing a stage with Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin on the closing night of Monterey.
The contrast was stark – from jostling for position with comedy troupes and novelty acts on the East Coast, to being at the epicentre of the psychedelic youthquake out West. Acid had replaced pills as the drug of choice. And while The Who were never likely to align themselves to the hippie scene or its attendant paraphernalia, Townshend was keen to experiment with LSD.
His brief flirtation ended after a particularly terrifying trip in which he underwent an out-of-body experience on the flight home from Monterey. Other, more meaningful factors played into Townshend’s development as an artist, not least a burgeoning interest in spirituality.
“At that time I was starting to get interested in [Indian spiritual master] Meher Baba,” he says. “I was starting to get interested in metaphysical ideas and meditation, the kind of stuff that The Beatles had been doing, and hanging out with Brian Jones, who’d met the Maharishi. It was an exciting time.”
The Who onstage at Monterey Pop Festival, June 18, 1967 (Image credit: Getty Images)
Across the Atlantic, Love paraded the exquisite Forever Changes, while Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow included the counterculture’s defining hymn to turning on, tuning in and dropping out, White Rabbit. The Who seemed like dissidents by comparison.
Townshend acknowledges a debt to Sgt. Pepper’s experimental zeal, but says he was galvanised “more by some of the extraordinary harmonic leaps that Brian Wilson had taken in [The Beach Boys’] Pet Sounds. Going from songs about the beach that were not much different than those by Jan & Dean to a song like God Only Knows is just a huge leap. It was inspiring to me and obviously to many others. I was just trying to make the music interesting.”
Certainly The Who Sell Out has an outlier sensibility. It’s psychedelic only in terms of the rushing Technicolor of the songs, which feel instead like a confluence of Townshend’s love of Pop Art, English baroque music and windmilling rock’n’roll. There’s also a heightened sophistication to many of the arrangements and chord structures.
The standout is I Can See For Miles, a smouldering firecracker of a song, riddled with paranoia. In May 1967, while promoting Pictures Of Lily, Townshend had referred to The Who’s sound as “power pop”. That term later came to signify an entire genre.
“I suppose it’s about writing pop songs that have a little more going for them than the usual subject matter,” he reasons today. “I think powerpop was just an attempt to say: ‘Listen, pop songs are not going to be about what they’ve been about any more. They’re going to have power and energy and colour and humour.
“And they’re going to be more important and they’re going to be much more emphasised. They’re going to be more mischievous. They’re going to be more dangerous, possibly.’ In a sense, the powerpop thing was a recognition, during that time in sixty-seven, that the function of the pop song had changed.”
Another key track was Tattoo, whose vaguely jocular lyrics belie a more profound discourse on the notion of masculinity. It’s a classic in the style of previous singles Pictures Of Lily and I’m A Boy, both of which had touched on a similar theme.
Townshend explains that I’m A Boy, released in August ’66, arrived at a time when “homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, so these adventures had to be couched in vignettes of humour and irony”. As for his own preferences, he adds that he was probably pansexual at the time: “I think I was ready to fall into bed with anybody that would have me.”
In terms of music, Tattoo displays a new level of finesse in Townshend’s songwriting. It was conceived during The Who’s recent US tour with British pop act Herman’s Hermits.
“It was a long sixteen-week tour,” he recalls. “A charter plane and a gig every day. We had three days off in Las Vegas, and I wrote Tattoo while I was there. I think I was very conscious of the fact that somehow there was a poetry behind all this stuff. It’s a very important song. And it’s so interesting that the reason The Who still sing it today is because Roger just loves it.
“I think he loves challenging himself with the idea of ‘what makes a man a man’, because when he was a young guy he talks about the fact that he was short and became a bully, a fighter. Roger was a notorious fighter in the neighbourhood we grew up in. I remember doing a gig in Glasgow and he got into a fight with about ten Glaswegians and knocked them all out. He was an incredibly efficient fighter.”
For all Daltrey’s commanding presence on Tattoo, I Can See For Miles and Rael, it’s instructive to note that The Who Sell Out features an unusual amount of lead vocals from the guitarist. Townshend is front and centre on, for example, Odorono, Our Love Was, Sunrise and Can’t Reach You. This wasn’t necessarily by design. Townshend has a theory.
“Jimi Hendrix was using the studio [recording Axis: Bold As Love] on the days that we weren’t in there,” he says. “And at that time Roger’s girlfriend, Heather, who became his wife, had been seeing Jimi. I don’t know whether or not this is turning into sort of silly gossip, but I think he wasn’t around as much as he would normally be. He used to enjoy being in the studio, and suddenly he was gone.
“So I think what actually happened was that I was finishing the songs as I was finishing the vocals, imagining that Roger would come in and replace mine. But he just wasn’t there. I think it had something to do with him being concerned about Jimi Hendrix stealing his girlfriend. I think Heather is the redhead he wrote Foxy Lady about, so I think there was some intrigue going on there. I’ve never spoken to Roger about what really happened.”
Given the short lead time and Townshend’s initial lack of faith, it’s a wonder The Who Sell Out got made at all. Referring to the ultimatum laid down by co-manager Chris Stamp on The Who’s return from America, Townshend remembers “a difficult situation. I would, of course, have written songs eventually. There’s always been a problem for me to find the time to write songs, make demos of them – which takes me a long time – then go into the studio and record them all over again with the band. Then go out on the road and play them.
“The guys in the band always wanted the album to be ready by the time we landed,” he continues. “I can remember Roger Daltrey once saying to a newspaper that ‘Pete writes his best stuff on the road’, which was his dream and his fantasy. But I never wrote on the road, because I needed a studio. So I was always under the gun.”
Despite everything, The Who Sell Out is an undoubted masterpiece. Released on December 15, 1967, it invited ready comparisons to the Rolling Stones’ album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out the previous week. But it was light years removed from the latter’s contrived psychedelia. The Who pushed against expectation without sacrificing their identity.
The same couldn’t be said of the Stones. Even the packaging for The Who’s record was far superior. On the cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request the Stones, wearing daft panto hats, stared sourly from a garish 3D backdrop. The Who, by contrast, accentuated the Pop Art elements of the music by commissioning art director David King and designer Roger Law (both of whom worked for the Sunday Times) to create what has since become an iconic sleeve.
(Image credit: Anthony Bradshaw/Getty Images)
Using giant props made by Law’s wife, Deirdre Amsden, the pair worked up four visual skits based on specific songs from the album. Photographer David Montgomery did the shoot at his studio in Chelsea. For their individual photos on the sleeve, Townshend pampered himself with roll-on Odorono; Keith Moon said goodbye to acne with a tube of Medac; John Entwistle, in the arms of a bikini-clad model, enjoyed the benefits of the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course; Daltrey sat in a tub of baked beans, cradling an outsized Heinz can.
The whole thing served as a fabulous send-up of 60s advertising. King and Law went so far as to give the as-then unnamed project a title: The Who Sell Out. The band were thrilled with the finished packaging, even if Daltrey was made to suffer for his art, having caught pneumonia afterwards.
“We’d just come back from Hawaii on the Herman’s Hermits tour,” he explains. “We’d only been home for five days. I drew the short straw of getting to sit in the baked beans. Unfortunately for me, the beans had been put in cold storage. They were freezing cold, and after sitting in them for an hour my teeth were chattering. So they put an electric fire at the back, and by the end I was literally cooking! I did get very sick from that.”
The release of The Who Sell Out held long-term significance for the band. Daltrey, in particular, had begun to inhabit his true persona on the immense I Can See For Miles, reaching fuller fruition some 15 months later, with Tommy. “Previously, the original material I was singing was from a person with a lost identity, searching for home,” he offers. “Tommy brought me home. All of a sudden I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew exactly who I was. I didn’t fear anything. My vocal style changed because of the type of material I was singing. It was its own thing.”
For Townshend, the songs on The Who Sell Out signalled the start of his personal spiritual and metaphysical quest that would continue for the rest of his career. Certainly the grand visions of Tommy, Lifehouse (initially truncated into Who’s Next) and Quadrophenia couldn’t have happened without it.
Unlike any of the above, however, The Who Sell Out bears its weight lightly. It never forgets to have fun, offsetting its intellectual vigour with an impish sense of joy and subversion. It’s an album that delights in the untold possibilities of pop music, made by people who were only too eager to explore.
“I very much enjoyed that process,” concludes Townshend. “It felt to me like I was discovering things about the guitar that I hadn’t discovered before. I was finding ways of creating new harmonies and textures and new sounds. There were challenges going on for me and I was rising to them. And sometimes I was pulling them off.”
Venue: Studio Recording: Soundboard Comments: Decent sounding recording consisting of studio versions, out-takes and unreleased songs, some even from “The Who Sell Out” sessions. The most frequently seen cover is black & white. However, A very rare color cover was recently discovered and is depicted above. Both of these LP’s come with a plain red colored center hole label without a track listing on them. The front and back covers of each LP are iden tical except for the coloring.
Radio Caroline was the first of the offshore “pirate ships” beaming into Britain, though the idea had been tried off California and elsewhere in the 1930’s.
Rosamond Press 
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