THE WHO should be in protoprog

 

You have it wrong wrt Sell Out - Pete Townshend's idea (and no doubt Kit Lambert was involved somewhere) was to have an album reflecting the then current music output into the UK of off-shore pirate radio (a concept of sorts but no way prog) - indeed the Who were writing advertising jingles for Radio London, some of which are replayed on the album. Sell Out was an album of psychedelic rock interdispersed with real radio adverts - all largely written by Townshend. BTW I Can See For Miles was the Who's valiant attempt to achieve a UK No 1 for the first time - made No.2, only No. 1 in (guess what) Radio London's chart, and this failure was said to be then cause of the Who abandoning the UK to concentrate on full American success for a couple of years.

 

And isn't about time we stop reading the claim that Tommy was the first rock OPERA (thanks TR for the very quick spot).  (I suppose now for the 50th time in PA we beg to report) SF Sorrow is Townshend's personal reference point - and then it was well known Mark Wirtz and Tomorrow's Keith West had started working on one -  for goodness sake they had a No 1 in the UK Charts called Excerpts From A Teenage Opera. And I wonder how much Townshend was aware of the Kink's Ray Davis's first and what turned out delayed concept album, which were greatly impeded by the Kinks' inability to record for a year because of legal action. Read around and you will also find folks suggesting the first rock opera dates back to 1963 - but then other people suggest (the most notably Joe Boyd) that real rock didn't happen until the  summer of 1964..........

 

 

(Is that controversial too?)