Coming on May 6th are new vinyl half speed remasters of the Who's first two albums — 1965's My Generation and 1966's A Quick One — with the latter mastered by longtime Who engineer Jon Astley. Both albums are packaged in original sleeve with obi stripe and certificate of authenticity and are available now to pre-order.
The images of the Who's early career will always be dominated with Pete Townshend's iconic guitar smashing — an instant gimmick that never failed to thrill: “Next thing I knew, I’m breaking guitars at gigs, y’know, saying, ‘I am destroying the instrument of my bourgeois child longing,’ y’know, which is I used to stand outside shops and people used to come and go ‘What a great axe!!!’ And I’d say, ‘It’s not an act, it’s . . .’ And I’d even have the guys in the band going ‘What a load of pompous pretentious drivel’ — and I’d go, ‘No, it’s auto-destructive art.”
Amazingly, Pete Townshend is still having “My Generation's” key lines — “Hope I die before I get old” — read back to him by journalists in hope of a “true” explanation: “The song was more about, y'know, refusing to grow old, rather than, y'know, 'I don't wanna grow old' — it was about refusing to grow old inside. That's what I'm so proud of: having the physique of a 16-year-old boy!”
