Direct Hits (Vinyl - 1968)

It is a genuinely strange experience listening to Direct Hits some four decades after it was rushed out by Track Records (the Who's U.K. label) to help fill what would become a 19-month gap between The Who Sell Out (November 1967) and Tommy (May 1969). Then again, it was probably a pretty strange experience listening to it back in November of 1968 -- the album was a blatant cash-in effort by the cash-strapped label, made all the more urgent by the fact that the group's last three singles, "I Can See for Miles," "Dogs," and "Magic Bus," had not sold nearly as well as expected in England. The first two were on this, the first-ever attempt to collect the Who's hits (augmented by some EP and LP tracks -- the Who not yet having had quite enough hits, even in England, to fill an LP) in one place, and Direct Hits would be notable on that basis alone. But the fact that it's such a damn weird-ass record, no matter when one hears it, makes the album especially worthwhile four decades on. What kind of a compilation of the Who's hits opens with the John Entwistle-dominated "Bucket T," a cover of a Jan & Dean car song that's dominated not by such Who signature sounds as Pete Townshend's guitar or Roger Daltrey's vocals, but by Entwistle's horn? And then jumps to a pair of Townshend-authored plunges into sexuality as subject matter, "I'm a Boy" and "Pictures of Lily," the former about a boy feminized by his oppressive mother and the latter an ode to masturbation? And then switches gears to Entwistle's loopy ode to hypochondria "Doctor Doctor," driven as much by the composer's loping bass figure as Townshend's crunching guitar, while the singer rattles off a comical list of ailments he believes himself to be suffering from? Only two of the first four songs have come down to us as defining the Who, but all were very much what this band was about in its first few years, pop/rock musical caricatures of how British teens defined the human condition during the mid-'60s. As a singles compilation, Direct Hits might be considered a joke if the individual songs weren't so good.

Instead, it ends up one of the wildest and woolliest rides one can take through the Who's early history, which it manages to be while still not being complete in that context (the mod anthems "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," and "My Generation" are absent, as is their debut as the Who, "I Can't Explain"). But it was worth owning in November of 1968, because there was no place else to look for a Who compilation (on either side of the Atlantic) -- what was here was unique, and it's still worth hearing four decades later. For all of its strangeness (especially on the original LP's first side), Direct Hits does focus on the Who as a killer singles band. That side of their work and history ended up being pushed into the background -- especially in the press -- after albums such as Tommy and Who's Next came to dominate their output, their image, and their concert sets, and is neglected in most histories. But it was as pop-music miniaturists, creating these vest-pocket dramas, comedies, and vignettes, along with anthems like "My Generation," that they excelled during their first four years, and it was those singles that first endeared them to their fans, as much as or more than LPs like My Generation or A Quick One. Direct Hits includes one forgotten highlight of that singles output, the band's manic rendition of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," rushed out as an expression of support for the group after Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, and Brian Jones' arrests on drug charges. On this single -- which was hardly heard (or known) in the United States at all prior to the explosion of interest in the band after Tommy -- the Who deconstruct the song and reshape it distinctly in their image, dominated by Townshend's frantic guitar in place of the carefully delineated original Brian Jones/Keith Richard performance; his playing, coupled with Daltrey's edgy vocals, impart an overall tension that leaves the song feeling inches from violence. "I Can See for Miles" is no less frenetic, while "Dogs" is a piece of British mod-ish whimsy that never saw the light of day on this side of the Atlantic, and they're surrounded by such moments of brilliance as "Call Me Lightning." Direct Hits jumps across these three-minute explorations of humor (dark and bright), sexuality, irony, and drama -- and just plain silliness in the case of "Bucket T" and "In the City" -- all of which are sharper and punchier than their album output of the period. Most of these sides are all-but-forgotten today, even by a lot of fans, or they're pushed far into the background of a band that was selling songs by the LP in the millions and filling arenas by the tens of thousands at the close of the decade in which they originally appeared. And the group itself, for all of its success with its albums from 1969 onward, didn't entirely abandon the history or the format represented here -- they kept putting out first-rate stand-alone singles like "Let's See Action" and "Join Together" into the early and mid-'70s, in between their sweeping, grand-themed albums; eventually, their efforts were simply overwhelmed by the size of their surrounding efforts. One can also find hints of the sophistication that led to that future in the album's cover design, depicting the band in the last phases of their London Mod period amid various pop-art images, with film-strip framing, arty angles, and color filters in evidence. It all pointed toward artistic goals to come, but it also oozed as much excitement as any piece of 12" vinyl to see the light of day in England in 1968.

And for reasons that Track Records could never have predicted, Direct Hits also had an effect far beyond its intended British audience. As the first compilation of the Who's work, it was brought into the United States by some enterprising importers, making it one of the earliest U.K. albums to find even limited distribution other side of the Atlantic, especially at record stores serving college campuses. And that's how it came to be reviewed in the pages of Rolling Stone -- possibly the first British import LP to receive what was, in those days, a true honor. Actually, the album bore a partial resemblance in song lineup, if not design, to the U.S.-issued Magic Bus album put out by Decca Records, which was also a compilation, but not acknowledged as such in its packaging (which, in fact, seemed to suggest that it was a live album). Critics and fans stacked them up against each other and found the American LP wanting in almost every department. And in one fell swoop, Direct Hits became the record that introduced British imports to a wider American public than had ever known about them, and established the notion that the British record labels often did better work than their U.S. counterparts. Decca would eventually get it right, with Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, a Who compilation that outdid Direct Hits in range if not quirkiness, but Direct Hits was and still is an appealing snapshot of the early Who in all of their weird and offbeat glory. For decades, it was consigned to history, part of their "shadow" U.K. vinyl history, apart from a 200-gram vinyl reissue in 2004 -- and then, in 2007, it suddenly showed up on CD from Japan, in an audiophile-quality remastering that brought out all of the bizarre glory of those early singles in 24-bit digital resolution, packaged in a miniature LP sleeve. And it is worth every penny to hear it again after all of those decades, and get a fresh fix of the Who as a bunch of pop/rock virtuosos and brilliant musical story-tellers who were also not afraid to be silly. ~ Bruce Eder minimize