10. The WhoI Can See For Miles
In 1965 they did ‘My Generation’. I remember hearing it on the radio and him saying ‘why don’t you all f-f-fade away’, and everybody knew what that meant. That was a big thing at the time, you’d be in school going ‘why don’t you all f-f-fade away’. That was quite revolutionary.
I followed The Who from early on, they had a lot of hit pop singles and then they did this album called The Who Sell Out. Roger Daltrey’s sat in a tin of beans, and they’re all taking the piss out of advertising. One of the tracks on there is ‘I Can See For Miles’. It’s moving on from all the substitute and all the pop hits to something else a little bit more, not drug influenced, but it’s like another world. They shift like a whirlwind in the song, and then again, it gets left out compared to the other hits sometimes. But it’s just a fantastic song. And it comes off in a major album, because on that album they’ve got little pop art adverts in between the songs.
[‘I Can See For Miles’] feels almost like you’ve taken some fucking speed and you’re a bit manic and a bit spacey. It’s got like a space quality and a bit of dark intensity about it as well, a defiance. Which was a wonderful thing to get into. That’s inspired when you’re young. This song is perhaps not completely representative of that album, but it is in that you can feel a few drugs going down on that album.
