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The Who Settle Out
ICE Magazine
#178 January 2002

[reprinted without permission]

Fans of The Who have been treated to upgraded, expanded, newly 
remastered and bonus-track laden reissues of most of the group's 
catalog, with the glaring exception of their 1965 debut album, 'The 
Who Sings My Generation'. For that album, consumers have had to be 
content with a low-budget first-generation compact disc produced by 
MCA Records in the '80s , with sub-par sound and bare-bones, generic 
graphics. That's because the album's original producer, Shel Talmy, 
owns the master tapes, and had never been able to reach a 
satisfactory arrangement with MCA, now the Universal Music Group.

All of that changed in late November with the announcement that Talmy 
and Universal have, indeed, finally put aside their differences and 
will collaborate on a special, two-CD Deluxe Edition reissue of 'The 
Who Sings My Generation' next spring, probably in May. In addition to 
the 12 tracks from the album, Talmy also possesses the master tapes 
to another dozen early Who sides, many of which appeared on various 
singles and EPs back in the '60s. All 24 selections will be mixed to 
true stereo for the first time ever, from the original three-track 
master tapes. That should result in a sonic clarity that will leave 
all previous versions in the dust. And there's more: Talmy's tapes 
contain hours of unreleased alternate takes, which will probably form 
the content of the Deluxe Edition's second CD.

The 24 basic tracks that will be heard in true stereo for the first 
time ever: "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," "Anytime You Want Me," "Bald 
Headed Woman," "Circles," "Daddy Rolling Stone," "Heat Wave" 
(covering Martha and the Vandellas), "I Can't Explain" (their first 
charting single in both England and America), "I Don't Mind," "I'm A 
Man," "Instant Party Mixture," "It's Not True," "Leaving Here," "A 
Legal Matter," "La La La Lies," "Lubie (Come Back Home)," 
"Motor-vating," "Much Too Much," "My Generation," "Please, Please, 
Please," "Shout and Shimmy," "The Good's Gone," "The Kids Are 
Alright," "The Ox" and "You're Going to Know Me."

Shel Talmy discovered The Who in England in 1964 and signed them to a 
production contract, produced their first recordings and then 
label-shopped the band, landing a record deal with Decca Records in 
the U.S. By the end of 1965 the two had parted ways, but Talmy owned 
all the early master tapes and has guarded them carefully over the 
ensuing decades, keeping them in a temperature-controlled vault.

Although Decca and then MCA could release and re-release the 24 songs 
all they wanted, they only had the original mono mixes that Talmy 
delivered to them, and the "fake stereo" that was innocently cobbled 
together in the '60s (not by Talmy), which is now heavily frowned 
upon. Talmy's multi-track master tapes could easily be mixed to 
stereo at any time...if the incentive was there. So Talmy has always 
held a strong trump card, but couldn't do anything without MCA's 
cooperation. The impasse grew into acrimony with the passage of time. 
"I've had to fight for my legal royalties for years," Talmy told ICE 
in 1997 (issue #121), "because I was getting fucked by the record 
labels, and you can quote me on that."

So what happened to thaw the iceberg? "It all really happened because 
I finally decided to put up a Web site this year," Talmy now tells 
ICE, referring to www.sheltalmy.com. "From that, everything just sort 
of happened. I started getting contacted by people that I hadn't 
heard from in years, and at one point, [Who leader] Pete Townshend 
actually e-mailed me, and we've been in touch ever since.

"Basically, Pete and I found out that various things had been told to 
us individually that were not exactly the 100% bona fide truth, and 
that we were really far more on the same page than off of it, so it 
all sort of finally came together." Townshend and his personal 
engineer Jon Astley will not be involved in the new mixing or 
mastering, although - as a professional courtesy - the Who members 
will have some say in what unreleased material is used.

Speaking of which, "I have tons of outtakes," Talmy says, "like maybe 
10-11 takes of 'My Generation,' something like that - but not all of 
them complete takes." How much tape, in all? "I don't know...20 
different reels, maybe."

"I've listened to everything [recently], and the tapes are in 
fabulous shape. I used old AGVA tape, which used to wear the heads 
out, but the tape itself is in fabulous condition." Talmy says Who 
fans have been imploring him not to use noise reduction: "I keep 
getting e-mails saying, 'Leave the hiss on the tapes!' So I recently 
posted to my Web site, 'Sorry, guys, there is no hiss on the tapes.' 
You know the term 'signal-to-noise ratio'? Well, the more signal 
there is, the less noise, and I always cut things as hot as I could, 
so there's virtually no hiss. Or distortion, I should add." Talmy 
says that he'll be mixing the multi-track tapes to analog, "but I'm 
also simultaneously going to mix it to DSD (Direct Stream Digital) 
for Super Audio CD (SACD)."

Andy McKaie, Sr. VP of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises, tells 
ICE, "I've been in the studio and listened to the tapes, and it's all 
there - alternate takes, breakdowns, instrumentals, even a cappella." 
What about the young band members clowning around in the studio? 
"There aren't any studio hi-jinks," McKaie says. "It's not A Hard 
Day's Night. They were pretty well-rehearsed. So it's just a matter 
of picking the right stuff and putting it together. Those 
three-tracks are as smart as can be, with beautiful sound, so it's 
gonna be awesome."

We asked Talmy if Townshend was showing any signs of wanting to run 
the show at this early stage. "No, not at all," he says. "People 
don't realize that I didn't just go in the studio and say, 'Now, what 
are we going to do today, guys?' I knew about 90% of what was going 
to happen, because of rehearsals. If anything wonderful happened 
apart from that, I'd leave it in. But I was paying for it, it was my 
money, and I didn't have much of it [laughing]."

The two-disc set's track list probably won't be determined until 
early in 2002, but the most likely scenario has the 24 masters 
appearing on Disc One and unreleased material occupying all of the 
second CD. Because of the tracks' short length and the usual costs 
incurred, however, collectors should not get their hopes up for 79 
minutes' worth of outtakes. McKaie, who's producing the reissue, 
says, "I hope to have in the vicinity of 40 tracks total, so you're 
talking about maybe 100 minutes of music. That's very substantial; 
Bob Marley's Catch a Fire Deluxe Edition was only 80-something, grand 
total."

ICE will print the complete track list for 'The Who Sings My 
Generation' Deluxe Edition as soon as the repertoire is selected.