Townshend
likes What
he hears

[H aden, from Page E1]

last week by the independent 1a-
bel Bar/None, and now she has a
new set of concerns.

“I’m kind of nervous about
what these die-hard Who fans
are going to think,” she says, fret-
ting her way through lunch at a
deli near her sister Tanya’s Mac-
Arthur Park-area home. “Like,
they’re going to want to kill me.”

Not the Who fan WhO matters
most.

“I heard the songs as if for the
first time, and I was really
pleased to hear how beautiful
they are,” says the Who’s Pete
Townshend. “In many cases Pe-
tra has released nuances that
might be 10st to the casual lis-
tener t0 the Who’s album. For ex-
ample, the vocal harmonies on ‘I
Can See for Miles’ are carefully
analyzed, and you hear all the
parts. . ..

“She’s so smart, because she

,[gi

RICHARD HARTOG Los Angeles Times

S HE CAN SE E F OR M ILE S: Petra Haden is assembling a choir to perform the album live.

listened first to What was on the
original record before she start-
ed her own thesis With it. That is
such a gift for one musician to
give another — to really listen.”
“The Who Sell Out” is Town-
shend’s favorite Who album, an

opinion shared by many fans of
the English band. Simulta—
neously a celebration and a spoof
of the era’s pop radio experience
and the youth culture it embod-
ied, it stitched together a set of
varied songs With original jingles

for Radio London and comical
commercials for such products

as Odorono deodorant.
Musically, the album brought
out a lot of the Who’s Beach Boys
side, as well as touches of music
[See Haden, Page E11 ]