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Direct Hits
Compilation album by
The Who
ReleasedOctober 1968
Recorded1966–1968
GenreRock
Length32:49
LabelTrack
The Who UK chronology
The Who Sell Out
(1967) 		Direct Hits
(1968) 		Tommy
(1969)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic [1]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[2]
Rolling Stone(favorable) [3]

Direct Hits is the first UK compilation album and the fourth UK LP released by The Who. It collects singles, B-sides, and album tracks originally recorded for Reaction Records and Track Records between 1966 and 1968.[4]

Earlier Who recordings from 1965, such as "My Generation", were released in the UK by Brunswick Records and were not available for this release due to music licensing issues. Thus the collection is not representative of the Who's hit recordings up to this point.

Direct Hits shares a few songs with the earlier US compilation album Magic Bus: The Who on Tour, but is otherwise unrelated to that release. Surprisingly, it does not include the song Magic Bus, which had reached No. 26 on the UK Singles Chart during the summer of 1968. Until the early 1980s this was the only album to include Who rarities such as "In the City", "Dogs", and a version of the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time".

Release history

Original 1968 UK LP copies were released in both stereo and mono. The album did not sell as well as other UK Who albums and it was deleted in the 1970s. It was released in Czechoslovakia in 1985 with a different artwork titled The Best of The Who. It was also re-issued on vinyl in 1980 in Japan. In 2006 the mono version was made available in the US as a limited-edition vinyl re-issue by Classic Records. This release was pressed in regular weight (150 gram) and heavy weight (200 gram) versions.

A CD version was released as a limited edition in Japan in 2007, which is one of only a few releases with the original mono single version of "I Can See for Miles" on an authorized CD.

Track listing

All songs written by Pete Townshend except where noted.

Side One

  1. "Bucket T" (Altfield, Christian, Torrence) – 2:08
  2. "I'm a Boy" – 2:36
  3. "Pictures of Lily" – 2:43
  4. "Doctor! Doctor!" (Entwistle) – 2:53
  5. "I Can See for Miles" – 3:55
  6. "Substitute" – 3:47

Side Two

  1. "Happy Jack" – 2:11
  2. "The Last Time" (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) – 2:50
  3. "In the City" (Entwistle, Moon) - 2:19
  4. "Call Me Lightning" – 2:19
  5. "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand" – 2:05
  6. "Dogs" – 3:03

References

  1. ^ "Direct Hits – The Who – Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  2. ^ Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
  3. ^ Ward, Edmund O. (18 October 1969). "Records". Rolling Stone. No. 44. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. p. 45. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
  4. ^ "The Who Official Band Website - Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon | | Direct Hits". Thewho.com. 1 October 1968. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
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