The Who Releases New Song “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”

The Who Releases New Song “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise” | I Love Classic Rock Videos

Who album sleeve - TheWho / Youtube

The Who has just released a new single for their upcoming album, Who. “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise” is the third release from the band, while also announcing the news of the inclusion of bonus tracks that will be packed in the Deluxe Edition of the catalog.

These are “This Gun Will Misfire” and “Danny & His Ponies”, which are exclusively written for this new album, while “Got Nothing to Prove” and “Sand” are some demos from the 1960s that are finally going to see the light of day. Townshend says that the two latter songs were “from the summer of 1966. They would not have been rejected by the band members but rather by my then-creative mentor, Who manager Kit Lambert.”

“In 1967, when the song seemed destined for the bottom drawer, I did offer ‘Got Nothing to Prove’ to Jimmy James and the Vagabonds who used to support us at the Marquee in 1965,” Townshend added. “I remember playing him the demo at my house in Twickenham. They were still managed by Peter Meaden, who had been so influential on me in particular in the short period he was our PR man in late 1964.”

The Who guitarist continued, saying, “Jimmy liked the song, and suggested making it more R&B, in a slower tempo, but nothing happened,” Townshend said. “I have a feeling Kit may have felt the song sounded as though it was sung by an older and more self-satisfied man than I was in real life. That would have applied to Roger too, I suppose. Now, it works. Back then, perhaps it didn’t. Dave Sardy and I decided to ask George Fenton to do a Swinging ’60s band arrangement to make the song more interesting, but also to place it firmly in an Austin Powers fantasy. I love it.”

“Sand is a simple idea, about a sunny beach-vacation romance that doesn’t last once the lovers get back home to the rain. Again, Kit passed on this, even as an album track, and it simply got filed away. I have always loved it, but have been waiting for computers to get smart enough to fix some of the tape stretch problems that had affected the demo,” Townshend said.

Townshend also noted that he stuck with the band’s recording techniques by replicating them in his home studio, saying, “I also revived this in my home studio by doing roughly what I felt the Who would have done had this ever been recorded by them. So, there is added backing vocals, Rickenbacker, and acoustic 12 string, and a feedback section to properly evoke the era.”