(Credits: Far Out / Dena Flows)
Mon 6 April 2026 7:32, UK
For a rock band like The Who, if they nailed down a song in the studio, then it would grow arms and legs to become even greater when they performed it during a live show.
After all, The Who built their reputation as a live phenomenon with the stage being the place where they always thrived, even if their albums were occasionally hit and miss. In the back of their minds, while in the studio, was likely often how it would translate to a concert, with their mission being to send arenas into a collective state of euphoria.
On one very rare occasion, though, they couldn’t replicate the beauty of the live recording during concerts, by Roger Daltrey’s own admission. The song in question is the delightful ‘Pictures of Lily’, which is always a perfect antidote if you’re having a bad day and want to have a smile planted on your face.
If you dig a little deeper beyond the gorgeous melody, the story told in the song is somewhat troubling, admittedly. In ‘Pictures of Lily’, a father passes on a collection of risqué images to his teenage son, who becomes infatuated with one specific woman.
The track then takes a dark turn upon the protagonist, realising that the woman of his dreams has passed away, as Daltrey mournfully sings, “Oh, how I cried that night, If only I’d been born in Lily’s time, It would have been alright, There were always pictures of Lily to help me sleep at night.”
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Although Daltrey was well aware of the song’s meaning, which Pete Townshend wrote, he tried his best to conceal the underlying theme of masturbation, telling Uncut, “When Kit and Pete came in and said this is the next single, yeah, straight away I saw the words and knew what it was about. So I deliberately thought I’d sing it the opposite way, with complete innocence. So instead of it being something suggestive, it tweaks it the other way and gives it a little bit more intrigue.”
While Daltrey did a fine job not making ‘Pictures of Lily’ sound sleazy, so much so that radio stations didn’t realise it involved masturbating and played it on repeat, it never worked live. Daltrey conceded, “But ‘Pictures Of Lily’ never sat well on stage for some reason.”
There’s not an easy, explicable reason for ‘Pictures of Lily’ not working as a live song. The Who could have turned the phonebook into a rock ‘n’ roll anthem during their heyday, yet they never managed to get ‘Pictures of Lily’ to click into place.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, either. The Who attempted to make ‘Pictures of Lily’ part of their set on numerous occasions, but it’s never become a staple. In total, they have only played the track live on 94 occasions, with the first performance at a concert in Cologne in 1966. In the next two years, it was aired 30 times before losing its position.
After a prolonged absence, they gave it another shot in 1979 before leaving it on the shelf for another 12 years, when they played it 11 times in 1989. It once again failed to retain its place but did return to their set lists a quarter of a century later, but was aired for the final time in 2017.
When they had a huge headline show at Hyde Park in 2015, it was brought out to appease a friend of the band, Paul Weller, who requested to hear it. Townshend warned the 50,000-plus fans that it might sound “crap” due to it not being a regular part of the set, and while crap is overly harsh, it certainly isn’t as special as the studio version.
Clearly, The Who’s Townshend and Daltrey do hold affection for the song, otherwise they’d have refused to play it entirely. On the other hand, the band’s late bassist, John Entwistle, couldn’t stand it one bit, telling Mojo in 1994: “The thing I hate about ‘Pictures of Lily’ is that bloody elephant call on the French horn. I also hated the backing vocals, the mermaid voices, where we’d sing all the ‘oooooohs.’ I hated ‘oooooohs.’”
In the grand scheme of things, ‘Pictures of Lily’ failing to translate to the live environment was nothing to lose sleep over, as The Who already had more hits than they knew what to do with to put in their set. But, still, the intriguing, unsolvable mystery about why it never quite worked remains.
