Was There a Real Lily Behind The Who’s “Pictures Of Lily”, or Is Pete Townshend’s More Lewd Explanation the Truth?

One song can contain multitudes of inspiration, with some influences stronger than others. And indeed, The Who’s 1967 track “Pictures Of Lily” off Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy is no exception. Songwriter Pete Townshend has cited several sources of inspiration for the track, for which the guitarist coined an entirely new genre: power pop.

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In some retellings, “Pictures Of Lily” stemmed from an actual person named Lily. In others, Townshend summarized the track as a teenage ode to masturbation. We’ll allow you to imagine the brainstorming sessions for the latter in your own time, while we focus on the first theory: who was Lily?

Pete Townshend Referenced Several Lilies in Later Interviews

In The Who’s “Pictures Of Lily”, the narrator describes himself as a lonely, restless person who struggles to fall asleep each night. He asks his father for advice, and his father responds by tacking up “little somethings” to his son’s wall. The chorus insists, “Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful / Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night / Pictures of Lily solved my childhood problems / Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright.”

According to guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, there was more than one Lily that inspired his 1967 track. One was an old Vaudeville star by the name of Lily Bayliss. In Rikky Rooksby’s Lyrics: Writing Better Words For Your Songs, Townshend recalled how his then-girlfriend had a photo of Bayliss pinned to her wall. “It was an old 1920s postcard, and someone had written on it, ‘Here’s another picture of Lily. Hope you haven’t got this one.’ It made me think that everyone has a pin-up period.”

However, in Townshend’s memoir, Who I Am, the guitarist said he based his song on Lily Langtry, a mistress of both Prince Edward and King Edward VII. (Though the detail of her photo on his girlfriend’s wall stayed the same.) Townshend wrote, “My song was intended to be an ironic comment on the sexual shallows of show business, especially pop, a world of postcard images for boys and girls to fantasize over.”

Or… The Who Song Is About No Lilies at All

Regardless of whether Lily Bayliss or Lily Langtry played a larger role in influencing Pete Townshend to write “Pictures Of Lily”, it seems like the underlying theme is the same no matter what. He summarized the song in his memoir as being “about a boy saved from burgeoning adolescent sexual frustration when his father presented him with dirty postcards over which he could m*sturbate.”

“Pictures Of Lily” was a success in the United Kingdom, peaking at No. 4 on the U.K. Singles chart. It performed more modestly in the United States, peaking at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100. Given its sexual connotations, it’s no wonder that the song didn’t perform quite as well in the conservative States—or that it appeared on an album called Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy.

Photo by Chris Morphet/Redferns