"When it first appeared as a concept album, in 1969, it was, after all, billed as a rock opera. And let’s face it, if you’ve ever paid attention to its story unstoned, you’re going to have some questions, just as you might with 'The Magic Flute.'... That’s why I find it more profitable to think about 'Tommy' not as a chain of events but as a dream you are watching from a perch inside someone’s amygdala. That person would of course be [Pete] Townshend, who...
recently told The Times that 'Tommy' is probably 'a memoir in which I work out my childhood stuff.'... [H]is abuse, he said, was at the hands of his 'awful' grandmother, not his 'neglectful and careless' parents.... 'Sickness will surely take the mind/Where minds can’t usually go'.... [Townshend's] avatar... finds that 'freedom lies in normality.' This is the opposite of rock’s countercultural pose; in the end, the one to whom Tommy sings the anthem 'Listening to You' is not a crowd of admirers but his mother. [The new Broadway] production does not traffic in such subtleties.... You will be overwhelmed.... [W]hen everything’s an effect, no matter how brilliant, none can be special."
Writes Jesse Green, in
"'Tommy' Goes Full Tilt in a Relentless Broadway Revival/Will the Who’s rock opera about a traumatized boy hit the jackpot again?" (NYT).
Green makes his points really well. I'm just going to pick one nit — with the headline. In pinball, you don't "go full tilt." "Tilt" ends the game. The "tilt" in "go full tilt" is the tilting in jousting. You're on a horse, aiming a lance, riding quickly toward another horseman with a lance. That's the concrete thing in the dying metaphor. You may remember
Janis Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie. And I concede that there was a pinball video game in the 90s called
Full Tilt! Pinball. That's got nothing to do with Tommy, which is not about video games.
But then the show, as Green tells it, is out of whack and, in overdoing everything, misses the chance to tell a story consistent with Townshend's recent revelations.
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Put a chick in it and make her gay…
"Green makes his points really well. I'm just going to pick one nit — with the headline. In pinball, you don't "go full tilt." "Tilt" ends the game. The "tilt" in "go full tilt" is the tilting in jousting. You're on a horse, aiming a lance, riding quickly toward another horseman with a lance. That's the concrete thing in the dying metaphor. You may remember Janis Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie. And I concede that there was a pinball video game in the 90s called Full Tilt! Pinball. That's got nothing to do with Tommy, which is not about video games."
The metaphor is a malaprop.
Why did they have to destroy a bunch of perfectly good vintage pinball machines for the most pretentious ending of any film ever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf-D-LJ-5YA
Has any rock opera made much sense, stoned or otherwise?
We’re nahgunna take it.
...if you’ve ever paid attention to its story unstoned, you’re going to have some questions, just as you might with 'The Magic Flute.'...
Townshend was a bit upset when someone pointed out that the story was a bit 'dodgy'. Kit Lambert told him not to worry as most operas had dodgy stories. Quadrophenia has a much better story, but even it's a bit dodgy at times. I guess the reason he's not brining that back is because Mods and Rockers would be a bit hard to explain nowadays.
In pinball, you don't "go full tilt.".
Townshend played a rough cut of the album for rock critic Nik Cohn whose response was "Meh!". But Cohn was a big pinball fan. And so Pinball Wizard was born!
First the Who sell out. Then they strike out.
Broadway? Isn't that in New York City?
I thought we had abandoned New York City. Do people still go there? No one I know.
"I'm Free" "See Me, Feel Me" "Pinball Wizard"
The rest is filler.
The movie is a Ken Russell mess. Clapton is great on "Eyesight to the Blind."
You know, Townshend was basically just talking about his generation. Not surprising that he can't explain.
I've had season tickets for Broadway musicals for many years.
This year I declined to renew for two reasons: The crime and grime and shithole status of downtown San Francisco, and the woke left destroying even 'classic' musicals.
Every character is race- or gender-swapped. Trans characters are now the norm, as in a 350-pound black trans woman (a dude) playing the part of Ado Annie in 'Oklahoma.'
So I don't expect anything written in the '60s to survive the insanity of the crazy, insane left.
The theater lost lost revenue as did the city (dinner, drinks, transportation, etc.).
Liberalism destroys everything it touches...
I have a vague recollection of seeing Tommy in a theater, a long, long time ago. The only things I really remember are his father in an airplane going down in flames, as seen from inside the cockpit, which was horrifying, and Tina Turner, who flipped ALL of my teen-age circuit-breakers. The legs on that woman were a revelation to me.
When Tommy came out, I listened to it once and went back to Renbourn, Cooder and Kottke.
I don’t like the album but i do like the movie.
His abuse, he said, was at the hands of his 'awful' grandmother, not his 'neglectful and careless' parents
Fiddle About
I’m your wicked Uncle Ernie
I'm glad you won't see or hear me
As I fiddle about
Fiddle about
Fiddle about!
Your mother left me here to mind you
Now I'm doing what I want to
Fiddling about
Fiddling about
Fiddle about!
Down with the bedclothes
Up with your nightshirt
You won't shout as I fiddle about
Fiddle about!
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle
Fiddle
If you haven't been indoctrinated into the Who, start with the double album "Live at Leeds." If you like it progress from there, it is a rare good live recording. Most importantly it includes an entire live rendition of Tommy. Then watch "The Kids are Alright" for their awesome performance of "A Quick One..." at a Stones led event. Kind of like the Grateful Dead's European tour double live album which gives you almost everything you really need from them.
Have we not been Tommy'd to death by now? Movies, stage musicals, tribute albums... enough is too much already. Four really good songs, at best: Amazing Journey, Pinball Wizard, & We're Not Gonna Take It/See Me Feel Me. Don't really care about the rest of it. I suppose the Overture is nice also. But really, I'd rather listen to almost any other album by The Who.
I saw the original play in London years ago in its first incarnation. It was ok, but frankly a stage performance of just the album would have been better - it’s not a very coherent story and the middle part is where the weird uncle character molests him ( hello Keith Moon for that part). You would really have to flash it up to make it a hit, sadly because it’s just not that engrossing as a story.
I have pleasant memories of Ann Margaret frolicking in baked beans. No one before Ann Margaret and Ken Russell had ever realized the erotic potential of backed beans. It doesn't take much for anything to realize their erotic potential when they're in close proximity to Ann Margaret. Viva Las Vegas wasn't the best Elvis movie because of Elvis....She was extravagantly gorgeous in Bye Bye Birdie and even better at the time I saw it, she was age appropriate. I could honorably lust after Ann Margaret playing a high school student because I was a high school student.
I saw the original play in London years ago in its first incarnation. It was ok, but frankly a stage performance of just the album would have been better - it’s not a very coherent story and the middle part is where the weird uncle character molests him ( hello Keith Moon for that part). You would really have to flash it up to make it a hit, sadly because it’s just not that engrossing as a story.
"Has any rock opera made much sense, stoned or otherwise?"
In broad description, TOMMY makes sense: An abused and traumatized child grows into adulthood and displays a special talent that draws attention to him from the counter-culture and, ultimately, fans who adore him and wish to emulate him. The adored but wounded young protagonist, having pursued spiritual explorations to help him heal himself and to explain to himself his special status, wants to "share" his "good news" with others. However, hubris, combined with a strong self-willed certainty in the beneficial results of his "good news," which he insists his followers adopt, lead him to overstep, becoming that which he (and the counterculture) had rejected--an autocrat heading a coerced followship. He is cast aside by his disillusioned followers, who realize they are being asked to abase themselves and adopt another's rules...reiterating the larger social organization typical everywhere throughout history.
I’ve never seen the movie or the musical, but the album is good, and the Who’s various recorded live performances of the work from 1969-1970 are some of the finest live rock performances ever put on tape. It doesn’t get any better than “Amazing Journey/Sparks” from the full version of Live at Leeds, or “We’re Not Gonna Take It” from Woodstock. And from a remove of 55 years, the subject matter of Tommy is pretty amazing for any rock album; Townshend was writing about still-taboo material for that time and place.
Townshend and the band would eclipse Tommy on the next two albums - Who’s Next and Quadrophenia - but Tommy is still a vital piece of rock, especially those live performances.
'Have we not been Tommy'd to death by now?'
This is how entertainment/media works.
If you're the content creator (always be the content creator) you can monetize the fuck out of what you create. Musicals, TV shows, movies, T-shirts, etc.
Then when you die your relatives can monetize the fuck out of it.
Be the content creator...
And all these years I thpught it was the drugs and booze that fueled the story....
"This is how entertainment/media works."
Well certainly, I'm quite aware. And that's all fine even if I'm not a patron. I suspect Tommy has made Mr. Townshend more money than he will ever be able to spend. Good for him!
As a college kid I enjoyed Tommy because of the music. The story was obviously "dodgy," but more than half the time I didn't think about any song lyrics. So that didn't matter.
Something stuck, because a few decades later I needed a title for a book I'd written, and this was my source. What About the Boy?
A college friend insisted I listen with hiim to the just-released Pink Floyd album, The Wall, the day he acquired a bootleg cassette of the album. Listening on a tinny speaker to that entire album was like watching Star Wars on a 12" B&W TV screen (thanks, 1983 HBO!). One heard the words and had time to realize how bad was the story presented, without being overwhelmed by the sensory overload from good speakers or a big color screen.
Tommy always, for me, will have those magnificent boots worn during the pinball match as a memorable bit of theater.
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