He plays pinball by sense of smell? But how does he … where does he …
Eh, just go with it.
*****
Leave it to PBS to introduce a 14-year-old kid to the Who.
In August of 1994, I’m not sure I would have known I was living through the 25th anniversary of Woodstock if PBS hadn’t started broadcasting the Woodstock movie on repeat. Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Sha Na Na … all cool, but who was this guy with a giant nose in a baggy white jumpsuit, playing guitar by twirling his arms? Didn’t that hurt his joints?
Watching from the kitchen, my father saw the tacky freeze frames of Pete Townshend in mid-air and said, “Oh, it’s the Who.”
“The Who? No seriously, who is it?”
Clichéd jokes ensued, yet as the singer in the excessively fringed shirt shifted from “See Me, Feel Me” to “Listening to You,” I could smell a winner a mile away. Despite having no clue what the lyrics meant, the lyrics felt like they meant something. I could see it in the audience’s faces. Or maybe that was the bad acid.
“I think this is a song from Tommy,” my father added.
“What’s Tommy?”
“I don’t know, some album. Everybody was into it, but I wasn’t really into it. They looked cool live, though.”
I would’ve done more research, but my brother beat me to it by checking out Tommy from the library a month later. This was back when Tommy was in its two-CD incarnation, before MCA realized they could fit it all on one CD. Just one problem: we didn’t own a CD player. Still, looking at the booklet was fun. Why were the band members trapped in a giant blue sphere with rhombus-shaped windows in outer space? Why was a wrinkled, calloused fist punching a hole through the universe while seagulls flew around it?
Fortunately, after a trip to a friend’s house, my brother came back with a cassette copy, and as he listened to it in his room, I lingered by the door, curious to discover where the “See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You” song fell in the album’s running order. Little did I know that I would be standing by that door for 70 minutes, given that the song I was waiting to hear was the last song on the album. The Woodstock movie hadn’t made that clear at all. Nor had it made it clear that the song wasn’t called “See Me, Fee Me/Listening to You.”
But maybe this was the perfect way for a 14-year-old boy to listen to Tommy: through a door, attempting to decipher the mysterious vibrations emanating from the other side.
*****
These days, I feel like Tommy is the “classic” album that isn’t.
Read any short biography of the Who, and it will invariably refer to Tommy as the band’s “classic rock opera.” Thing is, it’s been years since I’ve seen a record guide give the album anything resembling a classic rating. Here, from Tommy’s Wikipedia page, is a screen shot of the “Retrospective Professional Reviews” section:
You see any five star ratings there? See any A-pluses? I have a lifetime’s worth of practice ignoring Robert Christgau’s ratings but … Uncut Magazine? Three stars? Et tu, Uncut Magazine?
Someone needs to inform all these people referring to Tommy as classic album that its classic status has been revoked. I keep seeing YouTube videos where people do a list of their “10 Most Overrated Albums,” and they include Tommy in it. No, stop. I hereby decree that Tommy can no longer be called “overrated.” The powers that be have re-rated it. The consensus is with you now. I’m the outlier. Don’t rub it in.
But why? What happened? What did Tommy do? When did Tommy molest a deaf, dumb, and blind kid and get cancelled?
It all started a long time ago … before the war, before Captain Walker came home, before the man with the big schnozz who wrote “Hope I die before I get old” got very old indeed. It may have started, ironically, around the time I got into the album (but since this was only when I began paying attention, my perception might be skewed).
I remember picking up a Rolling Stone Album Guide in a bookstore in the mid-‘90s, and seeing Tommy rated five stars out of five, but when I picked up the 2004 revised edition, I shook my fist as I saw that they’d demoted it to four stars out of five. And that guide handed out four-and-a-half star ratings, so four stars? That was a proper demotion. Reviewer Mark Kemp wrote that “in retrospect, Tommy isn’t quite the masterpiece it was originally hyped to be.” Had I hitched my wagon to the wrong train? The MusicHound Guide, published in 1998, using the same rating system as Rolling Stone but swapping out stars for “bones,” gave the album four bones out of five: “The rock opera Tommy is valuable more for the concept than the music, though Moon’s brilliant, propulsive drumming overcomes weak production.” Interesting. Very interesting.
Not that any of these scores are especially low. I rarely see an album guide trash or outright dismiss the album. But forget “greatest albums” lists; even within the hierarchy of the Who’s discography (or, to clarify, the Keith Moon-era discography), Tommy often comes out closer to the bottom than the top. All Music currently gives every Who album from 1965 through 1973 its maximum five star rating, aside from A Quick One and … Tommy? Wait, Tommy has to hang with A Quick One now? Do we really want to declare Tommy the Who’s fifth best studio album, or possibly sixth (it’s tied with A Quick One, so who knows)? Richie Unterberger’s generally admiring review (which hasn’t been updated since the late ‘90s) makes me wonder if he felt the need to succumb to revisionist peer pressure by leaving out that crucial half star:
The full-blown rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy that launched the band to international superstardom, written almost entirely by Pete Townshend. Hailed as a breakthrough upon its release, its critical standing has diminished somewhat in the ensuing decades because of the occasional pretensions of the concept and because of the insubstantial nature of some of the songs that functioned as little more than devices to advance the rather sketchy plot. Nonetheless, the double album has many excellent songs, including “I’m Free,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Sensation,” “Christmas,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and the dramatic ten-minute instrumental “Underture.” Though the album was slightly flawed, Townshend’s ability to construct a lengthy conceptual narrative brought new possibilities to rock music. Despite the complexity of the project, he and the Who never lost sight of solid pop melodies, harmonies, and forceful instrumentation, imbuing the material with a suitably powerful grace.
Translation: “I really, really, really like this album, and anyone else who loves ‘60s rock will probably really, really, really like it too, but I can’t give it five stars because, you know, my buddies are watching me, and we’ve all agreed that Tommy is on the ‘outs,’ so …”
I feel like modern-day criticisms of Tommy fall into three categories: 1) It’s “Flawed/Pretentious/Overhyped”; 2) It’s no Quadrophenia; 3) It was better live.
Let’s start with Criticism #1.
The “occasional pretentions of the concept,” Unterberger writes. Definition of “pretentious” (per dictionary.com): “Characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved.” I just had a thought. I don’t think I’ve ever criticized an album for being too pretentious. I have criticized an album for being too 1) boring; 2) safe; 3) uninspired; 4) generic. But I’ve never criticized an album for being too pretentious. You mean pretention is supposed to be a bad thing? Here is a list of things I have never asked my favorite bands to do:
Don’t take artistic chances
Don’t use your imagination
Don’t experiment
Don’t have something thought-provoking to say
Don’t get on the wrong side of rock critics
Then we’ve got takes like the one from Dave Marsh, who, according to Wikipedia, agrees with Unterberger that the album is “flawed” … except he feels it’s flawed for the exact opposite reason as Unterberger does! “Dave Marsh thought the problem with the album’s narrative is that there isn’t enough transitional material provided by the lyrics. There are no stage directions, no cast, and narration is restricted to key phrases (such as ‘Tommy can you hear me?’).” Which is it, guys?
Maybe Tommy would have been better off if it had been panned upon release. Maybe it would have gotten the White Album/Exile on Main Street treatment, you know, grown to be re-evaluated more favorably over time. But no, you know what it had to get? It had to get the Sgt. Pepper treatment.
Background: nobody, in 1969, expected an album like Tommy to be coming from a band like the Who. “You mean those prankster kids who trash their instruments at the end of every concert? With the drummer who crashes limos into swimming pools? ‘Hope I die before I get old’? Those guys?” Imagine if Faith No More had suddenly released Automatic for the People. It was kind of like that. Nobody thought the Who had it in them. But when you surpass expectations that much, the sharks start nibbling at the fish, like in The Old Man and the Sea.
The late ‘70s prog vs. punk critical debate also didn’t help. As with Sgt. Pepper, I suspect prog rock took Tommy’s legacy to some questionable places. Because punk came along, and, “Gee, you know what? Weren’t the Who better when they were riding scooters and stuttering and doing all those short, feedback-heavy mod singles? All that Tommy stuff was so bloated.”
The problem with this argument … is that the music on Tommy is too good. I think that’s the rule. You can be as pretentious as you want to be … as long as the music is good. The other problem with this argument is that, when I was fourteen years old, I didn’t give a shit about punk, so the prog vs. punk debate didn’t carry much weight with me then.
But yes, there is something slightly off about Townshend’s efforts to so nakedly co-opt the form, or at least the terminology, of classical music. Did he really have to call it a “rock opera”? Did the opening track really need to be called “Overture”? Didn’t late period Beatles better manage to walk that tightrope of drawing inspiration from classical music without inviting overt comparisons to classical music? We didn’t necessarily need a “rock” version of whatever it was that snooty Europeans had been into 100 years earlier, did we? Was Leonard Bernstein shouting at Pete Townshend like a man possessed, “Do you realize what you’ve done?!” after seeing a performance of Tommy helping matters?
And yes, there are moments that slide into grandiosity and self-seriousness (“A SONNNN! A SONNNN!” in “It’s a Boy”; “Tommy can you HEARRRRRRR meh!” in “Christmas”) – moments that, say, the Abbey Road medley, despite its frequent displays of emotional intensity, arguably manages to avoid. They’re the kind of moments that wouldn’t be out of place in one of those “Don’t do drugs! Have safe sex!” school assemblies that the kids in the gym bleachers snicker at. But I feel like there are roughly five of those moments. On a 76-minute album. Let’s see the forest for the trees here.
Criticism #2: Despite Tommy coming first, and being more famous, it’s actually the lesser Who rock opera.
You have no idea how many of these people I run into. They think their take is so unique. They state it in this “I’m in the minority and I can’t stand it” tone. There are millions of you. Relax. I come here to praise Tommy, not to bury Quadrophenia. I guess I’m one of those people who respects Quadrophenia more than truly enjoys it. Which is funny, because Quadrophenia people say the same thing about Tommy.
Looking at the Quadrophenia argument on paper, I like what I see. Compared to Tommy, the subject matter feels more grounded, the treatment more impressionistic, the narrative (arguably) more coherent. From a thematic and lyrical standpoint, I can see why some would prefer it. Tommy’s plot is more colorful, trippy, and strange, but also more abstract, farfetched, and cartoonish.
It’s the musical side of the argument where I remain unpersuaded. I’ve never seen anyone articulate my feelings on Tommy vs. Quadrophenia closer than Richard Barnes, longtime friend of Pete Townshend, does in Richie Unterberger’s Won’t Get Fooled Again: the Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia. Barnes suggests that Tommy greatly benefited from the guiding hand of producer (and Who co-manager) Kit Lambert, whereas Quadrophenia did not (given that Lambert was sliding into heroin addiction by the early ‘70s, but, well, it happens):
As for Lambert, says Barnes, “unfortunately he was no longer that kind of support that Pete needed.” Barnes does feel Lambert could have been of use, however, had he been in the right frame of mind. “The thing about Quadrophenia, it doesn’t have a great plot,” he adds. “It’s a bit thin. It’s about a mod who sort of thinks, ‘Oh fuck, it wasn’t what I thought.’ It’s a bit subtle, really, for rock. There’s no one stabbed, no murders, no love. And – this you can’t emphasize more than anything – he didn’t have Kit Lambert to come in and say, ‘Oh, what about introducing…’ To come in and sort of say, ‘Well, it’s getting a bit lost here, Pete. Why don’t you reprise this bit?’ or whatever. Because Kit Lambert’s got a great understanding of film scripts, plotting, film structure, opera structure, because his dad was in opera. I think it’s flawed, Quadrophenia, as a work, because of that. Because it gets lost in the middle. It’s all muddy, and the songs all sound the same.
“… Like if you’re going to introduce a character and he does something, you’ve got to have a resolution later on. Peter says one of the first things that turned Tommy from being some kind of rambling rock opera was Lambert insisting on reprising things. It was Lambert that came up with this sort of structure. It changes the whole story. This is where someone like the pre-Tommy, [pre-]out-of-his-head Kit Lambert would have pulled it together in the middle and said, ‘No no no, it’s getting a bit heavy here, put in a ballad or something,’ or whatever. Because it gets very turgid. The middle five tracks all sound a bit similar, with manic Moon drumming and that.”
Bingo. I mention this to my Quadrophenia-loving friends and they give me a blank stare. Too many songs in the same key, or with the same tempo, or something. It gets too monotone. Whereas Tommy’s got sonic variety up the wazoo. Tommy knows to follow up the ten minute “Underture” with the twenty second “Do You Think It’s Alright?”
With Quadrophenia, I feel like Townshend had enough lyrical ideas for a double album, but only enough hooks for a single album. I love the four melodic “motifs” that he came up with to represent each member of the Who, but then why, over the course of the album, does he barely use the motifs? It would be like using “See Me, Feel Me” twice and forgetting about it. Why write hooks and barely use the hooks? Aside from “Love, Reign O’er Me,” my two favorite tracks are the two instrumentals, “Quadrophenia” and “The Rock,” because they’re the ones stuffed with those hooky motifs. I want more of that, and less of … whatever the hell side three is. At times I even suspect Townshend of recycling a few Tommy hooks: anyone else think the “Punk and the Godfather” riff sounds like a regurgitated version of the “Go to the Mirror!” riff?
But I respect Quadrophenia, because (“Punk and the Godfather” riff aside) it’s not Tommy, Part II. Whole different beast. Whole different vibe. If there’s a sameness to the material, nor are there any glaringly weak moments. If any of you Quadrophenia fans want to write a witty-yet-passionate twenty page essay about Quadrophenia, I’d read it. But some of my issues with Quadrophenia dovetail into …
Criticism #3: Tommy sounded better live.
Tommy sounded LOUDER live, I’ll give you that. Townshend’s amp was cranked louder live. In concert, Tommy turned into a different enough animal to where the question at least merits a debate, but … I have some thoughts.
See, for a while, I bought the party line on the Who.
I read what other rock scholars said about the Who, and I repeated it. I also did this with Bruce Springsteen and U2. I was also eighteen. At college parties, I would trap unsuspecting guests into a corner and, if they lacked even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Who, I would fill them in, trying my best to recreate their majesty in both word and gesture.
“The guitarist would jump up and down and strum his guitar by spinning his arms around in a circle! And the lead singer with the sexy, curly hair (and the sexy, curly chest hair) would swing his microphone around like it was a grappling hook! And the drummer, oh man, the drummer, he would swirl his arms all over the drum kit like he was the Tasmanian Devil, tossing his sticks into the air, and if he didn’t catch a stick, he’d just grab another one from a pile of sticks, without missing a beat! And while the other three guys were going crazy, the bassist would just stand there and lean against an amp, not even moving!”
My audience’s eyes would expand, followed by a drawn-out “Cooool.”
Then a year or two later, when I loaned a couple of Who albums to a friend who was already intimately familiar with the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, etc., he shared an unexpected observation with me:
“I feel like the Who are … holding something back. Like they’re almost about to rock out really hard, but they don’t quite do it – not in the way that Zeppelin or the Stones do, or even the Beatles do.”
Eh? The Who not “rock out”? The Who?
It was the daftest thing I’d ever heard. But to my surprise … it started to stick with me. And it got me thinking.
The Who’s sound is kind of … squirrelly. It’s kind of wonky. It’s not like what the other children sound like. And I don’t know if I always like it.
They say the Beatles were “more than the sum of their parts.” Sometimes I feel like the Who were the sum of their parts, and that’s it. And sometimes I feel like the parts might have even been at odds with each other. When I listen to, say, 80% of the Beatles catalog, I think, “Here is the absolute best version of this song that could have been recorded.” But as my friend’s words have echoed in my ears, I don’t know how much I can apply a statement like that to the Who’s catalog.
First of all: the many phases of the Moon.
With most bands, the drummer is the last guy you notice, but not with the Who. It’s like visiting the Grand Canyon and not noticing the canyon. The things is, while the drummer is the last guy you notice, in some ways, he’s the most important guy. When I used to hear all these comments about how Ringo “serves the song” and “keeps a rock-steady beat,” I never understood what the hell people were talking about. Until I heard Keith Moon.
I’m all for originality, but when the guy who’s supposed to keep the rhythm is the guy who’s all over the place, your band ends up sounding kind of weird, right? And after a certain point (1970?), Keith Moon only had one setting, and it was the Keith Moon setting. Whether you wanted that setting or not, that was the setting you were going to get. Or, as the man himself put it, “I’m still the best Keith Moon-style drummer in the world.”
Take “Baba O’Riley.” That pulsating synthesizer pattern grabs me by the throat, the piano enters with those clean, triumphant major chords, this feels like the intro to end all intros, all it needs is some drums, and then Moon comes in, and … I don’t know, man. Does anyone else feel like the momentum slows down? Sure, the song is crying out for drums right there, but I’m not sure Moon’s lumbering wooziness is what was needed.
Or “Behind Blue Eyes.” Minor-key acoustic arpeggios are sucking me into the psyche of this bad man (who’s maybe not so bad after all), a wall of ethereal harmonies is causing me to glimpse the tenderness beneath the beast, and then here comes the explosive section and … did Moon just wake up from a nap five minutes ago?
That’s the thing. If you concentrate too hard on Keith Moon’s drumming, you might go insane. I think they just had to catch him on the right day. I love what he does on “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” for instance – no slowing of the momentum there. I’d even say he crackles with energy on “Who Are You,” which, considering he was on his last legs, is impressive. But it helps that handclaps augment the rhythm track of “Who Are You,” allowing Moon to go off on his tangents.
Who fans get upset whenever latter-day Townshend jokes that he’s glad he doesn’t have to play with Moon anymore, but … I know what he means. While watching the Quadrophenia film, I remember hearing a brief song called “Get Out and Stay Out,” one of the new tracks recorded specifically for the film in 1979, and thinking, “You know, this has a nice, steady drive to it. Is this what the Who might have sounded like with a normal drummer?” Imagine Keith Moon pulling off something as funky as “Eminence Front.” Am I saying the Kenney Jones albums are better? Please.
But partly because of the Moon effect, I feel like the Who managed to be loud and noisy without riding a groove the same way their British rock peers did, either live or in the studio. Take the early singles. When I first got my hands on Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, I found Townshend’s melodic craftsmanship and lyrical wit impressive, and admired the band’s early experimentation with feedback, but compared to the Beatles or Stones, this stuff almost sounded like demos. “I Can’t Explain”? Kind of a Kinks rip-off. The stuttering in “My Generation”? Kind of got on my nerves. Later, I discovered bands like the Small Faces and the Move and I thought, “See, here are some late ‘60s Swinging London singles that are poppy, funny, and experimental like the Who’s, and yet the elements coalesce better. Also, their drummers are kind of … normal?”
Look, making a record is a delicate art. And I often get the sense that the Who weren’t being particularly delicate about it.
I mean, what the hell is The Who Sell Out? I can respect the people who prefer Quadrophenia to Tommy, but you know who I can’t respect? The people who prefer The Who Sell Out to Tommy. This is indie hipster contrarianism of the highest degree, and I will not tolerate it. (These are also the same people who go nuts over the Pretty Thing’s S.F. Sorrow. “Did you hear it came out before Tommy?” Yeah, fascinating.) These are the people so annoyed by all the “hype” surrounding Tommy that they’ve latched onto an album that’s never had the slightest stain of hype attached to it. It’s an album free from all that irritating stuff like “emotional depth” and “insight into the human condition,” therefore it’s way better.
Example: while reading an edition of the 33 1/3 book series devoted to post-punk band Wire’s Pink Flag, written by Wilson Neate, I came across this:
When Pete Townshend, another product of art education, used extra-musical ideas – appropriating Gustav Metzger’s concept of Auto-Destructive art – his guitar-sacrifices weren’t merely spectacles; they added a distinctive sonic ingredient to the Who’s performances. But beyond that, his band’s work betrayed familiar anxieties about its cultural worth: Townshend’s rock operas suggest his upward ambitions … The Who’s most interesting moment was their playful Pop-Art inspired blend of songs, fake ads and jingles on The Who Sell Out, which showed none of Townshend’s cultural insecurities.
OH GIVE ME A – breathe, just breathe. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. Granted, this was a guy writing a book about Wire’s Pink Flag, so what did I expect? (For the record, I am also an admirer of Pink Flag.) Maybe Neate is lucky to have never experienced the kind of social alienation, childhood trauma, inner turmoil, and psychological damage that would have caused him to find Tommy more “interesting” than The Who Sell Out, but I’ve never met the guy. To me, The Who Sell Out is cute; Tommy is an intergalactic portal into another realm.
“A British pop album from late 1967? Based around fake radio jingles? Where do I sign?” But again, I don’t think the Who (and Kit Lambert) really knew how to make records yet, so all the songs on Sell Out sound like demos. In fact, having first heard it as the expanded 1995 reissue with several bonus tracks at the end, I had a difficult time establishing where the original album ended and the bonus material began. Even “I Can See for Miles” sounds kind of wonky to me, with Moon playing two simultaneous drum parts, which is cool in theory, but also feels like a lot of rumbling when I just want to hear the song rock.
In summary, I have all these little issues with the Who’s catalog. But something happened on Tommy.
I don’t know what it is, but I feel like Tommy is the one album in the Who’s discography where they got their studio sound “right.” There’s a taut punchiness to the interplay between bass, guitar, and drums that I hardly detect in the rest of their catalog. And Tommy is the one Who album awash in glistening pianos, airy acoustic guitars, swirling keyboards, regal brass, and eerie backward effects.
And vocal harmonies. So. Many. Vocal harmonies.
They say the Who invented power pop, but it’s on Tommy where I truly hear that compact pop explosiveness I expected to hear earlier in their discography, on tracks like “Christmas,” “Go to the Mirror!,” and “I’m Free.” Tommy is like being hit with one finely honed melodic nugget after another. Nor have I ever been bothered by the 20-second “explaining the narrative” tracks like “Do You Think It’s Alright?,” “There’s a Doctor,” or “Miracle Cure,” because to me, they’re just nuggets of a different size. They’re catchy, they’re fun, they don’t sound like imitations of each other … if you don’t like ‘em, just wait ten seconds.
You know what Tommy is? It’s the one Who album that sounds like a Beatles album.
And here’s the ironic part. You know how just I’ve gone on a big rant about Keith’s Moon’s style driving me loco? You think I’m a Moon hater? Ask me to name which rock album features my favorite drumming performance ever, and I might answer Tommy.
When it comes to Moon’s drumming, Tommy is my Goldilocks moment. Here’s where they caught him on the right day.
Maybe I just like the way Lambert mixed the drums. Entwistle complained that Moon’s cymbals on Tommy sounded like “tin biscuits,” but I prefer this mix’s emphasis on tom-tom and snare as opposed to constantly being bludgeoned by cymbals on Who’s Next or Quadrophenia.
Listening to Moon drum on Tommy is like watching Nuke Laloosh harness his fastball in Bull Durham – if he could just focus that energy, he’d be an ace. Well, Tommy is Keith Moon throwing a no-hitter. It’s where he picked up enough maturity to better serve the song without losing his unpredictable edge. He doesn’t just do “Keith Moon” for 76 minutes; he varies and modulates.
And yet, he still does plenty of Keith Moon, thank God. As the backbone of this “pretentious” rock opera, he is the “rock” to Townshend’s “opera,” the wild card that keeps the project from turning stuffy or didactic. Whenever Townshend threatens to veer into preachy self-importance, there’s a sound in the background going, “Oh, you think you’re so dignified, intelligent, sophisticated? I am Keith Moon, and I am having none of it. I refuse to bow to you. I am going to trash the hotel room like I always do.”
Still, despite Moon prefacing concert performances of Tommy by shouting irreverent things like “It’s an opera, innit? Shut up!,” on a less public level, I suspect he loved Townshend’s passion and vision, leapt at the chance to leave his mark on music this complex and ambitious, and felt motivated to rise to the occasion. After Tommy, the Who would become superstars, and Moon would become lost inside his own legend. As Alice Cooper put it: “I always tell people, ‘Everything you’ve heard about Alice Cooper, you can believe maybe 40 percent of it. Everything you’ve ever heard about Keith Moon is true – and you’ve only heard 10 percent of it.’” But Tommy is that brief moment before the drinking, pill-popping, cocaine-snorting, hotel destroying, accidental chauffer killing, and spousal abusing drained him of his agility and creativity.
Which is one reason why I don’t prefer live Tommy to studio Tommy. I’m not sure Moon found that same balance in concert, and by extension, I don’t think the band did either. Although there are a couple of complete recordings out there, the one I’m familiar with is on the deluxe edition of Live at Leeds. On the studio album, I hear Moon playing slightly ahead of the beat, pushing the songs forward, almost against their will. Live, I hear him playing slightly behind the beat, as if Townshend is trying to charge ahead but has a giant kraken attached to his legs. Again, I love the myth of the live Who. With a few tweaks, I might really go for it.
Author Tony Fletcher probably speaks for many when he writes in Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend:
[T]o anybody who saw or heard the Who’s epic performances of all or parts of Tommy onstage or on screen over the years, it can come as a surprise to go back to the original album and realize, with the benefit of hindsight, how unfinished it sounds … Tommy the album was surprisingly quiet. Keith Moon was among the first to notice this. “It was at the time very un-Wholike,” he later commented. “A lot of the songs were sort of soft. We never played like that.”
Right. But for me, that’s a good thing! Being “un-Wholike”? Maybe that’s what I want. Fletcher partially understands:
But the spare recording had considerable unforeseen advantages: it enabled the group to replicate the work faithfully onstage as a four-piece, which would have been impossible with an orchestral accompaniment or layers of guitars and keyboards; it gave the music room to breathe and the listener opportunity to absorb, and its restraint helped mark it as something other than straightforward rock.
Well, there are layers of guitars and keyboards, and Entwistle’s French horn is orchestral-adjacent, but no, it’s not the Bee Gees’ Odessa. I guess, when I listen to the live version of Tommy, I picture four dudes on a stage. When I listen to the album, I picture microbes, and poppy fields, and Arctic glaciers. My mind travels through the cosmos with it. As William Miller’s older sister put it in Almost Famous, “Listen to Tommy with a candle burning and you will see your future.”
There are also sixteen other versions of Tommy. If the original studio album doesn’t do it for you, and live Who isn’t your thing either, look at all your options:
- The 1972 London Symphony Orchestra version, featuring Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Steve Winwood, Richard Harris, et al.
- The 1975 film soundtrack, featuring Tina Turner, Elton John, Ann-Margret, Jack Nicholson, et al.
- The 1993 Broadway cast recording, featuring … Broadway people, I’m guessing
- 2019’s The Who’s Tommy Orchestral, featuring a 74-year-old Roger Daltrey, accompanied by an orchestra, playing Tommy at the exact spot where Woodstock took place
At last, Tommy, onstage, with an orchestra – Kit Lambert’s dream come true. Fabulous, wonderful, but I’ll take the original studio album, thank you.
*****
Most bands making a record hope they come up with at least four or five good hooks, maybe six, if they’re lucky. When writing Tommy, Pete Townshend couldn’t stop coming up with hooks. He was sneezing hooks. He’d go to the toilet and urinate hooks. Chunks of hook were flaking off his skin.
Not just that. On other albums, the hooks are like strangers you pass in the street. But on Tommy, the hooks become part of the family. The hooks reoccur, pop back onscreen just when you thought they were dead, shift in meaning and purpose.
If Tommy is the Who’s Beatles album, then Kit Lambert was the album’s George Martin. Fletcher writes:
It was producer Kit Lambert who, seizing the opportunity to emerge from the shadow of his father’s considerable classical musical reputation, grabbed the reins with both hands. He convinced Townshend that such a grand vision as a rock opera could and would be completed; he stayed up at night typing out a script to elucidate the opera’s meaning for all concerned; he prodded Townshend to edit and clarify his themes … Without Lambert’s relentless enthusiasm and total involvement, it is unlikely that the rock opera … would have emerged coherent, cohesive, and, most important, COMMERCIAL enough to stun the recording world as it did.
Take that, dad. Whether Lambert succeeded in getting Townshend to clarify his lyrical themes is a subject worth debating, but when it comes to Lambert getting Townshend to clarify the musical themes, I’m afraid the debate is over. I picture him spending hours with his protege, cigar (joint?) in hand, shouting, “You know that riff you had in that song? Throw it into the outro of this other song! That chord progression from that song? Change the key and turn it into the bridge of another song! Chop Chop!” I once took an improv class where our instructor explained to us the concept of “reincorporation.” Well, Tommy is the all-time champ of reincorporation.
You could almost make a quiz show out of it: Spot That Motif. Some are so blatantly identifiable, even novices could get a few points. “Oh, it’s ‘See Me, Feel Me’ … it’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ … what’s my prize?” But we are talking about a musical spider web of such rare intricacy that I, a person who has listened to this album for 30-plus years, have only picked out certain occurrences of motifs while writing this essay. Four examples:
- Those first few chords of the “Overture” that I always thought sounded nice, but never realized why? They’re the first few chords of “1921.”
- The chord progression of “It’s a Boy”? Same as the main chord progression of the “Underture.”
- The chord progression at the end of “1921” that proceeds “What about the boy?” Also same as the main chord progression of the “Underture.”
- The repeated four-chord riff underpinning the chorus of “Acid Queen”? Variation of the “Go to the Mirror!” riff.
And so on, and so on. I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, realizing, “My God – the little acoustic riff that accompanies Townshend’s ‘Captain Walker didn’t come home’ line? One minute into the seemingly unrelated instrumental “Sparks,” that same riff comes back.” This is some next-level shit.
But Lambert suggested taking this next-level shit to one level above that. What would a rock opera be, he insisted, without an overture?
It probably would’ve been fine, but why not? Besides, it didn’t mean Townshend having to write a new song; I suspect, after Lambert suggested it, that Townshend cobbled together the thing in ten minutes. But the Who recording “Overture” toward the end of the sessions instead of toward the beginning (even though decades of listeners have experienced it as the first track) made all the difference. Recorded at the beginning, it might have come out unsure and tentative, but by recording at the end – when the band knew their children inside and out, could taste the finish line, and were flying high on fumes of near triumph – they could tear through each motif with an amount of confidence that would’ve made Caesar blush.
In other words: Is “Overture” my favorite track on Tommy?
Imagine if the Beatles, instead of merely slipping in reprises of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” onto Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, respectively, had added tracks where they took every hook from every song on the album, and crammed them all into one Supersong, like those old Odwalla fruit smoothies that featured apples, blueberries, bananas, strawberries, and exotic South American fruits you couldn’t even pronounce the names of.
Listening to Tommy’s “Overture” is like listening to an opening track as performed by the 2017-2019 Golden State Warriors, and you’re the opponent. Just when you’ve blocked Kevin Durant, Steph Curry makes a 3, then Draymond Green pulls off a steal, passes it to Iguadala for a dunk, Klay Thompson makes a couple of free throws … the “Overture” has so many ways to beat you.
This might be a fool’s errand, but allow me to break down the elements of the “Overture” as well as I can:
0:01 – Stentorian rendition of the opening chord progression from “1921,” minus the arpeggiated piano figure, followed by …
0:17 – A brief glimpse of the “See Me, Feel Me” motif, with Right Channel Townshend strumming his acoustic guitar as if he were presaging the entrance of a bullfighter, and Left Channel Townshend plucking an electric guitar with a deceptive lack of urgency, before …
0:33 – Moon says, “Hello, have you met my snare?,” timed with the first glimpse of the chorus of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” (which first-time listeners don’t know is the chorus of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” yet, but they will), then …
0:37 – The crowning instrumental touch, the one that gives the “Overture” its majestic but endearingly goofy character: John Entwistle’s French horn. Yes, that John Entwistle. Thirty-seven seconds in. A freaking French horn. Ooh la la. But after the third time through their “We’re Not Gonna Take It” interpolation, as if the glory of the French horn and the dueling Townshends weren’t gripping enough …
0:47 – Moon lets fly with his first, but certainly not last, whirling drum fill, before introducing a stuttering martial rhythm, while Entwistle momentarily steps to the side, allowing Townshend’s simple but insistent piano on the right channel to rise to the fore, until …
0:58 – Moon lets fly with his SECOND whirling drum fill, pounding the Tom Toms of Doom, propelling the rest of the band, whether they like it or not, into the hummable vocal line from “Go To the Mirror!,” Townshends #1 and #2 strumming their guts out on opposing channels, Moon riding that stutter-step rhythm until Entwistle’s horn leaps upward into the clouds (possibly the ones depicted on the album cover, possibly not), before Moon becomes bored and lets rip with …
1:22 – ANOTHER crazy fill that thrusts the group ever onward (and thrusts my arms into the air with a spectacular display of air drumming), before Moon unexpectedly puts the breaks on, giving way to…
1:34 – Vocal harmony. A divine bath of vocal harmony. A choir of heavenly angels has descended from the same clouds that were just caressed by Entwistle’s French horn (and were perhaps smacked by an airborne Moon drumstick or two), their ethereal “Ahs” once more flooding the ears with the “See Me, Feel Me” motif, only this time the motif has been given the whiff of the sacred. I ask you: How could a band capable of such violence and brute force bring forth such baroque beauty? Who is this Who that men speak of?
1:48 – As Moon returns, those who only know Tommy from, say, the Woodstock movie might be anticipating a segue into a certain motif about “Listening to You,” but ah-ah-ah, we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves. Instead, the band vamps on the “Go to the Mirror!” riff (this time sans horn), but it feels suspiciously low-key and unadorned, as if it’s setting the stage for a new instrument to enter the fray …
2:19 – THE ORGAN. My God, the organ. Could the “Listening to You” motif have asked for a more memorable entrance? The cat just caressed Harry Lime’s shoe. Sherif Ali just rode across a desert mirage. When that organ enters, sacred beams of light shine through the stained glass windows around my body and into my soul. Note how Left Channel Townshend really lets the strings on his acoustic guitar ring into the air, particularly at 2:25 (I believe that’s called a rake pick?). I mean, how well did they mic this stuff? But one mustn’t let the power of the organ distract from Moon, who is pushing the flow of the piece into a land beyond conventional human experience. We are entering the kingdom of the unknown – and not even Keith Moon knows where he’s headed. But after 30 seconds of “Listening to You,” they slide back into “Go to the Mirror!” (arguably the glue of the “Overture”), throwing in a quick modulation for good measure, before …
3:04 – Entwistle turns into a panicked elephant as the band returns to a final snippet of “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” which, in the blink of an eye, transitions into a snippet of …
3:20 – “Pinball Wizard,” Entwistle’s horn and Moon’s tom-toms providing the “duh-DUUUNNN” blast that Townshend’s guitar will provide in the song proper, someone also smacking a gong, if my ears don’t deceive me (that’s right, Led Zeppelin: you thought you were the only band who knew how to use a gong?). Let’s face it, once the gong shows up, nothing is quite the same, and all the players exit aside from Left Channel Townshend. It would seem like the “Overture” is over … or is it? He fingerpicks to his heart’s content (Townshend being one of the few rock guitarists who could make solo acoustic fingerpicking compelling for long stretches), until …
4:06 – A voice leaps out in the darkness: “Captain Walker didn’t come home, his unborn child will never know him.” And thus, as the acoustic guitar gurgles inside the womb of Mrs. Walker, our story begins.
You want a mood-setter? Talk about a mood-setter.
*****
So … the plot of Tommy. No one knows quite what it is.
They say it’s out there somewhere, like the lost city of Atlantis, or Amelia Earhart’s plane. Some have spent their entire lives pondering it, hoping to solve the riddle, only to have gone mad. Meet the man who tells you he understands the plot of Tommy, and you’ve met a liar.
I think I’ve figured it out though, or the important parts, anyway. Rare is the album that requires a plot description, and yet here we are. Wikipedia does a nice job; I tip my cap. Tommy is also not half as confusing as Lifehouse, Townshend’s famously aborted follow-up rock opera, featuring a plot so inscrutable he couldn’t even explain it to his bandmates.
One doesn’t need to understand the plot of Tommy to enjoy Tommy; I submit 14-year-old myself as evidence. This is because it’s a piece of music first, and a story second. The story is kind of the optional element, like the story in Doctor Zhivago. Oh, there’s a narrative here? I was too busy air drumming to notice. But as with Doctor Zhivago, one day I realized, “Wait a minute, the story is kind of good!”
The story is also very part-time Buddhist. Here I’m contractually obligated to mention Meher Baba, the spiritual teacher who inspired Townshend to write Tommy. The main thing I know about Meher Baba is that he took a 44 year vow of silence, which I’m glad Townshend decided not to do, because I’d rather hear him singing. I don’t believe in gurus much, but if Townshend having a guru brought me Tommy, then thank you very much, Mr. Baba.
I could attempt my own plot summary, explaining how Tommy witnesses his war veteran father murder his wife’s lover, which causes Tommy to turn into the Helen Keller of pinball, then his cousin tortures him, and his uncle molests him (because how’s Tommy going to stop them?), then they try to get a local prostitute to cure him by pumping him full of drugs and/or taking his manhood … you know, the usual. But I’ve never seen the alleged vagaries in Tommy’s storyline to be a flaw. It’s best to leave the details open to interpretation. Gather your wits and hold on fast, your mind must learn to roam.
To find what matters the most within Tommy’s plot, I suggest taking the approach that Tommy himself takes to pinball: ignore the bells, buzzers, and flashing lights, and focus on the main themes: 1) the effects of childhood trauma; 2) how childhood trauma can, paradoxically, lead to spiritual growth; 3) whether one can effectively share one’s sense of spiritual growth with others, or whether this is a fool’s errand; 4) how to know the difference between superficial wisdom and authentic wisdom.
Take “1921” (also known as “You Didn’t Hear It,” depending on one’s edition), which is either the album’s second track or third track (again, depending on one’s edition). Did I imply that the “Overture” is my favorite track on Tommy? I take it back, because “1921” might be my favorite track. At the very least, “1921” can go toe-to-toe with the “Overture” for favorite track on Tommy that most people forget about.
It could also win the award for “favorite track in a rock opera that supposedly establishes the plot but only makes the storyline murkier.” So Captain Walker did come home after all? So his wife took another lover, and now her not-so-dead husband wants her back? Who’s singing “Got a feeling ’21 is gonna be a good year”? What’s glowing in the briefcase? Who shot J.R.? During my first few listens to the album, I used to think “21” meant “age 21,” as in, “Got a feeling that the year I’m turning twenty-one is going to be a good year in my life.” Might just as well be that.
And another thing! If it’s 1921 when Tommy is a toddler, and then later on in the storyline, when he snaps out of his “condition,” he’s roughly twenty years old, then his adult years, and the events that the last several songs on the album describe, would be taking place in 1939 or 1940. Does that seem right? Would Tommy have been playing pinball while dodging mortar shells during the Blitz?
Over the years, perhaps recognizing the awkwardness of the timeline, Townshend altered it to 1951 in the film version, then to 1941 in the Broadway version, having come down with a bad case of what’s medically known as George Lucas Disease AKA “Greedo Shoots First” Disease.
Doesn’t. Matter.
To me, the layers of vagueness work in the song’s favor. Stickler for chronology? Try a different rock opera. The point isn’t whether it’s 1921 or 1941 or 1951; the point is that Tommy experiences severe childhood trauma during a social milieu steeped in wartime, becomes psychologically scarred, and embarks upon an inward journey that takes him to places most of us could never fathom due to our weak, pedestrian minds. Do I give a fuck what year this supposedly happened in, or which character is singing which lines? You go, Townshend, that’s what I say. You go, girl.
It’s called ALLEGORY. No shocking event from my youth turned me into a deaf, dumb, and blind boy, but I relate to Tommy because I experienced my share of childhood dysfunction. My mother suffered from a unique cocktail of depression, anxiety, autism, anger management issues, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. My father was an otherwise nice guy who decided to marry this woman, have children with her, enable her least healthy tendencies without treating them, and was convinced the absolute worst thing he could do was divorce her.
Common event during my childhood: My father, brother, and I are watching TV. My mother comes in and shouts that she wants a salad from the store. My father tells her he’ll get it later. My mother shouts, in a louder, nastier voice, that she wants a salad from the store. My father reiterates that he’ll get it later, but he’s not very convincing. My mother calls him a “fucking pig,” throws several objects at him, and commands him to get her a salad from the store. TV time is over.
Now, did I go deaf, dumb, and blind? No. But did I withdraw from my family and turn inward? You better believe I did.
Anyway, Townshend handling the vocals on “1921” was not only the right choice, but perhaps the only choice, his high, fragile quality embodying the tenderness that either the lover or the father is expressing to the suddenly in-demand Mrs. Walker, and the overall tenuousness of the domestic situation and Tommy’s embryonic psyche.
There’s something both chilling and true to life in the way the players in this love triangle, who are damaging their impressionable child beyond repair, are too consumed with their own internal romantic joys and fledgling discoveries to realize that they are, momentarily at least, playing the role of the villain. “I had no reason to be overoptimistic/But somehow when you smiled I could brave bad weather.” Awwww. Wait a minute. I can name one person in this house who isn’t feeling so overoptimistic.
It’s the cloak of mystery hanging over the goings-on in “1921” that colors everything to follow. This song flew in from another rock opera, which, if only we could have listened to on our headphones while smoking joints in our dorm room late at night, would have established precisely “what took place.” It just so happens that we’re listening to Tommy’s rock opera, not Tommy’s parents’ rock opera, so alas, these circumstances, just as they would have been to Tommy, remain tantalizingly enigmatic.
Nor does it hurt that the song’s melody possesses the trembling, precarious beauty of a sapling poking its head through the melting snow as it basks in its first taste of spring. Even Moon, by some divine miracle, keeps the approach quiet (possibly at gunpoint?), particularly toward the close of the track, where, as I so recently noticed, the band slips into the main melodic motif of the “Underture” before concluding on one stranded, uncertain phrase popping back up from the dramatic bridge, where it had presumably been buried for good:
“What about the boy?”
Indeed. What about the boy?
Although we’re getting another twenty tracks devoted to the boy, in terms of the inscrutable circumstances that inaugurated the damage, we must leave this chapter here, in its piecemeal glory, never to be granted the clarity we long for it to have.
Nope, it’s on to “Amazing Journey,” where the album becomes so part-time Buddhist it almost hurts, Townshend daring to suggest that society might have it all wrong. What if attributes that most people would deem as weaknesses are secretly strengths? What if a condition that seems limiting is secretly a superpower? Who’s the handicapped one here: Tommy, or ordinary mortals like you and me? “Sickness can surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go.” Think about it. Isn’t it the misfits and the outcasts who become the great artists? (Isn’t it also the misfits and outcasts who become Hitler? Never mind.)
My point is: pitying Tommy, are you? Tommy doesn’t need your pity. “Deaf, dumb, and blind boy, he’s in a quiet vibration land/Strange as it seems, his musical dreams ain’t quite so bad.” The less perceptive among us would look at Tommy and see an idiot, not realizing that his idiocy could give our supposed intelligence a wedgie and steal our lunch money. This is the central irony of “Christmas”: Tommy’s parents assume a person needs words or language in order to reach enlightenment. They’re stuck in 1921, while Pete Townshend’s zoomed ahead to 1969.
Look, it’s a double album – I can’t go deep into the weeds on every song, but what kind of a zone of “do no wrong” were the Who in while making Tommy? A zone where they could cover a Chess blues song in the middle of their otherwise self-composed rock opera, and instead of this being a ridiculous idea, it somehow works to advance the plot (or at least it works better than Bowie’s cover of “It Ain’t Easy” does in the middle of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars). I can see Townshend now: “Hmm … I need to introduce the Acid Queen somehow … ‘Deaf, dumb, and blind’ … Where have I heard that in a lyric before …”
The real joke is that their cover of “Eyesight to the Blind” (also known as “The Hawker,” depending on one’s edition), is a cover in lyrical terms only, baring less musical relation to the original than Zeppelin’s “Lemon Song” does to Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” – and unlike Zeppelin, the Who actually gave Sonny Boy Williamson songwriting credit! Swap out the lyrics and the song is unrecognizable, a scuzzy, muted guitar chord (strummed high on the neck?) seemingly establishing the track in one key, only for Townshend’s louder lead guitar to enter and switch the key entirely, forcing that first guitar chord to blend awkwardly into the background (perhaps as Tommy does in his parents’ house?).
You’ve got to give Townshend this: he didn’t turn Tommy into an ego trip. He even asked the bassist to write a couple of songs! I presume the conversation went something like this:
Townshend: “You know, this album doesn’t have to be written solely by me, guys. John, think you can come up with anything?”
Entwistle: “Sure, I’ll give it a shot. So, uh, what’s the plot about?”
Townshend: “Well, it’s about man’s potential to experience music as inner vibration, and the gap between external sensation and spiritual truth …”
Entwistle: “Yeah, OK, uh, what are the most twisted parts?”
Townshend: “Well, his cousin tortures him, his uncle molests him …”
Entwistle: “Say no more!”
Townshend picked the right man for the job, lyrically at least. While I love that Entwistle got on board with the concept, his two contributions have always felt melodically weaker to me. At this stage, maybe he was more “George circa Help!” than “George circa the White Album.” Tommy being my first Who album made me assume that most of Entwistle’s stuff wasn’t so hot, an impression partially confirmed by “Boris the Spider,” which sounded like exactly what happens when the bassist who’s never written a song before tries to write a song. “Cousin Kevin” and “Fiddle About” hit me in roughly the same way: scribble some lyrics, start humming something, BOOM, done. Not to mention that Keith gets pretty cymbal happy on the verses of “Cousin Kevin.”
Only later did I discover pre-Tommy Entwistle gems like “I’ve Been Away” (B-side of “Happy Jack”) and “Doctor, Doctor” (B-side of “Pictures of Lily”). Not to mention the wonders of Entwistle’s early solo catalog, particularly Smash Your Head Against the Wall and Whistle Rymes. Even moderate Who fans who’ve never given these a spin should tumble down this rabbit hole. Excerpt of “I Was Just Being Friendly”:
I was just being friendly, no need to act like that
Don’t call the policeman, girl, I take what I said back
How was I to know that you weren’t that kind of girl
It’s kind of hard to tell nowadays anyway
Or “I Feel Better”:
When I’m feeling blue
I stick a pin in the picture of you beside my bed
And I feel better
When I’m feeling sad
I remember that you were the worst lay I’ve ever had
And I feel better
Macabre humor aside, I think his hooks got stronger over time. Even shortly after Tommy, he dropped another catchy B-side, “Heaven and Hell,” which the band often opened their concerts with. Not to mention “My Wife” from Who’s Next … look, I’m a bigger Entwistle fan than any of you people. But … how can I put this? If you told me there were two songs on Tommy not written by Townshend, and didn’t tell me which songs those were, I would have guessed “Cousin Kevin” and “Fiddle About.”
But they do supplement the narrative in valuable ways (arguably more effectively than some of Townshend’s songs do). And major points for the unsentimental view of how a deaf, dumb, and blind boy would fare in the real world. Would he be taken care of and protected from harm? Ha! More like abused and exploited.
I’m not sure the Acid Queen would see her actions as abusive and exploitative, but I’d say she’s in the ballpark. “Pay before we start”? She’s not exactly doing this out of the kindness of her heart. I’m also not sure why Townshend sings “Acid Queen” instead of Daltrey, but I love both of their voices, so who cares?
When my brother first got the album, he dug the “Underture” so much, he put it on a mixtape. “Underture”? On a mixtape? It’s never been my favorite set of melodic motifs, either as “Sparks” or in its ten-minute incarnation, but Tommy is the kind of album where I even love the songs I don’t love. (Also, winkingly calling it “Underture” is a nice way of undercutting the pomposity of calling the first track “Overture.”)
Oh hey, I almost forgot about “Pinball Wizard.” I don’t have much to say about it except that a) I love it, and b) the people calling the studio version of Tommy “quiet” in comparison to the live counterpart are kind of forgetting about “Pinball Wizard.” Duh-DUUUUUNNNNN. Duh-DUUUUUNNNNNN. So quiet. Nor do I get how anyone can accuse this album of self-seriousness when its biggest hit is this hilarious. “From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all/But I ain’t seen nothin’ like him in any amusement hall/ That deaf, dumb, and blind kid/Sure plays a mean pinball”? It’s the combination of admiration and resentment in the soon-to-be-dethroned narrator that’s priceless.
No, all the time spent discussing “Pinball Wizard” might be better spent discussing “Go to the Mirror!” – exclamation mark theirs, not mine (although I almost wish it were mine). The song title might be the only lame thing about it. That, and its integral connection to the narrative rendering it more confusing when extracted from the album than certain other songs, is why I’m guessing it never makes appearances on Who anthologies, not its lack of quality.
Because this one takes off at the starting gun, the combo of the staccato guitar riff skittering away in the left channel and the piano skittering away in the right channel hitting all my sweet spots. Forget, for a moment, whether it’s even possible for a person to be “psychosomatically” deaf, dumb, and blind – get a load of that riff!
It’s not that the album’s momentum was flagging, exactly, but “Go to the Mirror!” gives it such a kick in the pants. Not since the “Overture” (which uses the “Go to the Mirror!” riff as its central building block) has a song on the album sounded so uplifting. I guess it doesn’t hurt that it mashes up arguably the album’s three best melodies into one song. The doctor doesn’t understand Tommy, the parents don’t understand Tommy, but when this song comes on, I just feel like everything (after a couple more twists and turns, granted) is going to be all right. Tommy’s parents aren’t so sanguine:
I often wonder what he is feeling
Has he ever heard a word I said?
Look at him in the mirror dreaming
What is happening in his head?
Surely nothing of note? A lot of silence? Oh, only this:
Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet
Right behind you, I see the millions
On you, I see the glory
From you, I get opinions
From you, I get the story
Damn.
The twist no one saw coming: what is happening in that deaf, dumb, and blind boy’s head is a lot more interesting than what is happening in most people’s heads.
At this point in Tommy – roughly the three-fifths mark, the “Listening to You” motif making its first appearance since the “Overture” – I feel like the album kind of soars into the stratosphere and never lands. Again, Moon is a monster. If the album is cruising through the clouds, Moon’s torrents of drum fills function like booster jets. The album could end here and it would still make the #3 spot on my list. The band members are looking at each other and thinking, “We’re going to do it. We’re totally going to do it.”
The icing on the cake is Daltrey’s soaring “What is happening in his heh-eaaad?/Ooh-ooh, I wish I knew, I wish I knew” that closes the track. As the other three bring the instrumentation down to a whisper, somewhat mimicking the ending of “1921,” the dominant vibe I’m left with is one of … well, serenity. It’s as if these questions from Tommy’s parents don’t need to be answered. That they will be answered is almost beside the point. Doesn’t the fact that no one knows what’s happening in his head, at least for this one moment, seem irrelevant?
Once “Go to the Mirror!” hits, this is where I think Tommy, compared to Quadrophenia, really finds its second wind, as each remaining track boasts its own distinct stylistic and production touches. The sonic diversity gets lethal. There’s the bouncy, almost bubblegum-ish “Tommy, Can You Hear Me?” with its wall of overdubbed vocals, followed by the R&B-ish “Smash the Mirror,” which lifts a hook from “Then He Kissed Me” and features Daltrey attempting soulful vocal ad-libs like “But you gaze at your own reflection, all right!” (Townshend watching from the control booth: “‘All right’? ‘All right’? That wasn’t on the lyric sheet.”), and the trippy folk-rock of “Sensation.”
How do I know Tommy was destined to be my Who album? Because I love the “filler” songs that the band sometimes didn’t even bother to play live like “Sally Simpson.” Give me a crisp army of acoustic guitars and rollicking, boogie-woogie piano for four minutes and twelve seconds, and that’s all I need. Moon doesn’t even hit the cymbals until the 1:50 mark. Narratively, with its creative shift into the third person, it also gives Townshend a chance to a) quickly fill us in as to how Tommy, post-“Miracle Cure,” has progressed into a charismatic quasi-religious teen idol; b) lighten the tone with a Ray Davies-esque study of a precocious girl rebelling against her family in an extremely middle-class way; c) poke fun at groupies.
I always get a chuckle out of the last few lines, which strike me as Townshend momentarily inventing an alternate, more upbeat ending to this generally somber saga, one in which Tommy goes on to be a “successful” messiah (spoiler alert: he doesn’t) and sits around with his posse of hangers-on, telling anecdotes about his crazy early days. It’s like a parody of those cookie cutter movie end titles that explain everyone’s fate:
Sixteen stitches put her right and her dad said “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya”
Sally got married to a rock musician who she met in California
Tommy always talks about the day the disciples all went wild
Sally still carries a scar on her cheek to remind her of his smile
And everything worked out in the end.
Here’s what I don’t get about Tommy. I didn’t need this many awesome songs to be on the album, and yet, the Who put them on there anyway. The race to the finish line leaves me shaking my head in bewildered awe, with a kind of pity for other albums. “You mean, by your 21st song, you’re not still spewing these out? What’s your problem?” We get country-tinged music hall (“Sally Simpson”), chunky hard rock (“I’m Free”), ethereal folk balladry (“Welcome”) … these are just the random songs that weren’t even singles (well, “I’m Free” was a US single, but never mind.) Maybe save a couple for someone else’s rock opera, you know?
I’m not a complete dunce when it comes to time signatures, BUT. When a ‘60s band messes around with the placing of the beat during the intro, I’m toast. Can’t handle it. “Drive My Car,” “Street Fighting Man,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “I’m Free” … no matter how many times I listen to the intros and try to figure out the deceptive trick, my brain just can’t do it. I’m like those people who can’t see Magic Eye posters, or can’t curl their tongues. “I’m Free”? More like “I’m Free to Figure Out Where the Beat Lands Until I Get to the Second Verse.” One of these days, I’ll get it. An aspect of the song I do get is the pointed arrogance of the first verse:
If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high
You’d laugh and say nothing’s that simple
But you’ve been told many times before, messiah’s pointed to the door
No one had the guts to leave the temple
Oh, but Tommy’s got the guts. Those other messiahs, they talked the talk, but he’s ready to walk the walk. He’s leaving that musty old temple and taking his teachings, and pinball machines, to the people (note the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance by the “Pinball Wizard” acoustic guitar riff as the mindless automatons chant, “How can we follow?”).
Every time I revisit Tommy after a long hiatus, I get to “Welcome” and I think, “You know, Tommy sounds pretty enlightened. I’d come to that house.” It’s like the house that the seven dwarfs live in; I picture furry little squirrels and bunnies prancing around on the front steps, and butterflies perched on the chimney. I used to hear the line “Little old lady welcome, and you shoemaker” as “Little old lady welcome, and Jew shoemaker.” Aw, how nice. Other messiahs might be anti-Semitic, but not this one.
And then, the flamenco breakdown. See, this is what I’m talking about – the extra flourishes, the colorful shades that lesser bands would’ve left out. Ninety seconds into “Welcome,” the tempo doubles, a harmonica pokes its head through the fireplace, and sinister shadow creatures start whispering “Wasso-wasso, wasso-wasso.” Wait, where are we? I thought we were in the cottage of the seven dwarfs, and now we’re at the evil stepmother’s castle? Why this hint of menace lurking underneath the song’s bucolic veneer? The Mephistophelian breakdown gives Tommy’s next proclamations extra force:
Ask along that man who’s wearing a carnation
Bring every single person from Victoria Station
Go into that hospital and bring the nurses and patients
Everyone go home and fetch their relations
And then … he’s docile and gentle as a mouse again. But it’s hard to ignore that glimpse of a more domineering spirit. As the track winds down, the piano, drums, and acoustic guitar rattle in unison. So nice! But wait, what are these ghostly notes coming from the piano in the darkness? Oh, never mind those, here’s the acoustic guitar and drums rattling in unison again. No, hold on, those notes from the piano have returned! A clandestine monk, presumably in robes, standing on the right channel, whispers “Welcome.”
I don’t know about this house.
And then, the fairground. “Good morning campers!” Tommy’s brand has grown a little bit … funny? “I’m your Uncle Ernie and I welcome you to Tommy’s holiday camp-ah!” Wait … that Uncle Ernie? I presume there’s something Uncle Ernie hasn’t gotten around to mentioning to Tommy just yet? Bonus points for the nakedly evil “WELCOME!” at the end that pisses all over the monk’s version.
Following the herbal-scented tranquility of “Welcome,” “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” is like the bugler playing “Reveille.” Here I was, sound asleep in my hammock, swaying back and forth, and someone just pinched me on the butt. But it’s precisely what the Acid Queen ordered, the album’s “Sgt. Pepper Reprise,” the point where Townshend knows he’s got us right where he wants us, so he can smack us around a bit. Because then comes the about-face from the funhouse to the depths of existence.
*****
For longer than I’d care to admit, despite Tommy being one of my favorite albums, I misunderstood the ending. Like, completely misunderstood it.
I can’t be the only one. I’d even seen the movie late one night, which you’d think would’ve helped, but I must have been so transfixed by the sight of Ann-Margret making love to a blob of baked beans that the contours of the plot didn’t quite register.
See, I thought the lyrics of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” were a triumphant depiction of Tommy inhabiting his final evolution as a successful, respected, and obeyed spiritual leader, and that the “it” his audience wasn’t going to “take” was mainstream society and all its trappings. I thought the chorus was the expression of the adoring crowd following Tommy’s advice, and that the “you” they were planning to a) forsake; b) rape; c) forget better still, was the world outside the camp. Thus, under this interpretation, when the crowd grows quiet and Tommy tenderly croons “See me, feel me,” his audience is listening rapturously, and once Tommy finishes, they respond en masse by chanting the “Listening to you” liturgy back to him, as if his kooky Zen pinball methods are collectively raising everyone’s consciousness.
Like I said. I misunderstood the ending.
Only while reading a plot summary of the album, presumably on dial-up internet connection in my college dorm room, did droplets of cold sweat run down my back as my mind drastically rearranged its interpretation of the work, like a Politburo officer hastily rewriting a Soviet textbook. Perhaps the dual illustrations in the CD booklet, one showing a sparklingly new holiday camp on a beautiful summer day, its clean walls painted bright pink, the other showing a crumbling, abandoned holiday camp under a dark evening sky, its now-colorless walls cracked and stained, should have been a clue. But since when did the illustrations in the booklet ever mean anything?
And yet, I sat with it for a couple of days. And the more I thought about it, the more I began to prefer the intended ending to my made-up ending. Because the “it” that Tommy’s audience isn’t going to take … is Tommy.
They reject him.
The masses wanted their enlightenment to be easy, but once Tommy starts laying down the rules and turning strict and didactic, they think, “Fuck this.” The Pinball Wizard’s spell turns out to be more Neville Longbottom than Albus Dumbledore. Nobody likes a know-it-all.
I get where Tommy is coming from. One hundred percent. When you’ve had a transformative experience that’s brought you out of your psychological prison, it’s natural to want to pass that experience on to others, thinking that what did wonders for you is going to do wonders for everyone else. Picture an anonymous blogger writing novella-length essays on the albums and films that “changed his life,” hoping that these same albums and films will, in turn, change the lives of his readers. Imagine that very blogger even including the word “Guru” in the title of his website. Who could tolerate such a pompous twit?
Tommy’s made the classic rookie mistake: he thought he knew his own destiny. But destiny ripped him a new one, and now he’s in trouble – real trouble, not the “I’m deaf, dumb, and blind” kind of trouble. He thought he’d gone through his supposed trial, with all its accompanying growing pains, come out of the other side “enlightened,” and that his story was written. But the universe tossed the crisp, clean pages of his story into the metaphorical shredder, and now he’s scared. Truly scared. His entire conception of himself has crumbled.
Huddled alone in his defiled, desecrated camp, familiar words return to him – words he might have assumed he’d have never felt the need to utter again:
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
Tommy is not, as I had initially assumed, singing to the attendees of the camp, but singing to God, the universe, anyone.
But just like the Who’s performance of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” at Woodstock, it’s always darkest before the dawn, and in the depth of his new psychological crisis, another batch of familiar words returns to him, and alters his perspective one last time:
Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet
Right behind you, I see the millions
On you, I see the glory
From you, I get opinions
From you, I get the story
I see, said the blind man.
And now as Tommy sings, it’s not as the fragile, isolated Daltrey voice, but as a thick, multi-tracked wall of Who voices. He’s transformed from Tommy into Mecha-Tommy.
And here comes the critical question: who is the “you” that Tommy is listening to?
Well, instead of, as I had once mistakenly interpreted it, a crowd of disciples serenading Tommy with these lyrics – the “you” being Tommy in that version – I believe it is Tommy singing here, with the “you” being creation, human existence, the innate oneness of all things. And unlike the fraudulent Tommy, this Tommy is experiencing a truer enlightenment – or rather, is discovering that no one is ever done becoming enlightened. To quote (or misquote?) Socrates, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Thus, what seemed like a moment of personal failure has transformed into a moment of spiritual success. Tommy thought he was free before? This is his real moment of freedom. He’s been stripped to his core, only to reemerge anew, unencumbered by prior illusions. It’s a boy, Mrs. Walker, it’s a boy.
Where does he go from here? Does it matter? The saga has reached its conclusion. Like the young girl turning to the camera at the end of La Dolce Vita, I always see Pete Townshend’s mammoth schnozz turning to me as if to say, “This story is no longer about Tommy; this story is now about you.”
Also, the song rocks.
I’ll be honest. Most of the plots of “real” operas don’t impress me much. I once checked out Opera for Dummies from the library (not joking), and was surprised to discover that the plots of 95% of the canonical operas tend to end in either an overly-neat, presumably charming, “That’s so cute, everyone gets married!” fashion (The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, etc.), or in an unbearably grim, tragic, Lars von Trier-style “God must hate these people” fashion (Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly, etc.). But life isn’t purely tragic or comic. Where’s my in-between opera?
Tommy is my in-between opera. Its conclusion straddles that sweet spot between defeat and triumph, a place where art rarely sits but life often does. How did Townshend manage to get so far, throw so much onto the table, and not screw it up? Listening to the ending of Tommy is like watching a circus performer, at the finale of his death-defying high-wire act, having precariously see-sawed from one side to the other, not only make to the other side, but do a somersault onto the platform.
He nailed the landing.
I listen to the ending of Tommy and my instinct is to applaud, even if I’m just sitting in my room with my headphones on. And then I can’t help but press play on the “Overture” and start the adventure all over again. Isn’t this where … we came in?
Speaking of applause: the closing “See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You” medley is the one song which I might agree became stronger in concert. In its live incarnation, Daltrey wrings every drop out of Tommy’s desperate plea, before the four of them ride the “Listening to You” motif and ride it hard, the tempo increasing and increasing, Townshend spitting sheets of sonic fire, Daltrey jumping octaves and throwing out funky “I get the heat-heat” ad libs before, seeing as they can’t perform a fade-out on stage, the other three bring it to a tidy conclusion with one last employment of the “Go to the Mirror!” riff (I’ll take any excuse to give that motif an extra appearance). That said, I never listen to the studio version and feel resentment or disappointment – I’m too busy getting goosebumps.
But there’s a moment in the Live at Leeds recording, when Tommy is finished and the audience applauds, where I can sense the swell of emotion and triumph in the venue – but it’s the audience’s triumph as much as Townshend’s. An artist has asked his audience to take a leap of faith with him, and the audience has been willing to take that leap. They cheer not just at Townshend’s accomplishment, but because they appreciate that he has trusted them to go on the journey with him. As Townshend mutters a humble “Thank you so much,” his genuine thanks is palpable. These northern louts could have easily spat in his face. It’s not just that the audience saw him, felt him, touched him, and healed him, but that they’ve seen, felt, touched, and healed each other.
Wait a second. If Tommy plays pinball by sense of smell, then shouldn’t it be “see me, feel me, touch me, heal me, smell me?” No, he probably made the right choice there.