Album #4:
Tommy
The Who might have made '
Tommy', but 'Tommy' certainly made The Who! That's the popular conception of the rock opera that took the band and made them into both global superstars and millionaires within the space of 12 months. There is no doubt that 'Tommy' saved the band from financial ruin, but it also proved to be a weighty albatross around their necks which continues to this day. Although the later 'Quadrophenia' album might be a more adult and complex piece, with superior writing, playing, singing and production, it is 'Tommy' for which The Who will be remembered for, apart from maybe the 'My Generation' single
Recorded with Kit Lambert in the producers chair at London's IBC Studios during the early months of 1969, 'Tommy' brought together all of Pete's influences and aspirations in one great rag-bag of ideas and ideals. The character of Tommy is a messiah figure who is elevated despite enormous disabilities to an other-worldly loftiness before being being brought down to reality and ultimately being turned into a rock superstar deity. That is one view, which explains why Meher Baba, the Indian spiritual figure who Pete had recently become attracted to, is credited as avatar. Another view is that 'Tommy' is just 90 minutes of bloody great rock music with the form being explored every which way with extraordinary precision and timing and thus becoming a text book on riffing, rock harmonies, interlocking rhythms, electric and acoustic guitar backing, bass fluidity, vocal harmonies and pretty much every other skill that a premier league rock band needs to be equipped with
There is an almost mathematical precision to 'Tommy' in which the musical motifs are introduced into 'The Overture' then repeated at various moments throughout, Because these motifs crop up repeatedly in this manner, 'Tommy' becomes much easier to listen to and understand on first hearing than a double album of non-interconnected songs
On stage, 'Tommy' took on a whole new dimension and anyone who saw it live in the late 60's saw The Who at the top of their game. Roger *became* Tommy, and the image of him bare chested in a tasselled jacket with long blonde curly hair is the perfect dictionary definition of what a 'rock god' is.
It's no wonder that Robert Plant emulated the look when he was in Zeppelin!
The original album release was opulently packaged in a beautifully designed triple gatefold sleeve, complete with booklet containing the song lyrics. The outer cover was used to show the experience of being in a world without conventional senses - it is limitless and unbounded yet trapped in an environment made for people who have all their senses. The cover used the form of the globe to represent both the Earth and Self floating in an endless infinite black universe like space. A space that can never be touched, only imagined, while the inner cover depicts a wall with wall lights as a symbol of domestic space. It is a space we can all touch and a room we all live in, but the light from the lamps does not behave as in *our* sighted world - it does not anchor objects to surfaces but appears to shift and change under Tommy’s searching fingers
Despite the perfect timing of the album – the mystical themes were perfect for the late 60's 'Age of Aquarius' – 'Tommy' stalled at #2 in the UK and #4 in the US, but in America it stayed on the charts for 126 weeks which was far longer than any other of their album releases
A proper opera needs a proper '
Overture', and 'Tommy' is no exception. Like all overtures, this one contains a well aranged, mixed bag of of instrumental versions of snatches of songs that will follow, most of them linked by the rumbling, bass-heavy riff from 'Go To The Mirror'. The guitar parts, played on an acoustic Gibson J200, set the mood for what is to come, but John's French horn adds interesting melodic touches and (as ever) the choral work and drums are superb. The best moment in the overturn comes near the end, when an organ arrives to pound out the 'Listening To You' medley
'
It's A Boy' details Tommy's birth. This is a short piece, sang in a high register by Pete. This song was adapted from the ending of the then-unreleased song 'Glow Girl'