Word: townshend
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This first attempt at a "rock opera" was composed by Peter Townshend of The Who and performed by the group on a record album released in 1969. Tommy was closer to oratorio than opera, but the most serious thing about the entire piece was the lofty label that was pinned on it. Tommy was just strong rock 'n' roll, sometimes raunchy, sometimes highfalutin. The Who even wound up performing it at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, an appearance that was less an honor than a shrewd piece of promotion. Tommy has not only endured since then...
...comment upon and satirize a culture where a shaky totem like Tommy could attract such worshipful respect. Tommy shares with traditional operas a foolish libretto, this one having to do with a deaf, dumb and blind boy who becomes a pinball champion, a culture hero and a new messiah. Townshend wavered crazily between satire, science fiction and sanctimony; Russell mocks the very seriousness of the piece itself by focusing on, then extending it. The movie is entirely sung; there is no dialogue. But there are several added narrative fillips and some lavish production numbers whose very excess is their...
...have." Joe, a lecturer in the philosophy and psychology of physical education at London University, was visiting the U.S., unaware that Mick was already changing his image. In London, he threw a Lucullan feast on his 30th birthday for some 200 friends, including Debbie Reynolds, Britt Eklund and Peter Townshend of The Who, and sported a new and different look: short back and sides hairdo and a zoot suit. Does this portend a new career? Journalist Tony Scaduto's recent biography, Mick Jagger: Everybody's Lucifer, implies this could be so. Mick is quoted as saying...
There's nothing difficult about these songs; they've got volume, crispness, precision, but no life. In fact, nothing really happens until midway through "My Wife," when Townshend finds a riff he can work on, Moon and Entwhistle lock into a solid rhythm and Daltry sees fit to chant "keep on movin'" over the top of it all. It brings a noticeable surge in intensity. "My Generation" is similarly structured and similarly extended, but awkward because it no longer incorporates pieces of Tommy. Townshend resurrects it by adding a simple solo to the break...
...substantial amounts of same written into the song...well, there was an obvious emotional peak. "Pinball Wizard" initiated hysteria--as much because it's from the by now deified Tommy as for any musical worth. It was well done, and faithful, with Daltry finally in good voice and Townshend alternating subtleties and musical invective. "See Me, Feel Me" is the closing number. It is Tommy's strongest song and, as a finale, is head and shoulders above "Love, Reign O'er Me." Done live, as an obvious climax, it's a second emotional peak...