1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 152. The Who – Tommy (1969)

 

Here we go with arguably the first “rock opera”, although SF Sorrow by the Pretty Things makes some claim to this. Where The Who differ from the Pretty Things, however, is that Tommy is more deliberately operatic in nature, whereas SF Sorrow may have an over-arching biographical story, but it is comprised of songs that each fundamentally stand on their own. In some ways, Pink Floyd’s The Wall will build on both of these traditions – while it tells the story of the unhappy childhood, unhappy marriage, and unhappy success of its protagonist, each track more or less stands alone.

With Tommy, however, many of the tracks are linking refrains, and returns to leitmotifs that run throughout the album. Listening to the whole thing, it’s unsurprising that Pinball Wizard is the only single from it, since it’s also the most entire and self-contained song.

The plot starts with the apparent death of Captain Walker in the Great War, leaving his widow to raise his infant son Tommy alone (The death of a father in war linking this narrative to both SF Sorrow and The Wall). But Walker is not dead, and returns to discover his wife with another man, who he kills in front of Tommy, causing the boy to retreat inwards and “see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing”. In this withdrawn state, he is abused by his cousin and his Uncle Ernie (who likes to Fiddle About with the boy), and there are more subtle cruelties visited by religious relatives who discard the boy as sinful because he is incapable of understanding Jesus.

Tommy’s refuge is in pinball, but eventually his symptoms are diagnosed as psychosomatic. Healed, he becomes a messianic figure whose followers become increasingly unruly. Running throughout the album is the refrain “see me, touch me, hear me”, a call for contact in a world of isolation. There’s a thematic similarity here to The Wall as well, which sees its protagonist retreat from reality into his own fantasy world where he is a fascist leader, before being condemned by his inner judge to have his mental wall torn down. But I digress – that’s not for another ten years.

Like a “proper” opera, there is an Overture wherein we get snippets of a lot of the big tunes and leitmotifs to come. There’s an Underture, which is when Tommy is lost in an inner world after being given LSD – it's a lengthy instrumental and you may recall my earlier musings that the late Sixties long tracks tend to be extended jams. Here, the track owes more to classical traditions, carefully layered texture notes of instruments and it feels like every note is placed with precision rather than anything improvised. Throughout the whole album there is some virtuoso guitar work from Townshend, and he does much of the lead vocal too, rather than Daltrey, who emerges more towards the end of the album (generally as the voice or inner voice of Tommy).

As a project, it’s a remarkable feat, and although sometimes the specific elements of the plot are obscure on a first listen, it’s so much more clear than SF Sorrow. It’s very nature, however, means that it really does need to be listened to in its entirety from start to finish; this also makes it unusual. The dark and disturbing subject matter make it uncomfortable at times too, which also makes it more something to give your full attention to rather than put on in the background, and I’m glad I was able to.