The live performances of Tommy drew critical praise and rejuvenated the band's career. Key gigs from the tour included appearances at Woodstock, the Metropolitan Opera House and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. The Who promoted the album's release with an extensive tour, including a live version of Tommy, which lasted throughout 19. Nonetheless, several writers view it as an important and influential album in the history of rock music. Its critical standing diminished slightly in later years. Tommy was acclaimed upon its release by critics, who hailed it as the Who's breakthrough. Recording on the album began in September, 1968, but took six months to complete as material needed to be arranged and re-recorded in the studio. Townshend came up with the concept of Tommy after being introduced to the work of Meher Baba, and attempted to translate Baba's teachings into music. The album was mostly composed by guitarist Pete Townshend as a rock opera that tells the story about a deaf, dumb and blind boy, including his experiences with life and the relationship with his family. Russell cuts between the crowds, the arena, and a dizzying series of close-ups of the games (at times, we almost seem to be inside the pinball machines), and the effect is exhilarating and exhausting.Tommy - the fourth studio album by The Who - was released 53 years ago today. Elton John, wearing skyscraper shoes, is the defending pinball champion. Then there's the great pinball tournament, which is the movie's best single scene: a pulsating, orgiastic turn-on edited with the precision of a machine gun burst. This scene is the occasion for Tommy's first smile, as well it might be. The scene begins with Tina as the hooker upstairs from the strip parlor operated by Tommy's wicked stepfather, and ends with a psychedelic stainless steel mummy with acid in its veins. Tommy's odyssey through life is punctuated by encounters with all sorts of weird folks, of whom the most seductive is Tina Turner as the Acid Queen. She has one number that begins in an all-white bedroom with her sexy red dress slit up the side to about the collarbone, and ends with her slithering through several hundred pounds of baked beans. He is aided by his performers, especially Ann-Margret, who is simply great as Tommy's mother. To make money on a rock opera attacking those who would make money on a rock opera: that was the brave moral stand taken by Tommy.īut none of this matters, because Russell correctly doesn't give a damn about the material he started with, greatest art work of the century or not, and he just goes ahead and gives us one glorious excess after another. How the makers of the film feel about this commercialization can be gauged by the prominence with which the end titles inform us that the sound-track album is available on Polydor Records. Tommy's enraged fans turn on him and what they perceive as his hypocrisy. Tommy is on the level, but the people around him begin to commercialize on his fame in order to peddle T-shirts, record albums, and other artifacts. Stardom brings him a fortune, he becomes the leader of a quasireligious cult, regains his senses, and gets his own Tommy T-shirt. By then the hero (who started out in life as a blind deaf-mute) has become the pinball superstar of all time, even though he can't see the machine. The message of Tommy, if any, is contained mostly in the last thirty minutes (of which we could have done without about fifteen).
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