Who

"Tommy" by the Who was one of the very first concept works that the rock world took into its all-consuming, insatiable embrace. Not the first ever, as it was preceded by only a few months by the concept works of Londoners Pretty Things and the Kinks with their famous "Arthur". But "Tommy" certainly had a decisive importance and influence on future generations of rock.

"Tommy" is the story of a child whose father is reported missing in the war, while his mother, in the meantime, seeks comfort with a new companion. The father unexpectedly returns home, catches the unfaithful woman in the act, and kills her lover; Tommy, through the reflection of a mirror, witnesses the tragedy and is left so traumatized that he loses his primary senses: he becomes blind, deaf, and mute. From here on, his journey will be a Dantesque one, a slow ascent toward a light that is not merely metaphorical. A path that will lead him to encounter ambiguous and bizarre characters who will not only serve as the soundtrack to his existence as an invalid, but will be life experiences for his fumbling coming-of-age, without any clear points of reference. Along his way he will meet violent cousins, discover drugs, have a sly and slimy figure for an uncle, and become a pinball champion through vibrations and the only sense left to him, touch. Toward the end of this labyrinthine journey, a doctor will realize that the only way Tommy can communicate is through mirrors. His mother, horrified by this outlandish theory, will smash all the mirrors in the house, unwittingly triggering a miraculous cure that frees Tommy from his heavy burden, restoring, as if by miracle, all his lost senses.

Tommy is an autobiographical metaphor. A metaphor for its author, Pete Townshend. Tommy is a human being who, through the course of his physical affliction, learns to see and discover the world through imagination, and the world in turn reveals itself before him; Tommy knows nothing of anything, he is untouched by everything in his most total purity, his imprisonment is a dark and narrow labyrinth: it is life flowing past and surrounding him without his being able to do anything about it. He will travel through fantasy and imagination, creating a personal world parallel to the real one. Only once the boy has completed his own natural journey, made up of experiences lived in his own way, will he be able to become like everyone else again.

Pete Townshend, its author, was a boy who came from the rundown outskirts of the city and who, in his great desire to identify with a society he didn't feel belonged to his own way of being, tried by every means to escape from it. Pete Townshend is Tommy, Pete Townshend is that ugly duckling with nothing, suffocated by a reality that wasn't his own; Pete Townshend escapes it through the power of art, finding on the wings of music his own particular way out of all the greyness oppressing him. The Who were, for Townshend, the first chance to forge his own personal identity, much as becoming a pinball champion was for Tommy: a first attempt to communicate with the outside world and, above all, to feel alive.

In 1975 a film was also made paying tribute to this work, created by that great director Ken Russell. An imaginative, grotesque and psychedelic work of celluloid, full of garish colours that make Tommy's darkness stand out even more sharply, the film drew its strength precisely from the music of the album of the same name, released six years earlier: a masterpiece in which the Who abandon the wild rawness of their recent past and turn to a more polished production. There are songs and emphatic sounds, at certain moments, capable of bringing the story vividly to life. The lyrics are an artfully crafted surrogate designed to make the story as real as possible. There are instrumental surges packed with majestic orchestral sounds, like "Overture", where the rhythm is an ode to the many-sided rhythmic sense of Keith Moon on drums and Townshend on acoustic guitar, with dry stops and frenzied rolls making room for well-judged organ entries. Then there are tender, touching moments, like "It's A Boy", and moments of agitation as in "1921", one of the finest songs on the whole album, superbly performed by Roger Daltrey with splendid anguish and intense drama.

"Amazing Journey" is another concentrate of raw-nerve atmospheres, an ideal backdrop for certain melodic bursts underpinned by the powerful, expressive bass of the late John Entwistle. "Sparks" draws on the same sounds introduced by "Overture", but does so by creating an atmosphere charged with anticipation, thanks to Moon's frenetic drum rolls.

Tommy's journey is held together by other significant musical touchstones marking the stages of his life, like the halting progress of "Eyesight To Blind", or the anthemic Christmas of "Christmas", before we find ourselves projected into a dreamlike dimension in the rarefied choral singing of "Cousin Kevin", with its strong post-Beat echoes. "The Acid Queen" is elevated by a psychedelic arpeggio and sudden guitar lashes from Townshend, while "Underture" picks up the logical thread of "Overture" — though here it's Entwistle who takes centre stage, with a skipping bassline charting the way forward, while Townshend layers guitar overdubs, first acoustic then electric, gently embroidering the whole structure with melodic flourishes before unleashing furious, adrenaline-fuelled rhythmic surges. It's the horns, instead, that introduce "Fiddle About" with its marching-band gait, while the famous "Pinball Wizard" opens with light acoustic guitar and electric flashes that set the stage for an evocative vocal from Daltrey. The chorus is the song's strongest point, punctuated by Townshend's nasal counter-melody, and it's in that chorus that we first touch the feeling of carefree youth that Tommy recovers as he fumbles his way through the joys and satisfactions of simple pinball victories. "Go To The Mirror" is another gem: the pinball machine is by now a faded memory, here anger prevails, the urge to rebel in that guitar riff and above all in Daltrey's gritty voice, save for moments of dramatic pleading resurfacing in those brief "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me!"

The Who allow themselves a brief acoustic interlude through the gospel sounds of "Tommy Can You Hear Me?", the mirror shatters in "Smash The Mirror", creating genuine "Sensation" of exquisite, refined melodic feeling, thanks precisely to the symphonic touches and the introduction of wind instruments set against a thoroughly rock backdrop, managing to coexist perfectly. "Sally Simpson", on the other hand, has the cadences of a lively, winking piano part: through fluid scales, the acoustic guitar accompanies Daltrey in a cheerful vocal that spills over into an anthemic choral chorus, while "I'm Free" is Tommy who, having finally passed through hell and purgatory, has ascended into the presence of paradise and sees the light again. Daltrey sums it all up in a vocal of liberating wonder, almost whispered shyly at first, then shouted with a gritty spirit of vindication, just like Tommy who is astonished by the colours and sounds of the world and, realizing it's all real, lets himself be pleasantly overwhelmed by happiness. "We're Not Gonna Take It" is an anthem, punctuated by a sly, repetitive piano part, the vocal is anguished yet touching at the same time: it feels almost like a prayer of religious gratitude, the true final gem of this dramatic and adventurous tale of pain and rebirth.

Even the album cover is an evocative masterpiece: metal bars enclosing darkness, the darkness of Tommy's blind existence; but white doves fly beyond the bars. Tommy's spirit and imagination cannot be caged, they fly free and light out of that wretched prison.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

14/11/2006