The Who - Tommy (1969)

I realise I've done this the wrong way around, being entirely familiar with Ken Russell's 1975 movie while only just having heard the original due to the Who never having been fully on my radar; not that I ever had anything against them. I own a few singles, and still think of them as a mostly great singles band at least up until the second half of the seventies, but the albums always looked a bit messy with those faintly gimmicky titles. Listening to this, I find I miss Olly Reed's slightly flat, slightly forced singing at least as much as that of Ann-Margret, Tina Turner, Paul Nicholas, and even Jack Nicholson, so thankfully the quality of the material soon overpowers such reservations. I had assumed it would sound like a mere demo version of the Tommy with which I'm significantly more familiar, but it's really its own thing.

Tommy, as you will know unless you're very young or an idiot, is the tale of a deaf, dumb, and blind child who somehow excels at pinball, regains his senses as a fairly heavy handed metaphor for spiritual enlightenment, and ultimately acquires a cult following; and the story is told through song, hence the term rock opera. I'm sure I've seen Tommy credited as one of those many albums which was apparently the first concept album, but really, who gives a shit? Fuck off with your silly time signatures and your fake goblin ears.

I'm not actually sure how well the tale is conveyed as just music, given how well versed I am with the movie - which follows more or less the whole thing beat for beat - but it seems to communicate an emotional truth regardless, even if you're wondering why Tommy's mum - and indeed everyone else - sounds like Roger Daltrey. Against my expectation, it has quite a basic, jazzy production with very little reliance on effects, and the instrumentation is all kept beautifully clear and expressive, so much so that one would hardly think this bunch once had the reputation of being the loudest band in the world. Additionally, I've never been entirely convinced by Roger Daltrey's voice - there's nothing wrong with it, and that's what's wrong with it as someone or other said; and yet he's great here - the blustering rock bellow presumably being still to come.

Tommy includes some of Townsend's greatest, most powerful songs, in my opinion, here in a more vulnerable, raw emotional form than the version with the visuals and explosions; and although I still can't tell which version works the best, or even if there's a comparison to be made, the narrative seems arguably richer, more mutable, more open to variant interpretations in sound only. It's about enlightenment, but it's about abuse of power, and even about yesterday's underground becoming tomorrow's establishment - revolution and even enlightenment colonised and transformed into the new orthodoxy. The Who returned to that theme more than once, and it seems particularly fitting for the tail end of the sixties - and for right now, come to think of it.