Tommy (1969) was everything The Who were looking for: an artistic, musical and commercial triumph. Townshend later said that most of the group's new fans thought that the group was called Tommy, and the album The Who. In any event, the album gave the group the freedom they needed from constant financial pressure, which must have surprised them. Who would've thought that a rock opera could do that?
Today, I'd like to focus on one particular point of interest for me - when the decision was made to change one crucial aspect of the story. In the Rolling Stone interview discussed yesterday, Townshend said that it was to be the story of a boy who is born deaf, dumb and blind. But of course in the final version it is a trauma witnessed by the boy (his parents commit and cover up a murder) that brings it on. Therefore, the disabilities are psychosomatic (or something similar), and the cure that releases him from his physical isolation seems more possible. The song, "1921" gives us the initiating incident mentioned above, but it was not an easy scene to understand from the lyrics at the time. (By the way, the best version of Tommy to see is the musical done for Broadway by Des McAnuff, now the artistic director of The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, entitled The Who's Tommy. It tells the story very clearly. I don't recommend the Ken Russell film version.) The story then follows Tommy through all kinds of tribulations, until it is discovered that he has a great gift for pinball. With the aforementioned plot change, this too becomes plausible, clearing the way for a work of great allegorical power. I'll explain what I mean by that tomorrow.