This is the
first of two extracts that will appear on Just Backdated from Tommy At 50, a 176-page large format book with
illustrations throughout, co-written by Mike McInnerney and myself, which will
be published in mid-May.
The
book is divided into four sections, The Mood (by Mike), The Music (me), The
Look (Mike) and The Legacy (me), together with a Foreword by Pete Townshend, an
intro by me and, at the back, notes, bibliography, index and acknowledgements.
There are also 15 two- or four-page features throughout on subjects like The
Detours, Meher Baba, Kit Lambert, Pete’s home demos, Woodstock, Karen
Townshend, concept albums, Ken Russell and many more, and the illustrations
include previously unseen material from Mike’s original Tommy artwork, dozens of photos of
The Who and other images linked to the boy who was unable to hear, speak and
see.
In many ways, The Who’s recording career up to Tommy can be seen as a template for
their magnum opus. Indeed, a case can be made that the protagonist of their
very first single as The Who was the prototype for the deaf, dumb and blind
boy.
The narrator
of ‘I Can’t Explain’, recorded in November 1964 and released midway through the
following January, is a frustrated teenager unable to express himself, not just
to the girl of his dreams but also to the world at large, and although he’s
unencumbered by Tommy’s sensory handicaps, there’s more than a hint of the
angst that Tommy Walker will endure.
‘I Can’t
Explain’ appeared after The Beatles and Rolling Stones had emerged as the twin forerunners
of the sixties beat boom. The Who – who in the fullness of time would occupy a
sort of bronze-medal position behind them – were not just slow off the starting
blocks but approached their calling from a different angle. The first eleven
singles released by The Beatles were love songs or songs that related in some
way to relationships with the opposite sex, as were seven of the first eight
released by the Stones. In contrast, it’s hard to find a trace of romance in
any of The Who’s singles that followed ‘I Can’t Explain’. Pete Townshend’s mind
was thereafter focused on higher things: the generation gap, the plight of
teenagers, communication or lack thereof, the futility of conformity,
cross-dressing, sexual frustration, illusions and disillusionment. Much of this
was seen through the prism of mod, the youth cult to which The Who had attached
themselves during the brief period in 1964 when they were known as The High
Numbers, and which clung to them throughout 1965 and ’66.
Fortunately,
Townshend had a knack of framing his rather lofty themes within a punchy
three-minute pop song, so those for whom the lyrics went in one ear and out the
other, or who simply didn’t get what Roger Daltrey was singing about, could
still appreciate the rush of a Who single, especially when Townshend’s
distorted guitar and Keith Moon’s tireless drums played key roles.
More
specifically, the musical seeds of Tommy
can be traced back to The Who’s second album, released in December 1966, side
two of which is dominated by the closing track, ‘A Quick One’ (also the album’s
title in Britain). Included largely because Daltrey and Moon had failed to come
up their quota of songs as per an agreement with the group’s music publishers,
“A Quick One” was in part Kit Lambert’s solution for filling up the LP, but
also a means to encourage Townshend to write an extended piece of music, thus
fulfilling Kit’s ambition to emulate in some way his illustrious composer
father, Constant Lambert. Goaded by his manager, Townshend wrote a
“mini-opera” that lasted just over nine minutes and sped through six connected
sections, all with different melodies of their own, ranging from rather camp
country and western to lush harmonies and all-out power-pop, with a touch of
ribald English music hall in between. There was also a rousing power-chord
climax, soon to become a distinctive Who trait, with quite stunning vocal
harmonies that benefited from John Entwistle’s ability to sing falsetto.
Once
recorded, ‘A Quick One’ soon became part of the group’s stage act, debuted at
London’s Saville Theatre on January 29, 1967 – a propitious occasion, with Jimi
Hendrix also on the bill and John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the audience.
“The Who were as wild and unpredictable as ever,” wrote Chris Welch in the
following week’s Melody Maker, before
going on to comment on the potential for rivalry between The Who and Hendrix.
“It was a close battle . . . and fans will be arguing about the winners. Either
way, two of Britain’s most exciting groups thrilled the crowds with
hard-hitting sights and sounds.”
Crucially,
playing ‘A Quick One’ enabled The Who to come to terms with the complexities of
performing a conjoined medley of several songs, albeit fairly short ones,
moving from one to the next with effortless precision regardless of tempo
changes or shifts in ambience. All of this would stand them in good stead when
it came time to take their next, far longer and more ambitious, rock opera on
the road.
The Who’s
1967 album, The Who Sell Out,
contains precursors to Tommy that are
even more unequivocal. There are hints of the opera’s mood in ‘Odorono’, a
spoof deodorant commercial, and Entwistle’s ‘Silas Stingy’ seems like a
blueprint for the “nasty” songs that Townshend requested he write for Tommy. Even more explicit is the coda to
a lengthy and fairly enigmatic song called ‘Rael’, which offers an early
introduction to the melodic themes of ‘Sparks’ and ‘Underture’ – both key
instrumental motifs of the opera.
An even
bigger clue to what was going on in Townshend’s mind, albeit hidden from public
view at the time, was a song called ‘Glow Girl’, which he wrote around this
time, and which was recorded shortly after Sell
Out was released. Though ‘Glow Girl’ would not appear on record until 1974,
on the outtakes LP Odds and Sods (and
later as a bonus track on the 1995 reissue of Sell Out), it seems in hindsight to be the very first lyrically identifiable
germ of Tommy. Ostensibly a song
about a plane crash in which the protagonist sifts through the contents of her
handbag as the aircraft descends, toward the end it includes the line, “It’s a
girl, Mrs Walker, it’s a girl.” With a gender change, these are among the
opening lines to Tommy.
“[‘Glow
Girl’] is rich in both melody and ideas and was to have influential
repercussions,” writes John Atkins in The
Who on Record. “A great deal happens in a short duration . . . and the song
encompasses Townshend’s patent ringing guitar chords on the intro and an
up-tempo verse pattern with a sure beat from Moon before a simulated plane
crash effect gives way to a more placid coda in which the victim is reborn.”
Tommy
Walker, of course, would himself be reborn once he was cured of those annoying
sensory impediments.
5 comments:
Spot on Charles! A well defined history of Tommy nutshell!
A handy overview of the gestation. Tommy's not really an opera, but a cantata. That technical term doesn't sound exciting though it shares qualities with classical cantatas.
Precisely the point I make later in this chapter: "Literal meaning has never been a prerequisite for a rock song to be considered great, and any ambiguities in the story line don’t detract from the pleasure fans derived from listening to Tommy from beginning to end. Neither, at the outset, was Tommy intended as a classical opera in which the characters would act out their parts on stage while singing. Perhaps the best description is a ‘cantata’, defined in dictionaries as 'a medium-length narrative piece of music for voices with instrumental accompaniment, typically with solos, chorus, and orchestra.' But cantata doesn’t have the cachet of ‘opera’, which sounds grand and is certainly more appropriate than ‘concept album’, a term that came into common usage to describe albums with a unifying theme."
Marvelous and well written article. Thank u!
Great minds think alike. Looking forward to that.
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