What is Tommy about?

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=chappachula]
I dont know what it was all about—but I think I do know how most of the fans at the time reacted: they didn’t care.
It was long, and sorta told a story, and so people agreed that it must have been , like, man, deep, or something. But nobody discussed it --we just turned up the volume as high as possible and dug the music.
[/QUOTE]

Yup.

[QUOTE=astorian]
My take:

Tommy represented the post-WW2 generation in England. His deafness, muteness and blindness represented the alienation many English kids of the Sixties generation felt from their parents and from society at large.

Many English kids (John Lennon and Pete Townshend, for instance) of that era turned to rock and roll as their way of expressing themselves and their alienation. Pinball was probably just a symbol for rock and roll.

Townshend and Lennon, among others, found that the music they created was turning them into celebrities, even into icons. They found that kids were turning to them and looking for answers to the big questions of the day. They were being treated as latter day messiahs.

“Tommy” reflects Townshend’s plight. He was probably thinking, “I’m just a screwed-up kid who found he was good at something (in this case, music)… and now I have all these people treating me like a god. They want to follow me, but I don’t know where to lead them!”
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  • that too, yes.

Most memorable scene? Got to be the baked beans. :wink:

22

I was talking about this once with a former co-worker; a guy who knew a lot about music. One thing he said (he claimed to have heard this in an interview with Townshend, but I haven’t been able to authenticate that) was that the lyrics to Listening to You…

were Townshend speaking to his fans; explaining that they were his inspiration instead of the other way around.

I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it.

23

[QUOTE=KGS]

Sitting in front of the mirror, Tommy can see himself, but all he sees is the image projected by all the people around him, the people who worship him and try to help him, but at the same time (from Tommy’s perspective) are also trying to hurt him. Ultimately, Tommy responds by shattering the mirror – destroying the false image of himself, thereby breaking the double-bind conundrum. At last, he’s able to see, hear, feel emotion, connect, and exult in his new found freedom. Of course, this “new Tommy” doesn’t match the expectations of all his pinball followers, so they reject him.

Years later, Tommy joins the war between the Mods & the Rockers…but that’s a different story. :wink:
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You got the first part (and it is sad that it seems the first encounter of many Dopers with Tommy was the movie) but I disagree about the last part.

Tommy, the solitary wizard who gained enlightenment by not being able to see, speak or hear (in other words, being apart from the physical world) loses it when he gains his sight and becomes popular. He gets interested in physical things like houses “build an extension. A colorful palace, spare no expense now.”

I think the really crucial song for the last part is “Sally Simpson.” Here, a girl who truly loves him, and his message, is rejected. “He couldn’t see through the light.” Tommy has become more interested in the adulation of the fans in general than the true love of one of them. He’s become a rockstar, with security guards and all.

The Holiday Camp, with Uncle Ernie as a counselor of all people, shows how far removed he’s gotten. It is an attempt to reproduce his enlightenment through the superficial duplication of his experience. Of course it doesn’t work. I think the up ending is that once he is abandoned by all the false disciples, he can regain his enlightenment. Remember the “you” in the first airing of that song is Tommy in the mirror. I think the reprise means he has looked inside himself again.

Townshend was a disciple of Meir Baba (sp?) a well know guru of the time. I think you need to consider that source for the Tommy story.

24

[QUOTE=Voyager]
I think the really crucial song for the last part is “Sally Simpson.” Here, a girl who truly loves him, and his message, is rejected. “He couldn’t see through the light.” Tommy has become more interested in the adulation of the fans in general than the true love of one of them. He’s become a rockstar, with security guards and all.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. Unfortunately, they changed it again. In the 1993 stage production, “…after the “Sally Simpson” scene, Tommy renounces his messianic role and returns to his family, embracing and praising the kind of “normality” that everybody else has and that he has been deprived of (significantly, the new version introduced lines such as “freedom lies here in normality” and excluded the earlier versions’ “Hey, old hung-up Mr. Normal, don’t try to gain my trust”).” link

How fucked is that? :smack:

25

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I agree. Unfortunately, they changed it again. In the 1993 stage production, "…after the “Sally Simpson” scene, Tommy renounces his messianic role and returns to his family, embracing and praising the kind of “normality” that everybody else has and that he has been deprived of (significantly, the new version introduced lines such as “freedom lies here in normality”
[/QUOTE]

Wow. How very Pippin. How very Liverpool Oratorio.

26

I think I may have to screw up my courage and watch the movie. Is it really as bad as everybody says it is? Wasn’t Ken Russel the chief perpetrator?

27

And didn’t it get a Golden Turkey award?

28

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
I think I may have to screw up my courage and watch the movie. Is it really as bad as everybody says it is? Wasn’t Ken Russel the chief perpetrator?
[/QUOTE]

Some parts are quite good. Imagine The Who with special guest singers Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, and Elton John. On the other hand, imagine The Who with special guest singers Keith Moon, Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson.

The music is generally worse than the original recording, except Clapton does some playing. It’s worth it just for that.

29

The pinball machine based on the musical was pretty cool too. Bonus stage consists of the sound and lights cutting off, and blinders covering up the flippers so you can’t see when the ball is at the botom of the field. Granted, it’s not exactly deaf, dumb, and blind, but it’s a start.

30

[QUOTE=Max Carnage]
The pinball machine based on the musical was pretty cool too.
[/QUOTE]

One thing in Russel’s version was an interesting twist. In the beginning, Mrs. Walker was working in a factory after hubby was sent off to war. She was filling what I assume to be shells with schrapnel. The schrapnel looked curiously like pinballs. (Is this historical fact? I don’t know.) And in The Acid Queen sequence, Tommy drops a handful of pinballs on Mrs. Walker’s face.

Groovy symbolism, man!

31

[QUOTE=tdn]
Some parts are quite good. Imagine The Who with special guest singers Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, and Elton John. On the other hand, imagine The Who with special guest singers Keith Moon, Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson.

The music is generally worse than the original recording, except Clapton does some playing. It’s worth it just for that.
[/QUOTE]

I will admit up front that I haven’t seen the movie in a long time. I seem to recall the Clapton part was pretty bad for Clapton. I also seem to remember Clapton saying it happened during the lowest point in his herion adiction and he didn’t remember much of it. Maybe someone can verify that.

32

I don’t know, but a low point for Clapton is still higher than a high point for most other guitar gods. :wink:

33

What’s Tommy about? It’s about an hour and a half too long.

34

Some random speculations:

If Tommy can see himself (or a reflection of his soul) in a mirror, he can also see a pinball.

In the 60’s, various individuals stumbled across Spiritual Enlightenment while on LSD. Attempts to convey this experience to others often proved frustrating. I think this is the basis for the story.

I saw the stage version about a year ago. They toned down the religious aspects considerably. Also, I think the lover-kills-the-father version makes more sense in that it creates permanent tension in Tommy’s external life, while his inner life is more authentic in oart because it’s inhabited by the spirit of his father.

35

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
I think I may have to screw up my courage and watch the movie. Is it really as bad as everybody says it is? Wasn’t Ken Russel the chief perpetrator?
[/QUOTE]

It’s not that bad, I think it’s kind of campy today. It bogs down towards the end, after Tommy becomes a star, but it has a pretty bizzare series of vignettes up until then.

And yeah, I’d tune in just for the baked beans (and chocolate and laundry detergent IIRC).

36

[QUOTE=Duke of Rat]
It bogs down towards the end
[/QUOTE]

It bogs down towards the beginning as well. Up until the father/lover conflict, it’s really slow. And the music is downright goofy. After that point, it picks up.

37

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I agree. Unfortunately, they changed it again. In the 1993 stage production, “…after the “Sally Simpson” scene, Tommy renounces his messianic role and returns to his family, embracing and praising the kind of “normality” that everybody else has and that he has been deprived of (significantly, the new version introduced lines such as “freedom lies here in normality” and excluded the earlier versions’ “Hey, old hung-up Mr. Normal, don’t try to gain my trust”).” link

How fucked is that? :smack:
[/QUOTE]
I was tremendously disturbed by the end of the play, particularly Tommy embracing Uncle Ernie! But in this Rolling Stone article, Townshend explains (sort of) the change:

[QUOTE=Pete Townshend]
I don’t see it as a happy ending at all. I see it as a deepening of the adversity, the difficulty that this young man is going through. He can put his childhood behind him. But what he can’t do is erase the fact that he has to live with his family. He has to live with the consequences of his family. …

And when I sat down to work on it with Des McAnuff I had to fight quite hard to get him to put on this so called happy ending. I said: “What would he fucking do?” He’d have to go home, partly out of sickness, partly because he would believe that there was some kind of vengeance available for him. But he’d also go home because there would be nowhere else to go. So to describe it as a happy ending seems to me to be just light headed.
[/QUOTE]

But that doesn’t make me like the ending any better, really. It just makes the whole story kind of pointless, doesn’t it?

38

Well, the movie gets the album ever so slightly wrong. The album appears to be partly about the sexual abuse of children, but mostly about the futility of organized religion.

39

Townshend later said that he was sexually abused as a child. Tommy has a childhood experience that leaves him emotionally scarred and not a little mad.

It has been a long time since I saw the film, but I seem to remember Tommy’s Mommy seeming seductive as she pleads with Tommy to come out of it.

Townshend was asked why director Russell played the “Listening to You” scene as Tommy speaking to God. Embarrassed, he said that was all Russell. “I didn’t write it that way.”

40

Say what you like about the movie and the excesses of Ken Russell, which are legion, but dammit, Roger Daltrey in well worn jeans running on a beach with his long curly hair flying in the breeze is enough to make any normally hormoned woman do a bit of fiddlin’ about–I’m just sayin’!

My kids loved the album–I’d put both LPs on and crank up the old stereo to do housework. My daughter would see me pull the album out and start yelling “Tommy record, Tommy record!” when she was about three or four… Good times… :stuck_out_tongue:

I wouldn’t let them watch the movie until they were well into their teens, though. Tina Turner was WAY scary, but not as scary as Jack Nicholson “singing.” :eek:

I always figured Russell used the baked beans as an homage to the cover of “The Who Sell Out.”