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e Who was following the uncorked creativity birthed two
years earlier by e Beatles. With
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band
—which coincidentally will receive its own complete
performance at Ravinia two weeks a er
Tommy
, on July , by
Classic Albums Live—the Fab Four forever elevated rock from
a edgling, three-chord, teenage musical fad to a dominating
form that changed popular music, ignited a counterculture,
and craved legitimacy.
Tommy
was a similarly dumbfounding leap forward, taking
the aspiration of
Sgt. Pepper
and heightening it. Townshend
invested his own self-revelations, life questions, and raw audac-
ity into his lyrics, and e Who harnessed the innate power of
their instruments. “ ere’s something about the mathematics
of Who music. Four incredibly di erent characters playing
completely individually, but there was something … within
it that knitted it together … it had an incredible strength,”
Daltrey o ered.
During the album’s recording process, Townshend ini-
tially planned to sing the work’s aching refrain, “See me, feel
me.” However, that immediately changed a er he came to the
studio one day and heard Daltrey’s pleading interpretation. He
realized that Roger had occupied Tommy in such a way that
other people weren’t able to occupy him. “I think everyone has
a longing in them. To be understood. To be loved. And that’s
what I tried to do,” Daltrey said.
e Who pulled o no simple feat with
Tommy
, unsus-
pectingly accelerating rock’s maturity. Kit Lambert, the band’s
then-manager (who grew up in a musical family—his father
was British composer Constant Lambert) and the album’s pro-
ducer, urged Townshend to challenge his talents, reconstruct
e Who’s sound, and obliterate rock’s boundaries. Lambert
steered Townshend toward invigorating what he believed was
a languishing operatic landscape. “Pete obviously wrote the
songs, but there was huge, huge input from Kit Lambert. Kit
was always pushing Pete—to write deeper, to write for a bigger
stage,” Daltrey emphasized.
Townshend’s songwriting brazenly explored new, complex
musical signatures and sounds for rock, coupling them with a
multi-layered narrative rooted in a psychological and spiritual
searching, his own childhood upheaval, and the introspective
teachings of Indian mystic, Meher Baba. What
Tommy
lacks in
story cohesiveness, it makes up for in its sense of personal dis-
covery and liberation, and a collection of classic characters like
the muted Tommy, the dethroned Pinball Wizard, the healing
Acid Queen, the bullying Cousin Kevin, the obsessed Sally
Simpson, and the depraved Uncle Ernie. ey each navigate a
series of twisted travails, swirling emotions, embattled cir-
cumstances, cathartic consequences, soaring sentimentalities,
crashing failures, and temporary triumphs.
ese are, of course, all required components of a worthy,
legendary opera.
Tommy
is just … louder. And packed with
more aggression, rebellion, and electricity.
In other words, a “rock opera.”
Tommy
was the rst to use this new designation, even
though other rock acts previously irted with classically
inspired passages and musical suites. Even Townshend toyed
The Who’s live-wire frontman Roger Daltrey transformed the history of music—not just of rock and roll—when he gave voice to
Tommy
nearly 50 years ago. Daltrey will
bring the story of the “Pinball Wizard” to Ravinia in its entirety for two nights, June 23 and 25.
FABRICE DEMESSENCE
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 18 – JULY 8, 2018
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