It was 53 years ago today — May 17th, 1969 — that the Who's double album rock opera Tommy was released. The work, which was conceived and primarily written by Pete Townshend, was based on a boy, Tommy Walker, who although born healthy is traumatized into an autistic state at the sight of his father murdering his mother's lover. Once rendered deaf, dumb, and blind, Tommy is abused by multiple outside forces and eventually becomes treated as a new messiah due to his flawless pinball prowess, which is seen as a sign of his divine spirituality and purity.
Back in 2013, Townshend shed light on his original idea and work process behind the original Tommy album back in 1968 and 1969, telling The Globe And Mail: “Originally in the story, pinball was not a part of the exercise. The boy was not deaf, dumb and blind except in clinical terms. He had been traumatized. . . I spoke to our manager, Kit Lambert, who was the son of Constant Lambert, and who knew about opera, who knew about music outside rock n' roll. And he was very encouraging of me to do something very audacious and grand that was challenging, and challenging in a way that would challenge our audience.”
He went on to say, “The only thing that is important is the audience. The only thing. And the message is from the audience to the stage, not the other way round. It's a strange mechanism, the one that underlies rock n' roll. The hero is not on the stage. So the hero is not Tommy. It's everybody in the audience. And I know that sounds like a pat cliche, but it happens to be true.”