Can`t you dig it? It`s incredible that this really came from the late 60s, so uncool. I would rather say it belongs to the 70s. Can you believe that this camp kitch was played at Woodstock? This caused an "Altman incedent" at the end of the show between Pete Townshend and a certain Altman which can be heard on youtube. It sure must have been a by-product of the "everything is possible" vibe. My first encounter was by the film in the mid 70s. The soap and beans scenes with Ann-Margret were tasteless beyond belief. "Who`s Next" is great.

I think you are referring to Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock.

Live at Leeds is the best live rock album... ever

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custom55
I think you are referring to Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock.

Live at Leeds is the best live rock album... ever

including the Tommy part on the expanded version!

The entire 2/14/70 Who at Leeds University show in the proper stunning order will be released on vinyl later this month. Can't wait!

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custom55
I think you are referring to Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock.

Live at Leeds is the best live rock album... ever

Live at Hull is just as good, imo.

Seems I heard The Who are planning on performing a acoustic performance of Tommy
in London during the spring.

Tommy is a masterpiece. It features some of The Who's most inspirational playing and songwriting and is one of their best recorded works.

Yes, it's a concept but then so much of Pete Townshend's work is conceptual - from A Quick One, Tommy, Lifehouse, Quadrophenia to Iron Man.

The film was dreadful and bombastic Ken Russell should never have been allowed to go near it.

Can you hear me ?

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Silver Dagger
The film was dreadful and bombastic Ken Russell should never have been allowed to go near it.

Tommy The Movie is an excellent and very impressive movie and Ken Russell was the perfect choice. Great actors, too.

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swimtothemoon
Seems I heard The Who are planning on performing a acoustic performance of Tommy
in London during the spring.

YUCK. I would rather have a root canal performed with an Oyster fork. It would be less painful.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-11-07 14:07 by virgil.

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HMS

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Silver Dagger
The film was dreadful and bombastic Ken Russell should never have been allowed to go near it.

Tommy The Movie is an excellent and very impressive movie and Ken Russell was the perfect choice. Great actors, too.

Hee hee.

Tommy is my least favourite of all the Who's work...certainly of their work before Keith Moon died.

I've just never been able to take to it.
Not really sure why.

Tommy is much better live. The Live at Leeds, Isle of White, Hull performances of Tommy are stellar. Worth it just to hear the explosive version of Amazing Journey/Sparks. INCREDIBLE! For me Quadrophenia is a far better studio album than Tommy. As is Who's Next and WHo By Numbers.

I agree with Quadrophenia being a better studio album. Who´s Next is their best album ever and a true masterpiece.

But The Who By Numbers is extremly disappointing, imo. It´s Hard is one of my all-time-Who-favorites, Endless Wire is a total flop, should never been released, what a horrible album.

I almost dont listen to Tommy anymore, seems I heard it too often when I was in my teens, so I´m not very excited about their plans to perform it again.

I always liked The Who Sell Out the most. Fantastic album!

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DandelionPowderman
I always liked The Who Sell Out the most. Fantastic album!

That's my favourite. Pop genius.

Tommy is an excellent record that was royally messed up for me having seen the movie first, which was absolutely awful at least to me. A friend of mine showed it to me when I was like 12 and it was just too much for me. All the abuse and rape and drugs really freaked me out. It scarred me from ever hearing the record until many years later, when I realized the album is great, its just the movie that sucks. Unfortunately, because I had seen the movie, I can never get the "story" out of my head, which is a shame because it doesn't ruin the music but the story is just so ridiculously stupid. It makes absolutely no sense and had I never seen the film I probably never would have noticed because I still don't think you can accurately follow the story just from the album.

For that exact reason, I never watched Quadrophenia. I adore that record and know its a concept but have no idea AT ALL what's going on. I guess I get the basic gist, but I have actively tried NOT to look for the story and just enjoy the great music. In the end, I think the music on that record is way better, but there's definitely a charm to Tommy despite how incredibly weird it is. My father is the opposite of me. Adores Tommy, thinks its one of the best albums of all time, but never "got" Quadrophenia. In his mind, the Who ended with Who's Next. But yeah, those concept records are weird. When I finally got into the Wall I thought "I should watch the movie, cause its basically the record so how bad could it be." Turns out, same as Tommy, I thought it was awful. I just hate when these artists overindulge in their work and make awful awful visual interpretations.

The movie did a terrible injustice to what was originally a great piece of work.

"Gonna find my way to heaven ..."

The album is a masterpiece, and the movie is not bad when acknowledging that it wad done with lighthearted kitsch and camp similar to Rocky Horror.
I remember seeing Tommy in a theater when I was 13 and thoroughly enjoying it, unlike Rocky Horror (which I never did like).
Lots of great cameos throughout (Clapton, Tina Turner, et al), it's still great to watch to this day.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

I like the album better than the movie (one of the rare instances I can enjoy listening to a rock album all the way through without breaks or selections). I also like the album packaging.

I still think the Who's Next album is the group's peak musically (including the single 'Won't Get Fooled Again).

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nightskyman
I like the album better than the movie (one of the rare instances I can enjoy listening to a rock album all the way through without breaks or selections). I also like the album packaging.

I still think the Who's Next album is the group's peak musically (including the single 'Won't Get Fooled Again).

agree.. Who's Next is one of the best studio albums ever produced by any rock group

I love the record, which I have in three versions - original, LSO and movie soundtrack - and I love the film. It never occured to me that anybody wouldn't but then I felt the same about Rocky Horror which I saw about 30 times when it came out. Needless to say I have both DVDs. Ken Russell was quite taken with Daltrey's acting ability and used him to star in his next film, Lisztomania.

In my opinion both Quadrophenia and Tommy are masterpieces.

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reg thorpe

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nightskyman
I like the album better than the movie (one of the rare instances I can enjoy listening to a rock album all the way through without breaks or selections). I also like the album packaging.

I still think the Who's Next album is the group's peak musically (including the single 'Won't Get Fooled Again).

agree.. Who's Next is one of the best studio albums ever produced by any rock group

You mean you like it alot. Nothing to argue about when you say it like that.

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nightskyman
I like the album better than the movie (one of the rare instances I can enjoy listening to a rock album all the way through without breaks or selections). I also like the album packaging.

I still think the Who's Next album is the group's peak musically (including the single 'Won't Get Fooled Again).

Tommy bores the crud out of me, I can't stand it. I had a brother who used to listen to it and I had to leave when he played it. Just seems so over the top and cheesy to me.

I also think Who's Next is their best album. I remember argument with a Who fan once where he kept saying that the Who were greater then the Stones because the Stones didn't have an Rock Operas. I then asked him what he thought the best thing the Who ever did was and he said Who's Next.

I was amazed by his answer and the fact that he didn't see that he destroyed his own argument. Oh the internet.

The Who never had as many great albums as other bands, like the Stones, the Beatles, Bowie, Kinks, etc. They had some, but probably 3 "excellent" ones at most. I like Who By Numbers but its a different category. Having said that, I do think you could make an argument that Who's Next is the greatest rock album ever made. Which I kinda like. It balances them out. Greatest album vs. someone like the Stones who have like 4 or 5 in the top 20.

Who's Next might be their best album but it's like comparing diamonds to diamonds.
Depending on the angle and light one will shine brighter at times.
Tommy takes some commitment and time and for me it's living breathing powerfully unique;
at the time the perfect culmination of all of Pete's bristling wit, deepest soul and guitar prowess.
There is nothing that really sounds like that one,
before or after, it's it's own stylistic thing. The blues cover in the midst of it all is astonishingly perfect.
This is the almost the last of Roger's really pure voice.
Keith Moon is his own full orchestra and that's just the cymbals. ta boom.
I've seen them very many times before and after Tommy;
Several complete performances, one at the Metropolitan Opera House. All of them brutal, and perfect and in many ways quite beautiful to me.
To think Pete wrote AND produced this labor of love is astonishing.
Sure when I Can See For Miles or anything from The Who Sell Out then that one seems like their best album. ;-)
It's a real good album. A real step out. Moon and Ox here are stunning.
A great album. groundbreaking in it's vision and execution; I don't say it's the 'best' this or 'that' particularly;
I was a teenager when this was released so it has it's own special big place in my life and my own state of mind at the time,
trying to better understand iconography and stars, cults, leaders, abused children, they cycles of cultural rises and falls,
dictators, resistance, sensory amazement, violence, lost tribes of young seekers, teenage wasteland before he said teenage wasteland later on...
...handicapped children, sexual abuse, illusion, idealism and so on...

Then again The Kinks put out several and very many concept albums that are fluid, have an equally great
or more interesting narrative. just as good singing, but they are very different bands. Writing wise Ray stands there with Pete.
Lola Vs. Powerman & The Money Go Round is an album I like every bit as much as Tommy. So are several of Ray's things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-11-08 03:37 by hopkins.

I seldom listen to Tommy, never really liked it all that much as a whole, however the beginning Overture is a gem that I've always loved and still do, and they never equaled the studio version as performed live, as there are so many great nuances throughout -- it's really one of their finest moments musically, And, of course, Pinball Wizard is indispensable. If anyone's interested, the bootleg collection The Tommy Demos is a lot of fun, the way you hear them laughing and cutting up through the outtakes.



Incidentally, if you've ever heard the bootleg The High Numbers - Live 1964 (Railway Hotel and Lounge, Wealdstone, 20 October 1964), there are seven additional tracks taken from their 22 October 1964 EMI audition recorded at Abbey Road Studios. In one original instrumental, you can hear that Townshend was already developing the riffs that would become part of Tommy way back in 1964. It sounds unlike anything any other rock guitarist of that time was doing.

But for something termed a rock opera, the sound of Tommy overall is still very crude and underdeveloped, not too far removed from their earlier albums. As Townshend remarked sometime in the early eighties, Who's Next gave the band the sound he felt the Who deserved.

It's not surprising that many find Who's Next to be their strongest album, given that it was cherry picked from a larger collection of songs that was to have been a double album rock opera (Lifehouse).

With Who By Numbers, the cracks are showing, Pete is drinking and pensive over the state of both the Who and rock and roll, and he is by then writing mainly for himself rather than the band. When you listen to No Way Out (However Much I Booze) that he recorded with another band (it's on the Scoop3 collection), it sounds far superior. Likewise, he had the band demo during the Face Dances sessions songs that he later released on All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (like Somebody Saved Me); the Who versions are clunkers, so it's a good thing he released them solo instead.

The Who Sell Out? Perfection -- as a whole, that is. Without the concept of a radio pirate show to hold it all together, apart from I Can See For Miles, there are a whole lot of lesser songs throughout the album, some of which don't make the collection Magic Bus particularly inviting. But as a concept of a pirate radio show with all those priceless jingles and the songs they came up with themselves as commercials, it makes for a perfect UK-themed Sunday evening as fitting as fish and chips.

Looking forward to that new 5-CD box of My Generation. That Kinks thread earlier got me to pull out some Kinks CDs, but now this has me getting some Who CDs ready to play. Today's a Kink Who type of day. Love the 'Oo!