Tommy
Tommy is the fourth studio album by the English rock band The Who, first released in 23 May 1969. The album was mostly composed by guitarist Pete Townshend , and is a rock opera that tells the story of Tommy Walker, a "deaf, dumb and blind" boy, including his experiences with life and his relationship with his family.
Synopsis
The following synopsis is taken from Wikipedia and summa up well the background to the story.
British Army Captain Walker goes missing during an expedition and is believed dead ("Overture"). His wife, Mrs. Walker, gives birth to their son, Tommy ("It's a Boy"). Years later, Captain Walker returns home and discovers that his wife has found a new lover. The Captain kills the lover in an altercation. Tommy's mother brainwashes him into believing he didn't see or hear anything, shutting down his senses and making him deaf, dumb and blind to the outside world ("1921"). Tommy now relies on his sense of touch and imagination, developing a fascinating inner psyche.
A quack claims his wife can cure Tommy, while Tommy's parents are increasingly frustrated that he will never find religion in the midst of his isolation ("Christmas").
They begin to neglect him, leaving him to be tortured by his sadistic "Cousin Kevin" and molested by his uncle Ernie ("Fiddle About").
As Tommy grows older, he discovers that he can feel vibrations sufficiently well to become an expert pinball player.
His parents take him to a respected doctor ("There's a Doctor"), who determines that the boy's disabilities are psychosomatic
This removes Tommy's mental block, and he recovers his senses, realising he can become a powerful leader ("Sensation"). He starts a religious movement ("I'm Free"), which generates fervor among its adherents ("Sally Simpson") and expands into a holiday camp ("Welcome" / "Tommy's Holiday Camp").
However, Tommy's followers ultimately reject his teachings and leave the camp ("We're Not Gonna Take It"). Tommy retreats inward again (" See Me, Feel Me") with his "continuing statement of wonder at that which encompasses him".
Tommy review – Ken Russell's mad rock opera pinballs back into cinemas
Russell’s adaptation of the Who’s concept album about a blind pinball wizard is a fascinating time capsule featuring Oliver Reed, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, Tina Turner and Eric Clapton
Ken Russell’s bizarre and ineffably seedy and fetishistic rock opera Tommy, based on the Who’s 1969 concept album, is now on rerelease. It is 44 years since it arrived in cinemas, and we were all shocked at that extraordinarily horrible scene with the paedophile babysitter Uncle Ernie, played by Keith Moon. This is a character even Roald Dahl would have flinched from imagining: cracking an egg into his glass of 70s warm beer and then proceeding to “fiddle about” with the blind, deaf, dumb and Christ-like young Tommy, played by Roger Daltrey. (Dennis Potter’s BBC TV play
The Uncle Ernie scene was the one I found most upsetting when I saw this originally as a teenager, though watching it again now I realise I had failed to clock a very dodgy touch: Uncle Ernie is reading Gay News, with its “Obscenity Trial Triumph” headline. I can’t believe that anyone making this film believed that gay and paedophile were interchangeable, but it was a clumsy irony.
Ann-Margret and Robert Powell play Nora and Captain Walker, a wartime married couple seen first where the film is to climax: in Borrowdale in the Lake District, the location for a number of Russell’s films. Walker is an RAF pilot on leave and, when he is reported missing, presumed killed in action, Nora remarries holiday camp entertainer Frank
But the miracle is that Tommy becomes a world-famous pinball champ – the pinball psycho-karmically connected with the ball bearings that his mum once made in her wartime factory. Tommy becomes worshipped like a rock star, and from there he becomes a guru and spiritual leader to a mercurial mob who might at any moment turn on him.
From the modern vantage point, you can see (and savour) Tommy’s connection not just to Russell’s freaky
What’s really interesting about Tommy is that it is about how the generation who led the pop revolution of the 60s had vivid but undisclosed memories of their wartime childhoods. The second world war and pop music are generally sealed off from each other in our culture, but Tommy brought them into alignment, showing how the pop liberation was a reaction to the pinched privation of wartime. (And then punk, it has to be said, was a reaction to the prog-concept indulgence of which Tommy was an example.) When Brit cinema mostly opted for dullness, Ken Russell was showing us a film that was daring and risky and mad.