Song 183: “Pinball Wizard” by the Who, Part 2: “Led By His Disciples”

Some 183, Pimble was it by the hood, part 2, his disciples lead him in.

“Before we begin, this episode contains a lot of references to subjects that might upset”

some people, both in what I say and in the lyrics of the songs accepted. It contains some discussion of child sexual abuse, both in real life and as a subject of songs. Sexual assault, drug use, and physical violence. It also discusses songs that have able to statitudes, and the episode both excerpts

them and discusses those attitudes. In particular, the song that gives this two-part episode is title, and others from the same album. Use a term for muteness that many non-speaking people find extremely offensive. The term is also used in a working title for the album, and an interview from the time

period.

“And I will have to mention it as a result, though I will keep uses of the word to a minimum.”

There are also excerpts from another song from that album that uses the term beginning with G for very many people, which some verma consider an offensive slur. By understanding which may be wrong, is that it's generally considered a slur by very many people in North America, but that most in Western Europe use the term about themselves. Shortly, that term is used so often in songs from the late 60s and early 70s, but it's

essentially impossible to avoid it in musical excerpts used in the podcast. Though I won't say it myself. The episode also contains brief mentions of domestic abuse, mention of racist violence, alcohol abuse, and a longer, though non-graphic description of a death in a car accident, as well as some descriptions of self-harm and mental illness.

If those things may upset you, it might be better to read the transcript I'll skip this

“episode rather than listen, and it may also be an idea to avoid listening to the music”

in the accompanying playlist. That said, let's get on with the story. When we left the hood at the end of the last episode, they had just released a single at Townsend believed with his ultimate single. As we heard, that single did make the top 10 in both the UK and the US.

But did nowhere near as well as it's right to hoped, this may in part have been because of the lyrics, while they were about jealousy and towns understated repeatedly that that's all he intended. Many listeners heard them as actually being about LSD, and while for most bands the end of 1967 saw a transition from caring about pop singles, to being about albums that didn't

yet really apply to the hood, the who sell out their third album, which had been released

at the same time as the single, and which has now often regarded as the group's greatest album, only reached number 13 in the UK and made the top 40 in the US. However, while the group were making such an impact as a live act, especially in the US where they could make serious money, that didn't matter all that much. As Townsend told the enemy, the group has been getting a great feeling of satisfaction

from the dates we've played. We'd like to reach a stage where our records success becomes secondary to concerts, and I think we might be getting there. He also got some satisfaction from a message from Subwellian Walton, one of Fritans' most celebrated composers, who had among other things written the correlation marches for both King

George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, Walton was Kit Lambert's godfather, and he sent word violin that he had been impressed by I can see for miles. Even if the record banged public weren't as filled with his experimentation as he'd hoped, Townsend could take comfort in knowing that someone has renowned as Walton found his work worthwhile.

But late '67 and early '68, was a time when Townsend was re-evaluating a lot of his life.

He had his first same-sex sexual experience with Danny Fields while on tour in the US,

and while the way he describes it in his autobiography makes it sound like a sexual assault, rather than a consensual encounter. He also describes enjoying it, and it leading him to the realization of his bisexuality. And even more importantly, he was becoming interested in the teachings of Maya Barba. Training Maya Barba has come from India with a message to the West.

He does not convey this message by speaking, but by his mere presence. And he wishes to communicate with people, he uses this board and points to the letters on it.

or spiritual societies and organizations.

I see the structure of all the great religions of the world. Townsend actually became a follower of Maya Barba in direct these thanks to the Blues Magus. As we discussed in the last episode, when the Who taught on the same bill as the Blues Magus, two members of the band had introduced Townsend to the works of the New Age Guru and supposed to UFO contacty, Georgia Damskie.

“At Damskie, you may remember, claimed to have been visited by a venousian called Orthon,”

an alien who was truly shocking in appearance, to quote a Damskie. Through a only two outstanding differences that I noticed as I near him. One, his trousers were not lying mine. They were in style, much like ski trousers. And with a passing thought I wondered why he wore such out here in the desert.

Two, his hair was long, reaching to his shoulders, and was blowing in the wind as was mine. But this was not too strange, for I have seen a number of men who were there have almost that long. Orthon also apparently communicated only by telepathy, augmented by hand gestures, rather than using words like earth people.

But at least at first, though between his first and second visits to a Damskie he learned

English.

“On that second visit, Orthon the venousian was accompanied by furcon the Martian and Rambo the”

Saturnian. They, however, were normal business suits, rather than having trousers on like those of normal men. Orthon furcon and Rambo took a damskie to venous, where they introduced him to someone called the Master, a thousand years old and his current body.

Who gave a damskie in potent revelations such as that Warv is bad and tolerances good, which he was told to take back to the other people on earth. Townsend was talking to his friend Mike McKinnery about this, and McKinnery handed him a book which he thought described similar revelations. This was the godman, a book about Mayababa.

Mayababa is a figure who it is very difficult to sum up in any sensible way. He described himself as a Sufi, but his teachings had little to do with actual Sufism,

“and seemed to be a blend of Hinduism, zirawastrianism, and Buddhism, with some overlay”

of Sufi terminology. Those teachings have written in an idea-syncratic jargon, full of terms that were expected to be understood without being explained. And no two sources I consult can fully agree on what those terms mean. Nothing that everyone is certain of, though, is that Barba coined the phrase "Don't worry

be happy", which later inspired the hit song by Bobby McFerman. But when you were, you make it double, don't worry, be happy, don't worry, be happy now. Barba was born in India to a rainy impermanence, who remembers of the Tsarastrian religion. Tsarawastrianism is too complex to explain at the moment, though we'll probably get to it in a future episode when talking about Freddie Mercury, but it's an ancient religion based

on the teachings of the Prophet Salatustra, which seems to have had a lot of influence on the Abrahamic faiths. But as we've discussed previously, there seems in the late 19th and early 20th century, so have been much more fluidity between religions in India than people listening to this would tend to assume, and it was very possible for someone seeking enlightenment to follow

a guru with a different religion altogether.

So the first master to be followed by Barba was not a Tsarawastrian, but has that Papa Jan,

and Afghani Muslim holy woman, who had in turn supposedly trained under a Hindu guru. Though, almost everything we know about her comes via Barba, whose description of her life contains several miracles, which those of us who don't follow either of them must consider skeptically. And it is an interesting point to note, given the themes of gender we have noted in Townsend's

writing in the previous episode, that Barba Jan was a name she chose herself, and the Barba, in her name, as in May a Barba similarly self-chosen name, means father, and she would apparently get very angry of anyone referred to her as mother, rather than father, claiming that being a woman had connotations of weakness, and she was strong. According to Barba, after sitting in silence with Barba Jan on many occasions, she kissed him

on the forehead, thus passing on her Barak, a blessing that gives one spiritual powers. He had apparently already had a realisation year earlier, after reading a book on Buddha, and coming across talk of the Buddha's future reincarnation as the Mytrayer, that he was, in fact, the Mytrayer. As he put it, I realized all of a sudden, I am that actually.

about the Vedas, but then he forgot about that until spending time with Barba Jan.

After being kissed by Barba Jan, by Barba's own description, he spent the next nine months almost catatonic, fasting and living on almost nothing but tea, in a state of divine bliss, but with no consciousness of his own body. His parents thought he was mad and took him to doctors who could do nothing. In one day, he went to move his bowels and couldn't, because he hadn't eaten solids

and so long, and, according to Barba, then I saw with these gross eyes of mine, circles and circles hold universes. From that moment, instead of the divine bliss that I was in, for nine months I was in such torches that not in the world can understand. I used to bang my head to relieve my pain, I skirt my head on floors and walls, I could

not contain myself, it was as if the whole universe was in my head.

“I sleep the staring vacant eyes, where we'd remember the most.”

This pain, according to Barba, was because he had achieved what he referred to as God Realization, and was conscious of a greater bliss than anyone knew, but he had to come back to normal levels of consciousness to bring everyone else to that level with him, and he was unwilling to come back to the pain and suffering of normal life. After Barba Jan, Barba went on to follow up a sani Maharaj, a Hindu guru and a evaded doctor,

who had himself studied with a Muslim guru, Sai Barba, who was regarded by many of his Hindu followers as an incarnation of the God-data-trayer, Maharaj apparently helped Barba to come

back to normal consciousness on their first meeting, by throwing a stone at the young

man's head, which hit him on the forehead in the same place Barba Jan had kissed him, drawing blood. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot in the stories around Barba, though it's usually

“Barba inflicted in the violence rather than having it inflicted on him.”

All of these stories are filtered through Barba's followers, who say things like, "This might sound to ignore a Western ear as like abuse, but to those of the mystic east it is apparent that this has a deepest, provisional meaning and is gentle of incandace." According to Barba, let's anytime in the world's history there are five perfect masters who are responsible for guiding humanity.

Barba Jan, Maharaj, and Maharaj's guru Sai Barba were three of them. The other two were Tajud in Baba, and Nayar and Maharaj, Barba visited all of these, three Muslims and two Hindus, in 1914 and 1915, and learned from all of them over the next few years, while still suffering from the after-effects of whatever happened after Barba Jan kissed him.

He would often go off and head but rocks until he bruised himself.

“In 1921, Barba came to the realization that he was himself the avatar, a personification”

of God. According to Barba, every few hundred years the avatar incarnates in a new human body. And he was the reincarnation of Zavatastra, Rama, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, and Mahamid. In 1922 he gathered forty-five followers, twelve Muslims, eleven zero-astrian, and twenty-two Hindu, who he said shall continue to practice their own religions while following him.

Barba's teaching, as far as I can understand it, was that everyone started as the same human for its soul, but that that soul got shocked and shattered into pieces, which identified themselves with gross material objects. Each soul, according to Barba, starts out as a stone, and keeps getting reincarnated as a stone until it has experienced everything the stone can possibly experience, and realized

that all the impressions of its existence as a stone have been illusions caused by its form. Here then me incarnates as a metal, and the same thing happens over again. And as a plant, and it has every possible experience for a plant to have, then a worm, then a fish, then an animal, then a human.

Each time the same cycle repeats. Souls get re-born over and over, and learn all the can through their sense of impressions as worms as fish or whatever, until they realize that all those sense impressions are false. Only when they realize that all human sense impressions are false, can they once again a send and become one with God?

At that point, that one's sense is of always lying, and that enlightenment comes with

the realization that you can't trust your sense impressions, is the theme that we see come up again and again in Townsend's future work. There's one other thing we need to note here about Maya Barba, and that is that for the last 44 years of his life, from 1925 on, Barba didn't speak a single word, instead he communicated at first by pointing at letters on an alphabet board, spelling out the words for his followers.

interpreted by a trusted follower.

“He claimed many times that he would say one final word which would shake the world to its”

foundations and set things up for the next avatar, who will arrive in 700 years.

But that word was never spoken before his death in 1969.

Townsend started going to meetings with some of Barba's disciples, and also talking with his friend Bunny Lane of the small faces, who became an author follower of Barba. The small faces in the who were very friendly with each other, and had both initially appealed to the same mod audience, though the small faces were actual mods, while the who had been moulded to appeal to the mods by Pete Meadon.

So it made sense that when the who toured Australia is here, the small faces were also on the bell, along with Paul Jones, a former lead singer of Manford Man. That toured did not go very well at all, from the very start it seemed doomed as the group

“found out when they got to the airport that they were having to make the 36 hour multi-stop”

journey in a economy class, and then when they arrived in Australia, they immediately had to do a press conference for hostile journalists.

The very first question, according to various band members later memories, was

directed at him a clagin of the small faces, who had recently been busted for pot use, as so many pop musicians of the period were. He was asked, "Mr. McCluggan, is it true you are drug addict?" And perhaps understandably, swore at the journalist in response, and from that moment on, there was no salvaging the situation.

Townsend was amazed, though, to be introduced to a girl who was also a follower of May a Barba, who handed Townsend a badge with Barba's face on it, confirming for him that he was looking in the right place by following Barba. We had a brief affair with the girl, a motor-song sensation about her, though the lyrics were later gender swapped.

That badge became the source of an anecdote which summed up the attitude that some of the other members of the band had to townsend's new family, G.R.City. When Moon saw Townsend wearing it, he asked who was on his badge.

“May a Barba, Townsend replied, "So which Moon was bonded?”

Is it? Well you won't see me walking around with a picture of Vidal Sassoon." For some Americans who are reading the transcript rather than listening to the podcast, that joke might not make sense, so as a brief explanation. Most English accents, including both mine and moons, are non-motic, which means they

drop off on the letter R when it comes after a vowel but not before another one, while most American accents are rotic. This means that in English accents, Barba, as in May a Barba, has pronounced the same as Barba, as in someone who cuts hair, but other than meeting that girl little went right for the group, both the who and the small faces were accused of swearing on stage

and investigated by Australian police. And then on an internal flight, a stewardess refused to serve any of the travelling musicians. They complained about this somewhere accused, possibly correctly, of being drunk and held for three hours at the next airport, before having to chart a private plane as the pilot for their connecting flight refused to have them on his plane.

That's not to say that the group's in question were innocent of bad behaviour, of course. For a start, there was an incident at Steve Marriott's birthday party where he threw a TV up his balcony, right in front of a passing police car. But, there were serious threats that would be departed, and either the who nor the small faces could cope with the cultural conservatism of Australia when New Zealand at the time.

They likened it to the American Midwest at the 1930s.

By the end of the tour, towns in the particular was vowing never to return, and he didn't

for more than 40 years. The feeling was mutual, New Zealand used paper the truth set of both groups on the departure. We really don't want them back again. They had just unwashed foul-smelling booze-swilling no hopers. The stress of the tour traumatized moon in particular, and a typical story told about him

is, when on their next trip to the O.S. three of the who were meeting with Frank Barcelona,

Barcelona made a remark about how if the group were making serious money now, they should

“consider investing in businesses in Australia, which he saw as a growing market.”

Moon immediately went into a frenzy, screaming and throwing the whiny-bid drinking all over Barcelona's furniture. Manting about how he hated Australia, and if Kit Lambert were there, he would punch Lambert in the face, becoming a totally different person as ever switch a bit flipped. Before eventually calming down, apologizing and leaving, having ruined the night.

At whistle, who remained behind, said to Barcelona, "You know my son, Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Heid. Now you see what my inspiration was.

“This is the first time you've seen it, but we see it's all the time."”

When the rest of the group got back to their hotel, they found they were being kicked out.

Moon had blown up the toilet in his room with cherry bombs, not the first time he had

done so. And was now throwing cherry bombs from his hotel balcony at police on the street, who had tried to figure out how to arrest him without being blown up themselves. One's fandalism and drunken buffoonery were at the time off and laughed off, not these by casual acquaintances and friends who were only saw him in public, but he was a deeply

deeply disturbed person.

“Now, while he would play the fool in public, because of his desperate need to be loved,”

in private that would often turn to violence, both against his bandmates and, inexcusably, against his wife, who left him on multiple occasions after his violence got too much, but

always returned when he promised to reform.

Most of these violent turns and angry outbursts, like the incident with Barcelona, happened when he was drunk. He was by all the counternaisers man in the world when sober. The problem was, he was getting drunk while we're more often, and spending less and less time sober.

After the Australian tour, of course, there was more music to be made. Plans were made initially for an album to be released during the Wimbledon Finals that year, to be titled "Who's For Tenys", though, as it turned out, though, who would not release an album in 1968 at all. Townsend was eager to expand this musical vocabulary.

He had been teaching himself the piano and learning orchestration, and he was doing exercises in different styles. One of the first things he wrote in demo after the Australian trip was a song titled "Go In Fishing" and attempt to copy the stellar Bryan Wilson's work on the beach by smiley smile album. There was also a new non-album single "Call Me Lightning", which wasn't released as an

ice-side in the UK, and barely scripted the top 40 in the US. In the UK, that was released as the "B" side of another single, "Dogs", a song about Greyhound racing that shows the strong influence of the small faces. That only made number 25, the lowest at any proper who single endorsed by the band themselves

had ever reached, other than their version of the last time which had never been promoted.

Townsend later said of this period, we went through that very funny period of happy Jack and Dogs. It was also a very terrifying period for me as the "Who's On The Ideas" man. For instance, though I can see for miles was released after Happy Jack.

the "Who's Ace in the Hall".

“If you want the truth and nothing but, I really got lost after Happy Jack, and then when”

I can see for miles bummed out in Britain, I thought, "What the hell am I going to do now?" The fetches were really on me and I had to come up with something very quick. Don't fear was similarly dismissive of this period, describing it later as, "A real self-indogent wanking off period that didn't work, and once again the group seemed on the verge of splitting up.

Townsend later said of this rather flandering period. When this happens, a group generally splits up. If a group goes along without accelerating its talents, it is inevitable that you either split up or you go into cabaret. We said, "It can't be that simple, why should we split up?"

The group were in a quandary.

“We still worshiped the two and a half minute wunk single, but worshiped it in playing”

it to two different things. Musically, the who were totally capable of making records like these. But by now we were doing things that just couldn't be captured on the pop single. We needed a bigger vehicle. Speaking of vehicles, the next single was another sand that towns and was wheels spinning

creatively. It was a remake of Magic Bus, the sungeid given to the pudding the year earlier. [Music] That did no better than dogs in the UK chart, and was equally unloved by the band members, especially in Twistle, who found it dull playing the simplistic bodiedly with.

“While the was, even 1968, the start of a move back to more simple, straightforward, blues”

influenced rock. That move was more noticeable among album artists than among singles artists like The Who. The pop charts was still looking for innovation, not for anything retro. It made number 25 on the U.S. charts, and number 10 on the cashbox charts, while the bigger discrepancies have seen between the cashbox and billboard tallies.

The single was successfully enough in the U.S. that when a planned live album of the group shows that the film of East was rejected by the band, their U.S. label put together an Arts and Sots collection titled Magic Bus The Who On Tour, which was meant to give the impression that it was a live album.

The actual live album didn't get released until 2018, when it finally got a release

to attend the copyright. As well as the live album, Lumberts, who's for tennis idea, was stalled, after Lumberts supposedly left several of the master tips the group had recorded in a taxi. Oddly though, Wild Townsend was unable to come up with a hit for his own band as a songwriter. He produced a bigger hit for someone else than the who ever had.

Townsend had been a fan for a long time with the band The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and it got found in his band's Santa track records. Townsend is credited as a associate producer of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's upon a first album, with Lumbert the credits producer. The Gaud of Hellfire, and I bring you, Wild.

That was recorded in June 1968, shortly after the recording of dogs, and shortly after Townsend's marriage. On its release in September became one of the biggest hit records track ever had, reaching

number one in the UK and number two in the US, and selling well over a million copies.

At the end of June, the who had to fly off to the US again for yet another US tour, their second of 1968. While the group loved them Americans' success, they were starting to see it as a double-edged sword, with moonsaying around this time. We're in an interim sort of position at the moment, both over here and in America, because

although we've established a name for ourselves in both countries, we're not well-in-established

What the who really need is a million-celler, and I think we ought to stay in England and

“just flood the US market with records until we achieve that, I think the tap the moment”

we're losing out both in America and England, because we're not spending enough concentrated time in each country. On one of the US tours of 1968, the group met up with their old friends the yard birds, themselves going through the motions on the way to splitting up for good. A moon and an entwistled, both once again taught with Jimmy Page about possibly quitting

the who to join his new super group. Both moon and entwistled were pushing for the name that had been thrown about the previous year, Led Zeppelin.

“Though at this point, only antwistled was really interested in joining Page's band.”

He was getting stressed that his songs were only being put on B-sides, and he wasn't getting any A-sides or many album tracks, and was looking for another outlet for his writing. Townsend was also annoyed that at that point he couldn't have a concentrated period of time thinking about his plans for his music. He and Lumber to have been talking with each other about the possibility of the who doing

something that might be considered a rock-upper. A long-form musical narrative that would take up an entire album. A longer version of what Townsend had already done with a quick one while his away, or

“the group's friends and small faces had done that spring, with side-to-of-agdons not gone”

flake. That idea was definitely in the air at the time, and before Townsend had a chance to complete his rock-upper, several other bands released narrative albums.

The first, but largely ignored, had been a psychedelic duo called Navada, who we heard

about briefly in the Jimmy Cliff episode, and whose album the story of Simon Simon Path had come out in December 1967. A better known example came out while Townsend was working on his own up for though. The pretty things released as of sorrow in December 1968. A very Davis was also working on his own narrative album, Arthur, or the decline in full

of the British Empire, though the Kings wouldn't release that until after the who released theirs. And as far back as 1967, Mark Words had planned a piece called a teenage opera, which had

never been completed, but the single excerpt from a teenage opera, sung by Keith West of the

Band to Mama, had been a huge hit, and Townsend liked the record. There was clearly something in the air. Townsend's initial plan for a rock-upper had been to expand Royale from the who sell out into a full-length work and have Arthur Brown, who had an operatic baritone voice, sing it, rather than have it be a who album.

He was eventually persuaded to concentrate on the who as a vehicle for his operatic ambitions, but he can still hear musical elements of Royale in parts of the album. Probably because Townsend found himself having to be used material because of distractions like having to tour the US. The tour did, though, give him a piece of inspiration, though in rather a sad way.

When the group was supporting the doors, Townsend saw the girl in your her face by trying to get on stage to get to Jim Morrison. That unpleasant experience inspired the song Sally Simpson. And by the time the who recorded it, the protagonist was no longer trying to get to a rock-star, but to someone else on the stage. Also, on that tour, Townsend gave a long interview to Yann Wennner with Rolling Stone

An interview in which at one point he wondered if he had been spanked because he was thinking differently than normal.

“In a later interview, he would admit that while by that point he had given up on psychedelic drugs after reading the Mayababa disapproved of them.”

He had compensated for that by increasing his consumption of both cannabis and cocaine, and was our lot of cocaine when he gave the interview. In that interview, he gave a long explanation of the idea that he and Ketland were to have been working on for the album. But that explanation was more or less off the top of his head, including quite a few details that he hadn't yet firmed up, but when Wennner printed it, Townsend felt that he had now been locked in, and that that story would have to be the one he told.

The idea was a story called, and here I have to use that offensive term for non-speaking people and so I apologise in advance. The death dumb and blind boy. The idea was to have the narrative be based around a child, Townsend refers to him as Tommy in the interview, which also makes it clear that at that point this was just a placeholder name.

“Though it later became the name, both of the protagonist and of the album, who can't see or hear, and to therefore also can't talk,”

but who can still feel music as vibrations in his body, and these feelings would be the only impressions he would have of the world around him. The name Tommy was chosen because the album was to be impart about trauma.

An in particular, the generational trauma of those growing up as Townsend had in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Though Townsend later decided to change it to after the First World War. Tommy was both a fairly common for a name, and also the nickname of British soldiers in both world wars. So the name worked well as a dynamic name for a British boy of that era. Townsend also liked it because it could tame the syllable 'um', which is the most sacred symbol in Hinduism. And Hinduism in turn was one of the major streams of thought that fed into Mayababa's beliefs.

“Tommy would be physically abused by his father, and sexually abused by an uncle. But would not experience these things as good or bad, just as pure sensation.”

Just like the sense impressions that Mayababa wrote about. And he interpreted those sensations as music, at some point he would gain the ability to see and hear. And this would give him a new level of enlightenment, which in Townsend telling would have powered the awakening of Mayababa and other enlightened individuals into understanding of God. In order to have that awakening, Tommy had to be physically capable of seeing and hearing. So his inability would have to be a psychosomatic one, several interviews and reviews describe him as autistic.

But this is very much a 1960s pop culture understanding of autism, which has less than nothing to do with the actual condition. I am told by Soannu Hazet that Tommy matches the condition called functional neurological disorder rather better. I don't know enough about that condition to say that's the case. But I mentioned it here, in case that's a lead, anyone else wants to follow. Townsend's explanation of all this was actually slightly more coherent than the eventual album's narrative ended up being,

but he still had the problem of how we could turn that into an album. At the start, despite having used the term rock opera, the plan was to have the album be a series of songs with no particular musical connection. Indeed, the initial plan had to include in cover versions along with originals. Incorporating the covers into the narrative, one cover version would survive into the album, popper. But one that didn't was the first song they recorded for the album.

Mose Allison's young man's blues had always been a favorite of the groups to cover live.

Not an end as well these days. Doltary in particular always liked that song. And early on, the intention was to incorporate the song into the narrative. Possibly this was partly because the song was not originally titled young man's blues, but was called Back Country Sweet, Blues. And was part of a sweet of 10 short songs on Allison's first album. Maybe the group thought that it would be appropriate to

not to someone else who would combine pop songs with more ambitious classical forms. Either way, the group recorded their version in a heavy rock style.

And when they later decided that it didn't fit the album, it was first thought of as a

potential stopgap single. But eventually sneaked out just on a cheap compilation of track records artists work. [Music]

blockbooked from one day through Fridays and spent the weekends playing one-half gigs.

“One of those one-half shows was for the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”

As show we looked at in the episodes on sympathy for the Devil. And which was apparently inspired initially by a planner who and small faces had cooked up together for a joint tour in a circus big

top. Which never worked out. For that show, the who only performed one song.

Though that one song was a quick one while he's away. Which ran to seven and a half minutes. No little and the three normal songs of the time period. [Music] The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus wouldn't get of at least for nearly 30 years. And one of the reasons often given is that the stones fall that they have been

upstage by the who who gave the best performance of the day. There was even a suggestion a year or two later that the special could be reedited without the stones as performance and turned into the who's rock and Roll Circus.

Though that never went anywhere. But while the group continued playing live shows,

there was spending most of their time in the studio, working on a project that was

“infinitely more ambitious than I think they'd done before.”

Tommy, the album, was conceived as a single piece. Put at the same time it was partly made up of pre-existing pieces that towns in a already written. And as we heard last time, in some cases that the who had already recorded and even released in other forms. As towns and said later, I didn't write Tommy in any kind of chronological order. I already had some of the material,

sensation, welcome, sparks, and underature. We're not going to take it as a kind of anti-fascist statement. The first one down of the idea of a pot on a graph. It was intended to show Tommy from the outside and the impressions going on inside him. To help navigate the complex storyline, which initially only existed in manned and notes in In Townsend's head, Kit Lambert wrote a film script,

titled Tommy 1914 to 1984. That script was used to structure the group's work, but it was also intended at the time that Lambert would actually try to make a film based on the album. Lambert and Stampard started working with the who five years earlier after all, as a way to become filmmakers. And they both still wanted to do that. And so Lambert's script was possibly going to be used for the actual film, which Lambert would of course direct.

Lambert's script just pulled together the things that towns had been talking about in interviews and in discussions with the other band members. But by doing so, it helped turn vague ideas into something at least semi-coherent. As towns and explained in an interview just after the album's release, the writing of Kit's film script made a lot of difference too. He wrote a film script for the opera and that changed my ideas towards the plot a lot, because he put forward

some very groovy ideas, with a groovy kind of scenario which I liked and which added to the atmosphere of some of the songs which I've already written. Now wanted to let that that was fairly Kimmore. Townsend has pushed back against this interpretation in many years, singing his autobiography, another myth is that Kit completed and guided the story around Tommy. He typed out what we settle on together, but only several days after the album was completed and the tracks sequenced.

He did this in part to protect the dramatic copyright. He also did its great to film treatment, something I wasn't aware of at first. That's clearly not what he was singing in 1969, and I suspect as an example of Townsend's memory being colored by his later disagreements

“with Lambert. At this point, Lambert was at least as important to collaborate with a Townsend”

as the other band members were. He and Townsend were bounce ideas off each other, and Lambert would encourage Townsend to go even wilder with his ambitious ideas. At a point where the other members of the group didn't fully understand what Townsend was trying to do, having someone who

not only got it were pushed in further was essential. It was Lambert, for example, who made the

important suggestion that the album, which eventually became a double album as the narrative expanded, should open with an overture like a proper opera. That was not only a statement of intent, something saying that the album was intended as a serious work, a rock opera, not just a concept album, but it also gave the pieces a whole more coherent than it or the wise would have had. The overture includes statements of several musical themes that turn up in later songs on the

album, so when they return later, it gives the piece more of an internal structure. It contains sections pre-figuring 1921.

See me, feel me. Listening to you. [Music] Pinball was it. [Music]

“And underneath the mold, the base part from go to the mirror. That said, not all of Lambert's ideas were”

taken on board by the group. Lambert wanted to bring in an orchestra and have the album fully orchestrated.

That wasn't necessarily a bad idea, and as we'll see in a future episode when we get to the 1970s, the album got reinterpreted several times, including orchestral versions. But the group wanted to have something they could perform live, and for that reason the entire album was performed only by the form members of the who, apart from some additional backing vocals by towns and for those.

“Townsend played all the keyboard parts as well as the guitars, while end was delighted French horn.”

The album was not recorded in anything like chronological order, and indeed a lot of the

album was recorded multiple times over, as decisions made about later songs required rewrite to earlier ones. But because it's innovative, it's probably best if we go through the cracks and talk about that narrative as it appears in the original album. The tracks segue into one another, as what happened in an opera, and as it also happened on a few albums in the previous couple of

“years. Most notably, of course, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, but also Frank's”

apples absolutely free, an album which, with its recurring musical motifs and two extended movements, is a bigger influence on many of the concept albums that came after it than many people realize. This segue means that some tracks made up of multiple movements, a label different the on the vinyl and CD releases of the album. And so sometimes, I might say that something is part of one track when your copy has it as another. I'm going to go with whichever version makes the most

sense to me at any given time. For example, on the original release, the overture was a purely instrumental track, three minutes and fifty seconds long. The follows a vocal section which is now included in the overture, but was originally part of the next track. In that brief section, the narrator, who otherwise only turns up in Sally Simpson and the

amazing journey, outlines the disappearance in combat of Captain Walker. In the last weeks of the

first world war, leaving its pregnant wife at home alone. Oddly, overture was covered in releases a single by a band of studio musicians called assembled multitude, who recorded an album of instrumental cover versions of then-covent hits like MacArthur Park and Ohio. That single made number sixteen on the U.S. charts. Tom Sellers, the arranger behind the assembled multitude record, went on to arrange records like

hearing from again. Under the name MSFB, those session players with a house band at Sigma sounds

and played an every classic fully sold record by artists like Harold Melvin and the blue notes, The OJs, the stylistics and the spinners. After the overture, there's a track titled It's A Boy. On the vinyl release, this included the excerpt about Captain Walker, but on the CD, the track name is given just to a short fragment sung by towns and as an earth. One of several vocals on the album which he takes on a female persona.

Interestingly, in Townsend's autobiography, when he talks about this, he says,

“"And the wording is important to you. To confuse things, I also took the role of narrator,”

and was supposed to sing Captain Walker didn't come home from the overture, as well as the role of the nurse who delivers baby Tommy and sings the entirety of

amazing journey and acid queen. I don't know if towns are maybe phrased this clunkly,

but that suggests to me that at least at some point, the character of the nurse was also meant to be the amazing journey narrator and the acid queen. If so, that certainly doesn't come across in the record, and they're definitely different characters in any of the later be workings of the material, which we'll talk about when we do our next episode on the Who,

“when we get to 1971. The next song moves forward two years, and is titled 1921. This is”

"Livocally of Not Musically," a throwback to a quick one while he's away, but with a much darker

outcome, Mrs. Walker's husband has been missing presumed dead for two years, and she has,

understandably enough, we've done with her life and taken a lover, but then it turns out that her husband isn't dead at all, until he turns up. This, like much of the narrative of the album, is not actually clear. For most of the record, there's no narrator, and the story is told by the character's dialogue, or their internal dialogue, but they only rarely explain their actions in a sensible way, and with only the members

“of the who to play all the different characters, it's sometimes not even entirely clear who's”

meant to be singing. But what is clear is that unlike in a quick one while he's away, when Captain Walker arrives home and finds his wife in flagranted illiter with another man, he has not as inclined to be forgiving, a murder takes place. This is only implied in the lyrics, and it's not even clear who is murdered. The implication is apparently that the lover is murdered by Captain Walker, but in the film adaptation is Captain Walker himself who gets murdered by

the lover, and both interpretations are possible from the actual lyrics. But there's a problem, little Tommy saw everything reflected in a mirror, so his mother, and either his father or stepfather, keep emphasising to him, you didn't see it, you didn't hear it, you won't say nothing. Little Tommy is so traumatized by this that he takes those instructions literally, and develops a psychosomatic condition which makes him deafblind and unable to talk. This is

something that is completely implausible if you know anything at all about the way trauma or the brain works, but makes sense with the kind of popphodian psychology that towns them was aware of at the time. This popphodianism in fact lays very deeply at the heart not only of Tommy, but of a lot of the who's work, and this is where I have to speak very carefully. And while I also ask people please not to interpret anything I am saying here, as meaning anything other than

the very specific words I am saying, any inference you make or implications you read into what follows are absolutely not intended, and I will be very upset at anyone who accuses me here of saying something that I didn't say, I am trying here to be respectful of something very delicate. Townsend has talked, often, about how he has recovered memories of some kind of trauma,

partially repressed as a child, and which has come out in much of his work.

Townsend also acknowledges, correctly, that that kind of repression is not actually how trauma works. We now know that most of Freudianism is dangerously wrong. The people of undergone trauma don't repress the memories at all, and that most so-called recovered memories are confabulations which people believe to be true memories but are no such thing. As we talked about at the beginning of last episode, memories change every time we recall them and talk about them, and so it is

entirely possible for people to have strong, vivid memories of something happening to them. When that thing absolutely did not happen, people with such recovered memories are not liars in the sense we understand that term. They absolutely believed their false memories,

“and for exactly the same reason that I believe I had a sip of sparkling water five minutes”

before writing their sentence, but Townsend, while acknowledging that his recovered memories probably aren't, also still believes that he was actually abused, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. Child abuse is far more common than we would like to think, and there is no reason not to believe that Townsend was actually abused, even if some of the memories he now has are confabulations. And no matter which of his memories are real and which aren't, there is no doubt at all that

those memories are very traumatic painful ones for him, and tummy, more than much of his work, deals with those experiences to an extent that he has been known to break down in tears when performing parts of it live. Musically, 1921 has a lot of characteristics that come up again and again in

“the album. The intro is inspired by Baroque music and has a seacord without the third,”

but with a descending bass line going down chromatically from C to G. Wilder, so you think 21 is going to be a good year section, alternates between a G and a G source forecord. The kind of shuffling of suspended chords we saw Townsend doing a lot in the previous episode, and we'll see in much of the rest of the material on tummy. Amazing journey, which follows, sets out much of the story and is the core of the whole album.

10 years old, the thoughts have gone as thoughts can be. Loving life and becoming wise isn't this a deal. Sickness will surely take the mind, but right can't be too early, go.

“Come on, be amazing journey, and let all you should know.”

Amazing journey was one of the first things Townsend wrote specifically for the album.

He also wrote it on piano, which was unusual for him, as he had only relatively recently started learning the instrument. The song was so important to the conception of the album that the full lyrics were included on the back cover of the album, along with credits. Including, along with the credits for the band members, one for Mayor Barber as Avatar, though as Townsend would say later, that was part of the adjoke, the idea of Avatar being like a function

which in fact it is, very much a function, just like being the Messiah, it's a job of work which somebody has to do. The songs originally are much longer poem about Townsend's own feelings, which he cut down to the present level concept of music, and talks about how while Tommy is cut off from the world of the senses, unable to see here of our speak, he nonetheless grows in his dreams. Those dreams mostly take the form of music, a hangover from the original concept of the album,

which had Tommy feeling everything as vibrations. But he also gets visions of a stranger in long robes, who appears to be intended to be a vision of Tommy's own future self. Though apart from the character having appeared, he sounds again as if he's based on Barber, whose followers often told about how he could communicate more with a simple expression or gesture than anyone else could with words. He's dressed in a silver spot glittering gun, and he's born with clothes nearly down to the ground.

Amazing journey is followed by sparks, an instrumental track named after a book of Mayor Barber

The next track is the only cover version to appear on the album. While it's titled the

“"Horca" on the album, the song in question was originally titled "I Sight to the Blind",”

and recorded by its composer, Sunny Boy Williams and two. "I wish you got a name that you could see mine. You've taught about your woman. I wish to God that you could see mine. However the group had originally encountered the song, not through Williamson's blues track, but through a cover version by Mowes Allison, who we heard earlier singing young man's blues, and who was a big influence on the group,

especially Townsend at this point.

“In the end, Townsend actually wanted to include another song he'd learned from Mowes Allison.”

One room country-shack, originally recorded by MercyD Walton, a song which, like I Sight to the Blind, includes reference to deafness, blindness, and being unable to speak. , and indeed the mayor of Bany from Morgan, those three, and an interview shortly after the album's release, Townsend says. Originally there were a lot of old blues songs I wanted to learn in it, because there were a lot of blues songs about things like

“cripples and blindness and all this sort of thing, like "I'm gonna get me some kind of companion,”

even if she's dumb, deaf, crippled, and blind, and so lonely." All this sort of thing. And I wanted to get all those in, because I thought there were great blues comments, which fitted them really well to the structure of the opera as I saw it then. It wasn't half as pop and cosmic cartoonier as it is now.

The lyrics to "I Sight to the Blind", about a woman so amazing she can make blind people see,

make deaf people here and make mute people talk. Obviously resonated perfectly with the concept of "Tommy" and so the who recorded the song unchanged. In the Vokopfer, as the altered title suggests, it's sung by someone trying to sell Tommy's parents on a cure which can be provided by his girlfriend, who will encounter later.

Christmas, which follows, is another song like "Amazing Journey", which is both

technically linked to the narrative, and also sets up a lot of the musical themes that will occur throughout the rest of the album. The song is about how children enjoy Christmas but Tommy can't understand it, and as how he can find salvation if he doesn't know Christ, but it also includes the first appearances of two motifs that will appear throughout the rest of the album, "Tommy, can you hear me?"

here for the first time. Apart from the counter vocal singing, I saw it, I heard it when being told

“otherwise by his parents, singing, "Simmy, feel me."”

[Music] Initially the planet been for townsend rather than daltry to sing this "Simmy, feel me" theme, which occurs several times in the course of the album, and have daltry only played the adult Tommy, but this would have meant that daltry was barely heard on the first disc of the

double album, as so much of it is sung by characters played by townsend and amwistle. Thankfully

for him, he demonstrated that he was able to sing that section in a far more sensitive manner than

“his normal vocals, and so he became a larger part of the early sections of the album.”

The "Simmy, feel me" motif, which occurs throughout the album, is another example of townsend's fascination with suspended chords. The cycle on the "Simmy, feel me" touch me heal me lyrics goes E flat major seventh F suspended fourth F, F suspended fourth F G over and over. [Music]

We then have one of two songs written for the album by an twistle, the both come from concepts from townsend.

Townsend wanted to have Tommy experience abuse, but felt unable to write songs about the subject

“himself, finding it too close to his own trauma, so he asked Endwistle, who was known for having”

a dark sense of humour, to write both. Cousin Kevin, sung as well as written by Endwistle, is sung from the perspective of a cousin of Tommy's, who has left to babysit him, and do the lights in total, to him. This is one of several songs written from the perspective of different characters. Townsend said at the time that one of the aims of the album was that because it was impossible

for people to see themselves in Tommy's experiences, he wanted to create many characters who people could identify with, but to make them want to be able to identify with Tommy. However, these characters he named Cousin Kevin, Uncolourney, the acid queen and Sally Simpson, are had with the exception of Sally Simpson all-growth tasks, and also in one way or another abusive. And one would hope that most people wouldn't identify that closely with any of them, though perhaps that hopes a gesture

rather more optimistic view of humanity than his woman said. After Cousin Kevin, we have a song that's oddly placed, the acid queen is actually, narratively, a follow-up to the Hawker, and is sung from the perspective of the Hawker's girlfriend, a sex worker who in an attempt to cure Tommy, introduces him to the pleasures of both sex and hallucinogenic drugs. Townsend admitted an interview shortly after the album's release that this was in an octave sequencing,

and in later revisions like Ken Russell's film version, the acid queen comes right after the Hawker. The song is also notable for once again, seeming in some ways to refer back to Townsend's own trauma. This is the song which uses the way for Romany people I mentioned at the top of the episode, and Townsend's abusive grandmother was apparently a Romany descendant.

He said of the song later, when I sing the acid queen there's a bit of my mother's voice comes in there.

“I'm kind of angry with my mother and I'm angry with all women who are mothers.”

It's a misogynist song in a way, I can sing it as a woman. While Townsend wanted to make the character of Tommy an exceptional person who nobody could relate to, the idea is that by the end he becomes to use the terminology of the Mayababa movement God Realized, he also wanted Tommy to be in some way the perfect embodiment of the typical post-war British male. As he said later, the song's not just about acid.

It's the whole drug thing, the drink thing, the sex thing wrapped into one big bowl. The acid queen was meant, as well as being a specific abuser, to be a representative of societal

“professional adolescents to drink, to have sex, to take drugs, and to be told they are lesser”

or freaks are not normal if they don't do those things. This is followed by the album's third

and final instrumental track. This time meant to represent the hallucinations of Tommy experience as well as acid supply by the acid queen. Titled under chore, it once again reprises the theme from Reyal that was also used in Sparks, helping to give the album a much-naded musical coherence. Under chore was titled as a joke, a play on overture. Tons and was, several years later, astonished to discover that a favorite album of his at the time, blood sweat and tears as

childish father of the man, also had a track titled under chore. Tons had the only had a taped copy of the album, so he didn't know any of the track titles, and didn't find out the coincidence until an interview of asked him in 1972 if it was a reference. Does then a short fact titled "Do you think it's all right?" in which Tommy's parents questioned whether his uncle or any would be a suitable babysitter, coming to the conclusion that he

would, before the next song makes it very clear that he is absolutely not.

Fiddler Bout is the second of the songs written in perform by an twistle. This time in character

is on clerny, a child molester who sexually abuses the helpless Tommy. As is the case with the inquisals of the work, the song is played for laughs. But if it's funny at all, it's a bleak kind of humor, and many people will question whether it's a fit subject to joke about a tall. Though given that Tons and was the one who asked them was motivated and was himself a survivor,

“it leads to me like the kind of bleak you have to laugh about she'll cry joke,”

the many people make about their own worst experiences. I won't, however, accept it here, in case it's upsetting to people who've had similar experiences themselves. Tons and themselves seems to be ambivalent about the song even from sentence to sentence, saying in his autobiography, "I liked it very much, it was disturbing, but lent this in powerful, although I was sad that it also seemed to turn to a dark joke,

something I myself had found so disturbing as a child. Still, it did the job nicely, and I was relieved not to have to battle with the subject myself. But after that comes the song which gave this episode its title, and about which there is of course quite a lot to say.

When planning the story of Tommie, Tons and had always had a mind that Tommie himself should

gain a following of teenagers, much like the one that a Rockstar would have, and that these followers should be admire as of his even before he has his mystical experience. His made different statements about what would have caused Tommie to get those followers at different times, but it seems quite likely given that so much of the initial plan of the album was about Tommie feeling the vibrations of music even though he couldn't hear it. The Tommie was originally

both as in being a guru and a kind of divine musician who felt vibrations as music and made music

in the hearts of his followers, but then Tons and played some of the tracks from the album to the journalist Nick Cohen, someone who had generally been quite supportive of the group's music, and who was at that point the Guardian's pop music critic. Cohen taught the idea of Tommie being a guru was in Tons and words, "old hat." The Beatles' infatuation with the Maharishi had been at the beginning of 1968 and it was now

in 1969, after all. Tons and tried to explain about Tommie not only being a guru, but also a divine musician, but this didn't infest Cohen anymore. Cohen said that he probably would not give the album a five star of you, but then Tons had to have an idea, Cohen was a huge enthusiasm for pinball, an enthusiasm he shared with Tons and, and was then meeting a novel titled Arthur

“Teenage Pinball Queen. What of Tommie got his Teenage followers by being great at pinball?”

Well, Con said, obviously that would be a five star album, so Tons and went off and wrote the song that would become the single of the album, and the group's first UK top five single in two years. Cohen was as good as his word and gave the album a very review. Saying in part, Tommie is

just possibly the most important work that Tommie won as yet done in rock, and this just might

be the first pop masterpiece. The start of the track is another one influenced by Baroque music. The very start of the intro this time has a pedal bass, a bass keeping the same note, an F sharp, as one might in Baroque organ music. With the chords changing by one note each time, going from B minor to B minor suspended fourth to F sharp 7 to F sharp 7 suspended fourth to F sharp minor 7. Each one with one note going down a tone or semi tone while keeping the

rest of the chord the same, you can play it with quite a bonk feel. But the intro also has another inspiration from a different type of classical music. It sounds instead of the song shortly after Tommie was released. It's a very recent influence from that Strauss music in 2001. I just built up a similar rock structure on it. The same sort

“of thing and it works in exactly the same way. I suddenly realized the other day that that's what”

I'd done. The music in question, also is Fractex Alitustra, coincidentally named after the profit of inspired Zoroastrianism, Mayor Barber's religion, had become very popular after Kubrick's film 2001 and you can hear a faint family resemblance between Strauss's piece. And pinball wizard, even though none of the actual notes are the same.

The song is sung by Daltry, giving him a very lead vocal in the first part of the album.

As well as writing that song, Tommie wrote the lyrics to a couple of other songs to include references to pinball and depending on how one looks at it, the change he then adds a pleasant level of absurdity and surrealism to a story that was otherwise in danger of getting far too pompous or makes the story ridiculous and unbelievable. I've taken both attitudes at different times as my artistic views have shifted. And I'm sure I'll go back and forth and it's over future decades.

“Townsenders always acknowledge the ridiculousness of pinball being such a crucial part of the story.”

Saying what we have to accept is that what he's got a following for is pretty bloody stupid.

somebody having a huge following for writing songs about boys at one curve of pictures and smashing

“guitars. Townsend even found a way to convince himself to the introduction of pinball into the story”

resonates with the larger themes. Mayor Barbara had said on multiple occasions that God plays marbles with the universe, and indeed Barbara himself had been a keen marbles player. And there's one famous story about Barbara Tang is disciples to bring him their best marbles because he wanted

to play a game with them. He went first and took his shot with such first that several of their marbles

all made of glass smashed. He then said in a serious tone that that was the end of the game. His serious mood and the smashing of the glass was later taken as a premonition right after the game he got into a car and was in a car accident that left him with mobility problems for the rest of his life and which killed his companion Nealoo. According to another Barbara's companions named Vishnu,

“even though Barbara was seriously injured in the crash in the immediate aftermath. Never in”

my life if I've seen such utter radiance and roster as was on Barbara's face then. He was like a king, a victorious king who would want a great battle. Lord Krishna must have looked like that in his chariot on the victorious battlefield. The radiance was blinding, I could see nothing else, not the car nor the surroundings only Barbara's face in glorious triumph. One thing the inclusion of pinball does do though is completely wreck the chronology of the story. And again,

everything about the story becomes much more sensible. If you have kept them work if I'd

get the second world war rather than the first. Because the living's of pinball wizard described

pinball as it was played in the 50s and 60s. But that particular type of pinball table wasn't invented until after the second world war. So Tommy, the deftum and blind kid is in his late 30s of early 40s when he starts playing pinball. For more, a lot more on the history of pinball, and why the sun doesn't make chronological sense. See season 2 of the great country music podcast

“cocaine and mind stones, which I think anyone who enjoys this podcast will find worth their time.”

But again, that is a relatively minor point for nitpickers. If you're expecting Tommy to make any kind of coherent senses and narrative, you're really looking for the wrong things in it. And pinball wizard is undeniably one of the greatest pop singles the whoever released. Arguably they're last great pop single, before they completely transition from being a pop single band into an album rock baller. Tansen said to be a tennis baller.

I had no doubt whatsoever that if I had failed to deliver the who and operatic masterpiece that would change people's lives. With pinball wizard, I was giving them something almost as good, a hit, and he had. It returned the group to the top 10 in the UK, reaching number 4 and getting them a gold record. I made the top 20 in the US. Though in both countries, it also got a certain amount of criticism for what was considered its sick lyrics about disability.

With then, after the preceding fuel co-heavened independent songs, which most distended part from the narrative, have a long stretch of pieces that only makes sense within the context of

the album. We start with a 20 second snippet titled "The Zodopter", which just says that "The

Zodopter" might help Tommy. The song that follows, go to the member. It's not really a song as much as a patchwork of different ideas. For the first time on the album, it introduces a light motif that will come back again. The listening to you, section. But the song is mostly narrative, explaining that Tommy's disability is psychosomatic rather than physical, and also saying that Tommy can see himself in a mirror, even though he can't see anything else.

Once again, the decision to have the band members play all the characters on the album makes for certain amount of confusion as to which character is who. In this case, Doltery sings the lead vocal as the doctor. But this in turn means that when it gets to the "C" me feel me section of the song, even though that's normally sung by Doltery as Tommy, this time in a melody of the original conception, towns and sings that part.

more narrative rather than sung, showing Tommy's mother trying to communicate with him,

and getting frustrated and splashing the member he looks at all the time, which shows his reflection

“and is the only thing he can see. This is followed by a return to self-contained songs as we get”

to sensation. This is the song we talked about earlier, originally written about a woman with whom Townsend had an affair in Australia and titled "Jesus" and "Sensation". The lyrics will be written to be from the perspective of Tommy. Though Townsend sings it on the album. Doltery sang them in subsequent be workings of the material. The member being smashed as freed Tommy from his

“psychosomatic disability. And not only that, it has elevated him to a higher spiritual level than”

normal people. In the terms Townsend used, which he took from May a barber, Tommy has attained "Gloat Consciousness" and in our thanks to himself as a Messiah.

After sensation, there were more self-contained songs. We first go into Sally Simpson,

like sensation, another song that was not originally part of the narrative. And based on that incident with the doors, finally got hurt. It's a song about fandom and female fandom in particular, and has Townsend conceptualizing Tommy's religious disciples as essentially being the same kind of people as mock-fams. After that comes another self-contained song. Indeed, one that was released as a single

of many countries. I am free. I am free was inspired by the Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man, and you can hear some similarities. Compare the stones. , and the who. There's no direct one to one copying going on. Nobody could mistake one song for the other,

“but there's definitely a family resemblance there, I think you'll agree. Again, showing the way in”

which Townsend tried to construct the album as a coherent work with repeated themes. We then go back to pure and narrative material, as we learn that Tommy's followers are showing

up in droves. Welcome, the song that follows is about welcoming those followers to what we first

assume is Tommy's home, but we soon discover from the song after. Tommy's holiday camp. He's actually, well, a holiday camp.

In the middle of the last century, any medium-sized town never beach would have a resort,

“operated by a company like Buttons or Pontons or several smaller competitors.”

Consisting of a few hundred or thousands, pre-fabricated chalays and caravans, large ones similar to American trailer park trailers, where people would go for a week at the seaside, with entertainments included. As we heard in the first Beatles episode, Ringo Star was playing a residency at a Berlin's camp when he got the call to join the Beatles, for example. Much of the entertainment would be of the cheap and tacky variety, bathing beauty

competitions, contestancy who had the nobliest knee is and so on, and there was a low-went cheeseiness to the whole of her. Moon had suggested that Tommy's religious retreat should be at a holiday camp, rather than anywhere more traditionally religious. And Townsend had liked the idea enough

“that he'd written the song and given Moon the songwriting credit. While Townsend's not Moon had written”

it, he felt that he'd written it the way Moon would have, so Moon deserved the credit anyway. In another confusion of carators, while on Colourney was played by Antwislam Fiddler about, here the caradvist song by Townsend, according to Townsend's autobiography, that's because Kit Lumbert just used Townsend's demo for the track, while then having the band re-recorded it. And the final song, we're not going to take it, was another piece that had its origins before

Tommy. It started out as, in Townsend's words, a kind of antifascist statement, and presumably in its original incarnation, it was somewhat similar in Moon to the group's later won't get fooled again. But in its finished version, the song has several parts. The song

“starts with Tommy giving his disciples instructions on how to gain enlightenment like him.”

At first, they have to play Pinball while deliberately cutting off their own senses, just like him. He then tells them that they also have to give up on drinking, smoking dope, and also on being normal. Their reaction to this is, as one might expect, to be angry at the restrictions Tommy was putting on them. I note, for those who might find such things distressing, if you listen to the full version

of the song, the crowd go on to threaten to rape Tommy. The album ends with Tommy, a lone, no longer being followed by disciples. First, reprising their "See Me Feel Me" material again, and then ending with the final section, sometimes labeled as a different track. A reprise of the listening to you material, as a finale in which Tommy experiences her spiritual

ecstasy. Some of the most powerful music on the album, and a fitting climax to the record

that took the hoop from being a singles band to an album act. Right behind you, I see the millions on you, I see. While Kit Lambert was the credited producer on Tommy, he didn't supervise the mixing as a producer normally would. Instead, he went on holiday and left engineer Damon Mayan shorted to do the mix down, although he left detailed instructions

as to how it should sound. The group, on initially hearing the mixes, were horrified, to the extent the 10 whistle found they are monolistible. The instrumental tracks were mixed far lower than they expected, and the vocals much higher. The group eventually came down to the decision, which made sense as the album was enamitable, and so the words needed

to be audible. But Tans and always suspected that there was an element of sabotage involved.

Even though he was the first one to decide that the mix was okay, Tans and Lambert had clashed from the beginning about whether or not there should be an orchestra on the record. Lambert influenced by his father on wanting to impress people from the serious music world, wanted to have one, but Tans and was insistent that the whole thing should be performed by the members of the group. As much as anything else, he wanted to make Tommy into a piece

pretentious. At the time, Tans and was listening a lot to Frank Zapper, and particularly to the

“album Uncle Meat, which had just been released, including a performance where Dump Feston,”

the mother's keyboardist, had climbed the Albert's hallogue and played Louis Louis on it. In a contemporary scene to be with Bami Miles, Tans and Sede of Zapper, who he said he listened to at the time more than anyone else. If it's freaky and way out, he wouldn't let that stop him. For example, he wouldn't not use the Albert's hallogue and because someone would say, "Well, that's just flash piece of moody." He'd get right up and use it, you know, and has done.

He also wouldn't not use, and he did this as well, use the London Symphony Orchestra. He'd use it for the right reason, not the wrong reason. The BGs would use it for the wrong reason,

Zapper would use it for the right reason. I'm always afraid of using things like that for the wrong reason.

So in a way, allowing influence by both those parties, I'm not half as influenced by them as I am by straightforward groups like the Stones and straightforward musicians that both did the and took Bavvy and people like that, who affect me far more, and straightforward levices like Brian Wilson. And I find these people affect me far more as a composer. And he had to get another reason for not wanting the Albert's hallogue-estration on, which was simply that it would be the first time

the who had used an orchestra, and it was worried that if they did that, then people would think that the only reason the album worked was because of the orchestra on it, not because of the who themselves are his writing. Lumber did reluctantly agree to what Tans and wanted, but then when recording started, they hit a problem. There were several songs by Tans and wanted to play acoustic with them guitar, but IBC, the studio in which they were recording, didn't have very good shielding,

and so Tans and couldn't play acoustic along with Enquislam Moon. Lumber persuaded him to play the acoustic parts on those songs on an electric guitar while cutting the basic tracks, and Tans and planned to replace those electric with them parts with a much thicker sounding acoustic, doubled with a stronger electric guitar than he played during the tracking sessions. But according to his autobiography, Tans and discovered that Lumber hadn't left enough

free tracks on the multi-track tape to record the multiple guitar overed-ups he wanted. But there was enough left over that they could overdo an orchestra to thicken the sound. John Enquislam on the other hand said an interview's later that when he either examined the multi-tracks, he discovered that they'd only used five of the eight tracks on the tape, because they were used to recording him for track and didn't know how to use so much space.

In the end, neither set of overed-ups happened, and the album went up with a much thinner guitar sound

than Tans and wanted, and he would never be completely happy with how the album sounded.

"Who will ms I approach you, make your loudest growth breath inside?"

“Tommy wasn't the only thing that Tans and was working on during those sessions.”

At the end of February 1969, Tans and recorded some tracks with Ian McCluggan, Money Lane, and Kenny Jones of the Small Faces. The fear had been blindsided by Steve Marriott's departure from the band, and asked Tans and to sit in with the money guitar to see if it was possible for them to carry on without him. Tans instead of those sessions, they don't quite know what's happening,

though they're making the discs to see how things would work out without Steve, although Ronny's voice likes Steve's projection, they still sound very like the small faces. I think that if Ronny Kenny and Mac don't find another guitarist they really like, they will break up completely. Thankfully, they did find another guitarist they really liked, and also a singer with more projection than Ronny Lane had. But that's a story for a future episode.

Tommy was premiered live at Money Scots, the famous jazz club, in a much louder and more rock sounding version than the rather thin sound of the album itself, so in a appreciative audience of critics and people from the industry. Tans and in particular was relieved that the songs were coming alive in the live shows, becoming more like the who. He was increasingly seen recording a live performance as two entirely

“on related art forms, and it was important to him that the band would be able to be a breathtaking”

live act. The group almost immediately started touring the U.S. again, playing the same circuitive venues like the Grandi Bowl room in the film are east, with support actors varied as Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, and Buddy Rich. The group also made a range worthwhile on that U.S.

On their return to the UK, they played a pop drum with Chuck Berry.

“Disputs over the billing meant that for the two shows, Berry had line one, and the who had”

line the other, in a repeat of the Mods v. Rockers' fights of years earlier. Angry Chuck Berry fans who didn't approve of this more modern music tried to force the who off the stage.

And in the first set they threw sharpened coins, one of which caught Daltre on the farad.

For the second show, the group started the show with two of the older rock covers they included in their regular set, summertime blues and shaken all over, which placated the teddy bow contingent in the audience somewhat. For much of the next couple of months, most of the group worked on outside projects in between who gigs. Keith Moon went on tour with his friends in the

“Banzo Dog Band, a band who would take a long time to explain here, but I did a Patreon bonus”

on them a couple of years ago. But for whom the best one sentence description is, the link between

the Beatles and Monty Python, indeed Paul McCartney had co-produced their big hit and the urban space man, written in song by Neil Innes, who later went on to provide music for many Python projects and the vocals. They had also appeared in the Beatles' magical mystery tour, performing their song Death Cab for Qt.

And a jammed at the Apple Christmas party in 1967 with members of the Beatles and with Mike and Bruce of the Beach Boys. Much of their music was eccentric sounding and less commercially successful, but hugely popular among both musicians and comedy connoisseurs. And I kiss, yes, I kiss your perfume tear, the sweet essence of giraffe. Moon would increasingly spend time with the Banzo in the late '60s and early '70s, particularly

with their frontman Vivian Stanchol, whose mannerisms he would often adopt, including addressing people as dear boy in an affected aristocratic accent, though the accent was also very similar to that of Kit Lambert. And drummer Legs Larry Smith, both of whom were, as Moon was, Alka-Holic Accentrics with bizarre and sometimes tasteless senses of humour, which paradoxically allowed him to be with them, a much less voice to this person than otherwise.

Moon's wife Kim would later say, with those two he could be quiet, usually he wanted to be

“on display and on show and everyone could see that side of him, but I think Legs Larry and Viv”

would the only ones who saw him in all his different guises. On the Banzo Tour, Moon, under the stage name Delo and Aranger, would cover for Smith on drums whilst Smith went up front and performed as a second frontman with Stanchol. Doltery produced a track for a band called Ben Traim,

which at the time featured the Who's Roadie Tony Haslam on drums. That track was never released,

but oddly a later lineup of Ben Traim would briefly feature the guitarist Jimmy McCollock, who at this time was in the band that Townsend was doing his side project with. And the song that Doltery produced for Ben Traim, Accidents, was a cover of a track by that band, from the club Newman. I see Tony in the middle around the bow and play in his hand, was a bit more rare of playing. And I looked around and he was gone. Come on to play. Down the clock Newman were a trio of musicians and songwriters that Townsend had brought together

as a studio project, consisting of McCollock, a 16-year-old prodigy who had met the who when a band he was in had been their support act on guitar. Jazz piano player Andrew Thunderclap Newman,

and had actually written the opening song on the Who's Sellout, Armenia City in the Sky.

“Townsend had initially wanted to produce separate projects for all three men,”

but decided to put them together. As he said later about the group, a lot of them would say of us now that we were a figment of Pete Townsend's imagination, but they weren't. It's not true. Independently, old three of them came to me, or I got involved with them with a view to helping them, and then suddenly I realized, or rather again it was Kit Lambert who said to me, you haven't got time for all of them, why not try them together? I thought, impossible,

three more one likely people you couldn't get, but they got in a room together, they played together on some film music for a friend of mine, and they were really great, and I played them back the tapes and they said, yes, seems to work, and they liked it,

and then we're all enthusiastic about it as a concept as it were. Townsend thought all three

members of the band were geniuses, but especially Kean, who ended up writing 10 of the 12 songs on the only album that Thunderclap Newman made, which Townsend produced, and on which he played

“bass and pedal steel under the suit and imbesued reins. The two songs that Kean didn't write”

were an instrumental written by McCulloch and his brother, and a cover of Dylan's then-only spacement tape song opened the door homeer. Townsend's main creative contribution to the album, as he would later tell it, was that he would encourage Kean to actually record his material. He said of that album, speedy very much needs me to tell him that he's written a song, he doesn't know until I've told him. That doesn't mean that I've written it,

I mean, he will stand in front of me and I'll say, well, what have you got? And he'll say, "Well, nothing." So I say, "We can't record then, can we?" He must have something, what's on that bit of paper there? Oh, that's just a few lines about down the other day. Well, has it got a tune I ask? Yeah, a bit of a tune, but it's not very good. Well, play as that, and it's a great song like something in the air. In the case of something in the air,

in fact, Kean initially didn't want to play the song for Townsend at all, because it was called

“Revolution, and the Beatles had already released a song called Revolution. Townsend suggested”

renaming the song, something in the air, and the track went to number one in the UK for three weeks. And you know it's fine. Thunderclap Newman didn't stay together very long after their won album. Newman later said that he liked Kean's music, but this liked Kean as a person. While he liked McCollock as a person, but this liked his music.

Kean went on to record a couple of solo albums before moving into production, producing records that motorheads first album. Newman played with former Bonsor Dog Band member Roger Ruskin Spear, and McCollock had the most successful career, playing with bands like Stone The Crows, John Mayall's Blues breakers, and most notably a Stint with Paul McCartney in Wings,

as well as playing on solo albums by both Daltry and Enthussel, and briefly joining a reunited small faces. Before dying tragically young of an overdose in 1979, aged only 26. But something in the air had been a massive hit, and this led to a certain amount of resentment from Townsend about the way he was treated by track records. He complains in his autobiography about the fact that the who had been under the impression

they would get shares in track records, but never did. And that this was particularly unfair on him,

as he had brought the label two number one artists in the crazy world of Arthur Brown and Thunderclap Newman. After playing a few more UK gigs, the who flew to the U.S. to play a couple of festivals, including Woodstock. Having been burned before by promoters of big U.S. festivals, they were one of the few acts to play Woodstock and actually get paid. John Wiggy Wolfe, the group's tour manager, later said, "I told them,

"Look, we're not waiting anymore, where's the money?" they said, "We'll give you a check." I said, "I'm not interested in a check." So they avoided me for several hours. By now it was getting closer and closer to the band going on. They then tried the "You'll have to go on routine," like, "You won't be able to not play in front of all these people," I said, "I don't care, not interested, they're not going on."

Anyway, they kept stalling until in the end they had to get a helicopter to get the bank management because the safe was on a time lock and he was the only person who could open it. They got the cash, paid me, and suddenly I was surrounded by all these other band managers who hadn't been paid. Sly and the family stern had been on for three hours and the band before that it overplayed. The who were supposed to have been on us about 10 o'clock at night and ended up on

stage at four in the morning. It was just a joke. They performed almost the whole of tummy. The group stage performance of the album missed out to handful of the more standalone songs

that the audiences were unlike because it's still for 10 minute long instrumental.

“The performance at Woodstock was a typical 40 minute length performance of this cut down tummy.”

Well, it was a typical stage performance of the solo stage performance of the band. It was a typical stage performance of the band. It was a typical stage performance of the band. It was a typical stage performance of the band. It was a typical stage performance of the band.

It was a typical stage performance of the band. It was a typical stage performance of the band.

It was a typical stage performance of the band.

It was a typical stage performance of the band. Well, it was a typical performance except for, as we heard in the MC5 episode.

“I'll be Hoffman invading the stage to try and raise awareness of the imprisonment of Johnson Claire.”

Oh, I could dig it. Townsend attacked Hoffman and got him off the stage quickly. For all the Woodstock had a reputation as being a piece and love kind of festival. That reputation didn't extend to the who's performance. Indeed, Townsend also kicked the director of the Woodstock film off the stage at one point,

actually kicked him, not metaphorically. Because Townsend saw his stages sacrosanct and the director was getting far too close to him. Townsend later said that he probably wouldn't have done that. Had he not been in such a terrible mood at the time. Because Townsend's experience of Woodstock was not the idyllic one that everyone later talked about.

He disliked crowds anyway. He was appalled at the basic lack of professionalism of the organizers. Saying later, no one was supplying water, no one was cleaning the laboratories, no one was supplying food.

“But the group's played. I know that's what people were there for, but it's a whole trip.”

He had also been spanked backstage. His first asset trip since decided to give up on

psychedelic drugs. And he had a bad trip which had put him in an even worse mood. Though their set was so much later than expected that the whole trip was over with a few hours despair before they went on stage. The group's performance was however mostly a triumph, helped by the unplanned effect of the sun rising as the group finished their set, making Dolty look almost like a guard-seller wetter down his rays.

Most of the books on the Who say that this happened exactly when Dolty started singing "See Me" feel me. But watching the footage, which is now much more easily available than it was when most of these books were written, that seems not to be the case, though some footage of some songs is missing. It looks like the sun actually rose by to the group were finishing my generation the last song of their set. Though without having access to the actual worth footage,

I wouldn't like to say that for certain, as edited film can be deceptive. Either way though, Dolty was now totally transformed from the performer he had been a couple of years earlier. With his curly-blown shoulder-length hair and waving a book skin shirt open to show his bare chest, he was no longer the rather ordinary looking man he had been perceived as being in the group's early years. He was now a magnetic charismatic figure in Habiting Townsend's

Lebix. And while factually it might be the case that the sun rose during my generation. It just seems more of appropriate that it rose when Dolty sang "See Me" feel me. And so that's the way everyone now remembers it. Yummy in this cut-down 40-minute version, became the centerpiece of the group's life for performances. And while Townsend had been annoyed at the filming at Woodstock, a lot of

their UK gigs over the next few months were filmed, because Lambert still wanted to make a film of Tommy. The planet at this point was to do something combining life footage of the hoop performing songs from the album, with an animated version of the story, possibly made by the same people who had made Yellow Submarine. At the end of 1969 and the end of the '60s in Jemble, Keith made two further guest-live appearances with other acts. He performed with a one-off line

up of John Lennon and Yokohono's Plasticono band, also featuring George Harrison, Eric Clapton and the Delaney and Bodyband, playing on the same drum kit as Alan White for their two-song set.

drummers who appeared with the Banzer Dog Band and what was surprised in the announce from the stage

“is their final show. Though they got back together briefly a couple of years later for a”

contractual obligation album, and partial lineups of the band toured in the mid 2000s and again in the 2010s. Moon was also guest drummer on a solo single by Leg Slurry Smith, which he tied to. But Smith would also be involved in the darkest moment in Moon's life, and the start of the downward spiral that would eventually kill him. On the 4th of January 1970, Moon had been

invited to be the special star guest at the opening of a disco tech. It was going to be a party,

and Keith Moon could never turn down a party, especially when he was going to be the centre of

attention. A few of his celebrity friends came along, but only celebrities were less famous than Keith. In one car came Jimmy McCulloch of Thunderclap Newman and his brother Jack, who had now joined

“that band on drums to let speedy king go up front. In the car with Keith came Keith's wife,”

Leg Slurry Smith and Smith's girlfriend. And the car was driven by Neil Bowland, Moon's chauffeur, buddy guard, and general vitan man and close friend. But there was a problem at the disco, everyone in Moon's untovage was a long-head hippie, and the disco, as it turned out, was a skinhead disco. We've not talked much about the skinheads before, but they were, and are, a working-class subculture that descended from the muds of a few years earlier,

but were a much more exaggerated version of them. While the muds had had relatively short hair, the skinheads had a crop to the looked bold, for example. They shared a lot of the taste of the muds, including a love of soul music and especially scar and reggae, but they hated most of the people who made that music. While it's not true that every skinhead was a regular racist,

“it's true that a much larger proportion of skinheads than of the general population”

were likely to abuse people of non-white ethnicities. And given that this is January 1970, when vittin was a much more racist country even than it is today, that's saying quite a bit, but they didn't just hate black and Asian people. They also hated gays, and middle-class people,

and intellectuals, and, basically, anyone who wasn't a skinhead, including, of course, hippies,

who were everything that they despised. Moon at first was given a certain amount of leeway, because he was a pop star. But as the crowd got clunker, that changed into resentment at that same status. He was clearly someone who thinks he's better than us, the ultimate crime in the skinheads eyes. Eventually, Moon and his friends left, but people surrounded the front car, the one Keith was in, throwing first coins and then stones, trying to break their windscreen and windows,

Neil Bowle and couldn't get the car through the crowd, so he opened the door to try to argue with them and get them to clear the way. The crowd pulled Bowle and out of the car all together. Moon couldn't actually drive. Not only was he very drunk at the time, he didn't actually have a driver's license, but he was terrified for his life so he slid over into the driver's seat and started the car up. Legs Larry tried to direct him from the back seat, left a bit right a bit

and so on, until they got off the side street that the venue was on and onto the main road, pulling over away from the crowd, leaving Bowle and, who they thought could find for himself behind, or so they thought. They hadn't noticed that in the confusion, they had hit and killed Bowle and, Bowle and had been knocked to the ground by the crowd who were, to use the term later used by one of the teenage skinheads in the trial, putting the boot in when the car moved forward,

the crowd had moved on, but the occupants of the car hadn't seen that Bowle and was still on the ground. Nobody blamed Keith, except Keith himself, who said to a journalist later,

"I'll always have his death on my conscience, now everyone has what they want, Keith Moon down,

really down, they're welcome to him." Moon had always been someone with more backpoints and good. He was abusive towards his wife, unreliable, and, like all of the who at times violent, he was also, though, up until this point, so on who did have good points. He was a loyal friend. For example Vivian Stanchol of the Banzo Dog Band was spending time in a psychiatric hospital, one of the reasons the group woke up. And Moon paid for him to be moved to better private treatment

facilities. People, even as wife, found him charming and lovable to the extent that they could

was no longer the case. Miss Pamela of the GTOs, who had enough and on a fair with Moon throughout

“the early 70s, says in her great memoir and with the band. At night he would wake up 10 times,”

bathed in medicine-smelling sweat, jabbering about running over his roadie and burning for eternity.

He couldn't wake to pay for that horrible mistake. From this point on, Keith Moon seems to

“only have one mission in life. To destroy Keith Moon.”

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