Anyone else think that "Tommy" is overrated?

As another member has said, the live version available on the double deluxe CD edition of "Live At Leeds" is just phenomenal. Less polished, much more aggressive. A superb document in rock music.

 

Five stars was my rating. A masterpiece.

 

Personally, I see all the best material on the first Disc of The Wall, everything on Disc 2 (with the glaring exception of Comfortably Numb) isn't nearly provoking. As for Tommy, well it seems the strength comes at the beginning and the end. It opens out quite well and then around Underture it seems to lose pace and then it finishes with strong tracks like Sally Simpson and I'm Free, finishing with the albums best piece We're Not Gonna Take It. They could have easily cut the record down to around 50 minutes and gotten the same narrative with much more focused product.

 

As for The Wall, the crucial ending to the rock opera is a let down to say the least...nothing on the scale of We're Not Gonna Take It

 

 

Live at Leeds:  very well respected, and then some.

 

Good album, though the full potential not fully realized until they played it live, at which point there's no question.

 

Glad to see more folks share my opinion.

 

People still can relate to the music, simply put. Personally their other music has a greater meaning to me, but I always get chills down my spine during the finer moments of Tommy. Again I do see the album's significance, but feel cohesively it does not rival Sell Out, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia for starters.Tommy wasn't even that original in The Who catalouge; Sell Out explored the concept album in a much more succint and cogent manner, introduced themes Tommy would expand upon(Real 1), and went widely unnoticed. That to me is unbelievable and a reason for me to believe Tommy is overrated in terms of other Who material.

 

I'm just trying to seperate the fact from fiction when it comes to this, and "Tommy" in my mind was surpassed musically, conceptually and emotionally by The Who's following work.

 

I have also said the same thing about DSotM and been crucified for it, so to each his own, really. I just started this thread to see if anyone else shared my feelings on the album, and apparently a lot of people do, so I'm a happy man.

 

Very nice write up ... and not skimpy on some of the stuff around the time that brought it on.

 

I think that Keith Moon is probably one of the very best rock drummers of all time ... and the main reason for it, and I am not a drummer or a learned musician ... is that he could keep time without having to rely on a snare drum ... for the life of me you can always tell how good a drummer is if the left hand is pounding that snare drum ... get a fripping metronome moron! ... and then color the music you are playing!

 

Which is what Keith did! And as such, in my estimation this is what made Tommy so special .,... instead of just another piece of music.

 

Now do not mistake this rant about his drumming, as a statement that John, Roger and Pete weren't good enough or just slink'd their way through. I kinda think that John's bass was important here along with Keith in that he was not afraid to play to the subtleties that scare most time keeping bass players and drummers ... that can not "color" a break like these two could ... and without that I am not sure that Tommy is anything but just a bunch of rock songs united by some musical passages that have little meaning ... the veritable "filler" (as in another thread on this board).

 

I am of the opinion that Tommy was a way for Pete and the band to transition to some music that was more serious and meaningful for them ... as musicians and people. I think that some of their early stuff had a lot of spunk and power, and when they would have to color it with a funny song here and there, while entertaining and showed the musical abilities of the band, it also showed their pop band side ... and I'm inclined to believe that Pete and friends wanted to be out of that mold altogether and taken as much more serious musicians than just pop stars getting stoned and tripping up hotel rooms and smashing instruments to gain some attention. And this is a very common theme in a lot of music from London at that time, and still so today!

 

That said ...

 

Tommy is important, specially at the time it came out. At the time, radio had a lot of very important musicians, and the "progressive fathers" had already shown up for us ...

 

If Tommy were to be done today, by a small band in the northwest that no one knows, every one of us in this board would say a lot of sh*t about it ... and how uneven, and all over the place and how much strange stuff and how pretentious the story was ... and to me, this is the test of how we are to respond to something.

 

Litmus test:

 

Will you sit through a rendition of Tommy in your evening dress 20 years from now (for example), as you would today Yo Yo Ma?

 

You and I might think that's silly, no one dresses like that for a Who concert ... but you are assuming the reverence will not have expanded in 50 more years ... and the respect for that musicianship is different. If you say YES ... then we can say ... it's good ... and worth it. If you vacilate, or think anything as if it were an excuse ... the question is over ... it's not worth it to you or me.

 

I, personally, would rather see The Who, do all their songs from "Who Are You" ... which to me is a much more important album and concept than Tommy ... and has vastly more amazing musicianship on it in my ears. That I would pay to see on my deathbed  ... Tommy I might let go by ... until I can see Klaus Schulze, Vangelis, Mike Oldfield ... and people that mean a lot to my world. A lot more than The Who ... but I am not sure that some of their work would have not been there, and as good, without someone like The Who busting out, or Led Zeppelin, or The Doors ...

 

Gosh ... you shouldn't start me on this ... I have a lot of fond memories of that time and have tremendous love and respect for a lot of music and how it helped me grow inside ... and I have a soft spot for special musicianship and quality that is not "normal" ... and a lot of these things fit into that space.

 

I would never discount Pete and the gang from the important and influential music that did one thing that we are not able to address now ... they helped bust up the AM radio controls in America and define a new music and something that was far more important than just a pop song ... and FM radio was major in showing to us all ... that there was a whole lot more music ... than just hits ... and Tommy was one such piece, even despite it having one or two hits off it in the end.

 

To me, I kinda do not need to listen to the "opera" Tommy .... all you have to do is watch the 15 minutes of The Who in the Woodstock film ... and that in itself is much more of a vivid image and special moment ... than anything else.

 

Ken Russell's film was much more about Ken Russell, and in my book ruined things ... and I liked Ken Russell until he became just another daffocdil clamoring for attention and the meaning of his work died after "The Devils". Please don't recommend that to anyone ... it's a sad b*****dization of a real important time to many people, and the greatest example of how it was raped, exploited and killed!  It was, in the end, how the "establishment" thought of us all idiots that paid for it and created a Tommy in the first place ... the very thing that The Who, and so many others, were trying to fight against.