I don't care for it much. I think The Who went on to write far, FAR superior work, like "Who's Next", "Quadrophenia" and "Who Are You". I just don't get all the mystique that surrounds "Tommy", other than the fact that it was major step towards Prog, which I absolutely get, but musically it gets a bit draining, at least for me, and the next four albums that followed it left it in the dust.

 

Is this only my opinion?

I have never heard a Who album all the way through, so I can't comment beyond my Zen wisdom.

 

Yeah, but the Kinks had the idea first, and the screenplay too, but it just never got produced. Arthur was actually supposed to be a rock-opera thing too on TV, but the project had so many problems that it was eventually chucked. They came out with the album anyway later, but Tommy was already out (and a success) by then.

 

(spoken as a very partial Kinks fan )

 

YES. I cannot agree more. Even their previous album miles ahead of Tommy IMHO. My review, albeit brief, says all I have to say...

 

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=206715 - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=206715

 

 

 

Glad someone else here shares my feelings about the whole thing.

 

 I'm an avid Who fan and feel Townsend is a much better writer when he focuses on real, personal topics. Tommy seems to be the anomoly in The Who catalouge in its seemingly abstract concept; sure it has its emotional moments, but it comes nowhere near something like Quadrophenia or By the Numbers in its ability to grab me in 110%.

 

If it was a single album with the great musical ideas Tommy only briefly covers and no rock opera label etc, I would hold it in much higher esteem. For this reason I am thankful Lifehouse fell flat on its face...the passion on Who's Next is so enjoyable for me, so many moods and emotions.

 

Could you elaborate?

 

But it was groundbreaking album back in its days and an outstanding achievement for Townsend

 

The movie was allright too.

 

No. I'm not kidding. And I don't care to elaborate beyond this: I have never understood what's so important and unique in The Who's musical output for rock....

 

Anyway, as we all do with bands we think are overrated, I'm free to say this am I right? Or saying The Who, a barely-prog-related band in PA is overrated, is forbidden?

 

Iván

 

I don't know what The Beatles or The Rolling Stones fans would have to say about that...

 

... but hey... it's all OPINION. Mine or yours....

The T wrote: cacho wrote: mr.cub wrote: The T wrote: The Who in general is overrated.   Could you elaborate? I assume he's kidding...right, T?   No. I'm not kidding. And I don't care to elaborate beyond this: I have never understood what's so important and unique in The Who's musical output for rock....   Anyway, as we all do with bands we think are overrated, I'm free to say this am I right? Or saying The Who, a barely-prog-related band in PA is overrated, is forbidden?

ExittheLemming wrote: micky wrote: yep...   Tommy 'live' was where the brilliance came out...  remember before Tommy was released the group was noted for smashing guitars and a few hit songs... with Tommy they skyrocketed to the rarified air of the Beatles and Stones and became a world-class rock band. Before Tommy... they could hardly pay the bills. what is overrated about that... too many confuse their own tastes for fact... no... it isn't overrated not at all... but no.. the album musically wasn't a patch on what they did with it live.... sure they weren't the first to do a rock opera... but what they were ...were the first to make Joe Six-Pack in bum-f**k Oklahoma sit up.. take notice.. and buy the albums.  So what is overrated about that hahha. If indeed 'too many confuse their own taste for fact' , there are others amongst us who appear to intuit only objectivity in a remark like 'Joe Six-Pack in bum-f**k Oklahoma' ? This reeks to us lesser mortals us a slice of patronising arrogance, but we bow to the continued largesse shown by the poster's gaggle of slavish disciples on PA. 'smashing guitars and a few hit songs' as a summary of the Who's career prior to Tommy, is such a facile and plain ignorant statement that those with even a passing knowledge of UK rock would just dismiss with the contempt it deserves. Speaking of contempt, the poster has this in spades for those unfortunate souls in 'bum-f**k Oklahoma' whom he implies appreciate 'Tommy' in it's live incarnation, but would otherwise swap the cultural treasures offered up on 'PA' for some line dancing classes instead (y'all).

 

Sadly that is what people think this band is all about.

One true sign of a truly great band is when said band ardently defies categorisation, that is, when for every "well, they sound like this reggae-influenced heavy metal band playing avantgarde bebop" remark you can have yourself a "funny, I thought they were this raw punk outfit doing acoustic folk" counterproposal. And I don't simply mean "being diverse" here, I mean "being different". Blazing off every colour of the spectrum. Baring one's soul in all of its existing aspects. That sort of thing.

Few bands were as good at that as the Who. When they started out on their recording spree in 1965, the pop music world was only beginning to get slowly adjusted to the idea that, instead of making artists rot in the rut by recording the same record as long as there were enough fans to compensate the expenses, it might be more reasonable to let the artists change and evolve into something completely different. The Who were among the first bands, if not the first band, to lock on to that idea from the very beginning, and as a result, no two Who records - at least, not until Keith Moon's demise, that is - sound the same. Garage rockers, surrealistic artists, psychedelic visionaries, art-rockers, roots-rockers, synth-poppers, the Who were all that and more.

Not that this alone should be enough for granting them top honours. More important is the idea that, unlike so many others, the Who were rarely following trends - they were setting them. They weren't above borrowing ideas off others, of course: in this world of constantly interlocking interests, nobody really is. But that was never an overriding concern for the band. Not even the Who's most ardent haters, and there are plenty, could accuse band leader Pete Townshend of lacking a musical vision expressly his own. Whether it was annihilating his guitar - figuratively or literally - or toying with freshly constructed synthesizers or coming up with strange tales of deaf, dumb and blind kids empowered with extrasensorial capacities, he always knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, and it was never for the sake of jumping on bandwagon X or Y. Whereas many others might not have been knowing that.

Many people define the Who as the quintessential rock'n'roll band, with a heavy emphasis on the "rock" thing. Others contest the title, somewhat justifiably pointing out that the Who rarely rocked in a way as hard and uncompromising as, say, AC/DC or Motorhead or certain other rock'n'roll bands that came later and truly redefined the meaning of "raw sound" as we used to know it. In a way, this is true. Even for me. For me, "quintessential rock'n'roll" is something you hear, for instance, during the first twenty seconds of the Stones' 'Can't You Hear Me Knockin'. That kind of thing I only sporadically find on the Who's live records, and never on their studio ones.

The truth, I think, is that the Who, from the very beginning, were essentially an art band, and rock'n'roll, for them, was primarily an art object rather than a lifestyle. This is why, for all their diversity, the Who never ever touched the style which we commonly define as "barroom rock"; they'd simply lack the spirit to do it. I can't even begin to imagine what a song like 'Honky Tonk Women' or 'Rip This Joint' would sound like in the hands of the Who. Simple or complex, original or ripped-off, in ninety-nine percent of all possible cases, the Who's music was carrying a message; when it wasn't, it usually sucked, like on the band's early laughable James Brown covers.

To put it differently, where other bands just used rock'n'roll for fun, the Who used rock'n'roll as a medium to let out their "spirituality". From the very outset, Townshend used to regard rock music as the perfect tool for uniting people and channelling their emotions into one massive collective stream; this eventually reached its culmination on the Lifehouse project, which, according to Pete's plan, started life as the project to end all other projects, and it is absolutely not surprising that the eventual failure of the project nearly cost the guy his life. In this respect, the Who were the rightful progenitors of the entire arena-rock / stadium-rock genre, where the anthemic and "unificatory" qualities of the music matter more than anything else. Of course, seeing the word combination "stadium rock" on a page dedicated to the Who is bad news. The good news is that, again, unlike so many of their lesser followers, the Who (a) sincerely believed in the anthemic power of the stuff they were writing and performing and (b) actually wrote good music to go along with the feeling.

Which brings us to the next point, namely, Pete Townshend as one of the finest composers of his generation and maybe the pop music world in general. If we agree to roughly divide great pop composers into "masters of the form" and "masters of the spirit", Pete will unquestionably join the latter category, along with John Lennon and Ray Davies (whereas, for instance, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson I would rather stick into the former - not that I'm denying them their rightful spiritual shares). His songwriting has always been a little crude and spontaneous, even during the Who's 70s period when he would spend huge amounts of time complicating and polishing the arrangements. He hasn't been above recycling his own melodies, either, or overrelying on similar chord progressions. But when it comes to basic, simple, instantly grappling emotional hooks to chain you to a certain song for life, he's beyond all competition - except for maybe the two guys I namechecked above.

What I mean is, for Pete Townshend "art" was never just an empty word. Maybe "art" was different from "real life", but it was still an evident piece of "reality", and you only have to watch a few minutes of any of the Who's classic live shows from around 1969-71 to see the truth of it. At times, the pedantic mathematician in Pete would take over and he'd try out all kinds of rigid formulas to synthesize true beauty - but these things always failed, like the symbolic failure of the band trying to play along to their synthesizer tapes during Quadrophenia live shows, or the equally symbolic failure of their finding the "perfect chord" for the Lifehouse project. But the non-mathematical things, surprisingly, always survived. And that's what makes analysing the Who's albums such a delightful gas: separating the sincere and spontaneous from the calculated and overwrought. It's almost always a mixture of both.

As is the case with the Kinks, the biggest flaw that can be ascribed to the Who is the lack of a second equally gifted songwriter within the band. (Neither Dave Davies nor John Entwistle, with their limited access to the recording mikes and only moderate wishes to actively participate in the writing process, really count). With no-one to act as a counterweight, the Who had little choice but to accept every single idea that Pete deemed worthy, and as cool as the guy was, not all of them were worthy. While writing his rock operas, he could get carried away with the storyline, disregarding the musical content. While feeding on his depression and disillusionment, he could get carried away with conveying the idea of miserability - again disregarding the music. Finally, to put it blunt, one person just can't write as much good music as two people can, unless that one person is Frank Zappa and Frank Zappa's idea of "good music" was an entirely different thing altogether.

Yet on the positive side, the Who had something that neither the Kinks nor 99.9% of all rock bands ever had: distinctive artistic identities for all four of the band members. Pete Townshend may have been the band's creative leader, primary songwriter, and guitar wiz par excellence, but the Who were never just "Pete Townshend and the Who". Every member of the band brought something vital to the table; every member pioneered something in rock music; and even in real life, every member - bar maybe Roger - was as interesting a human being as you could ever desire.

First, there was Roger Daltrey - vocals - the quintessential rowdy suburban kid who started out as little more than an annoying arrogant bully but eventually became the father of the Big, Brawny, Heroic Anthem Delivery. His patented lionine roar, as forever immortalised in the wall-rattling scream at the end of 'Won't Get Fooled Again', is nowadays a rock cliche, but, believe it or not, there actually was a time when it wasn't. And he's still pretty much the only wide-lunged arena-rock screamer that brings out the positive emotions in me, although even today I can't fully decide if that is mostly his own merit or if it's mainly due to his singing all that "intelligent" Townshend-penned material.

Second, there's John Entwistle - the guy that, at one time, finally convinced me of the importance and potential of the instrument we commonly refer to as the bass guitar. Suffice it to say that, again, even today, while hearing or seeing his playing on some bass-heavy passages of the Who's music, I still have a feeling that somebody's got to be deceiving me because it's frankly impossible for a living person to play that instrument that fluently unless said person's fingers have been diligently pre-programmed. Whether playing live or recording in the studio, Entwistle could at the same time make his bass act the "exuberant lead guitar" part to Townshend's drier, minimalistic power chord riffage and act as the stable rhythmic anchor to prevent the band from slipping into musical chaos. In that way, he was the quiet one of the band, which only made him all the more noticeable - because for the Who, "crazy" was normal, and "normal" was crazy. Additional Entwistle-related features would include occasional significant help with singing (John actually had the widest range of them all, making it possible for the same guy to deliver the creepy "I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote" basslines in 'Summertime Blues' and the angelic falsetto of "you are forgiven" in 'A Quick One'); occasional catchy songwriting; and a distinct touch of - mostly black - humour that added further diversity to the band's albums.

Finally, the drummer was Keith Moon, a figure as legendary in its own rights as JFK or Martin Luther King and therefore not really worth writing a lot about. The only issue I'd like to address is that some people seem to seriously believe that the only thing Keith Moon could ever do was bash, thrash, and crash. Well, that's true. And John Coltrane could only blow. And Hemingway could only write. The art of bashing and thrashing can be as much an art as anything else - and the bashing and thrashing of Keith Moon had a clever and unique bashing and crashing technique all its own. In fact, I'd like to see some of his bashing and thrashing converted to guitar music one day, just to let the dissenters see what he really was trying to achieve with his style. (Note: I am primarily referring to stuff Keith did in the studio here, not in a live setting - his approaches were quite different onstage and offstage).

Thus, even if the songwriting was primarily Pete's domain, every single member of the band had his own agenda, and the resulting fusion of the four - Pete the songwriting philosopher, Roger the heavy-fisted rebel, John the technical-minded scepticist, and Keith the schizophrenic surfer - was something completely unprecedented and, I'm afraid, never to be repeated. Even the Beatles fall behind in this personality department, and this is the main reason why The Kids Are Alright is widely considered as the best "rockumentary" of all time: because its non-musical parts are almost as interesting to watch as the musical ones, which is a pretty rare thing for a "rockumentary".

Now then, why are the Who ranked among the select few on this site? After all, you could pile plenty of vile accusations against these guys. Inconsistent songwriting (even I have to admit that, although I do think it's far less inconsistent than some would have you believe). Pompous, overblown concept albums whose ambitions do somewhat exceed their grasp. A relatively small amount of recorded output - much of it due to a crippling legal battle with their first producer, Shel Talmy, which prevented them from recording at the same speed as their contemporaries during the Sixties, but also due to Pete's own neuroses and paranoid procrastination. And, finally, a much-tarnished reputation gained by their deciding to carry on playing after Keith Moon's untimely death and then reuniting for innumerable "anniversary tours" throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s, tours that have not been stopped even by John Entwistle's recent demise.

Well, fact is, none of these accusations are decisive. Inconsistent songwriting - heck, you could accuse anybody of inconsistent songwriting. Pompous albums - who cares as long as the pomposity is just a by-product of utter sincerity? This sure ain't Queen we're talking about. Lack of output - well, that sort of helps you out with the inconsistent songwriting problem, don't it? And as for the tarnished reputation, this is simply not a good argument at all, not to mention that some of that touring was actually quite good.

To summarize my feelings about the band - I like rock'n'roll music "for the body". I also happen to like intelligent music "for the soul". And I happen to think that, contrary to rumours, these two things are not at all incompatible, provided they're being made compatible in the proper way. And finally, I think no other band in pop music history has been able to make the two compatible in a way more proper than the Who did it in their glory days, from 1965 to 1973. And that about winds it all up.

 

Ivan, I can appreciate everything you said (my personal unliking of the music do not contradict the points you mentioned) except the funny argument they are still selling. Well, Madonna is still selling huge amounts of albums and I think all of it is dated before it even released. If selling was our way to judge anything than most of the music we all love is neglible.

 

OMRI; the central point is not that they are selling, the central point is that they passed the test of time, I never cared for sales, if that was the truth, I would had bought Tina Charles I Love to Love instead of Going for the One in the late 70's, and that's not remotely what i think or said.

 

Selling copies after 40 years, is something most of the artists today would never dream, but it's only one of many consequence of not being outdated.

 

While many ephemerous albums were popular of their day and 6 months later were forgotten, TOMMY has 40 YEARS and still is remembered and people buy it.

 

 

 

 

I think that nowadays with the ability to get almost everything, 40 years is not enough time to state that The who (or any other band / artist) passed the test of time. I think that should be tested in about 50 years from now. Given the fact you and me are nearly the same age we both probably not live to make that test.

 

Please OMRI, 40 years is a lot of tuime in an ephemerous scenario as the ever changing Rock, yess you can get almost anything, but TOMMY is stioll requested by the fans, and I'm not talking about a sector, Rockers, Proggres and even POP listeners get Tommy.

 

The remaining members of The Who keep touring and playiong tracks from Tommy for the audience that fills any place they go.

 

A few years ago, they made a full presentation of Tommy on stahge, it was in 96 if I'm not wrong, th 1996 and filled the Madison Square Garden two consecutive days, I was there and probably was above the average age, most people were very young, so it had attractive for new audiences.

 

If you check Amazon that sells 70% of the total net musical salessand  3.5% of the music worldwide (More than enough for a good survey), you will find: 

 

Tommy is in place Nº 960 (Remastered) and Nº 1072 original recording on CD, this means that after 40 years and millions of albums, Tommy is still in the top 1,000.

 

Also is considered

 

#30 in	http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_1_1 - Music > http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/40/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_1_2 - Rock > http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/292809/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_1_3 - Progressive > http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/408264/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_1_4_last - Progressive Rock
#36 in	http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_2_1 - Music > http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/67204/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_2_2 - Classic Rock > http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/408256/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_m_2_3_last - Supergroups

 

Two categories in top 50

 

On the other hand, you check Thriller, which was released almost 14 years later and hit the top all around the world: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,024 and Nº 6,452 in the Deluxe 25 years edition.

 

But not only Pop artists, check Band of Gypsys, one of the most influential albums for every genre: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #554,099

 

Lets go to a coetaneous album like Machine Head, a total classic: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,953 or if you want Made in Japan: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,341

 

This doesn't mean that Tommy is better than Made in Japan (ecven when I like Tommy more), is simply that has aged better, so it passed the test of time.

 

I bet that only (Just mentioning albums released in the 60's) The Beatles, some Elvis albums and a couple of Stones albums are better positioned than Tommy.

 

So tell me....Isn't that passing the test of time?

 

My two cents.

 

Iván

 

BTW: Maybe you won't be alive, I plan to be here at least 60 years more.

 

 

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.

 

It's not overrated definitely, maybe is really not understanded the real meaning of the whole rock opera at last.

 

I didn't find boring, i find that record a great challenge of musical exploration of a band that after 3 albums of rock, go ahead with a full blown thematic that is fascinating and adventurous at the time.

 

 

Maybe it's correct to say that The Who is NOT a Prog band and we can start to argue about the nature of the record.

 

Now that we can enjoy remastering of albums Tommy played live is a great rock experience.

 

So, my conclusion is, i like The Who and i like Tommy 

 

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.

 

I salute to your optimism ! I even have a suggestion to you. The first one of us to die will buy a beer to the other one when he gets to hell . Is it a deal ?

 

Now, to the test of time. I immediately thought of frank Sinatra. I don't think in 50 years from now anybody will remember him (this is personal taste I know but for some odd reason I am quite confident in that) but nowadays he still sells tons of albums.

Ofcorse Tommy is much better than Thriller (I hated it from the very first day it was released) or many other "one moment hits" but we are comparing it to much better albums (based on our taste and our snobish atitude that let us believe we know better but we both share that atitude I believe).

 

And finally, I hope you charge your clients more cause what you wrote worth much more than 2 cents and if not you are probably starving.

 

 

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.

 

Glad to see more folks share my opinion.

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.

I don't agree with the comparisson to 'The Wall', which is a grabber from start to finish, but I do see parallels to 'Lamb Lies Down on Broadway', which is just as filler infested as Tommy.

 

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

 

 

 

Songs such as: all of them except Pinball Wizard

 

the only rock opera that came close to not disappointing me is Joe's Garage 

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.

 

On its release it received mixed reviews and took ages to grow but looking back  it was a huge gamble which paid off and showed the way for rock music in the future, the band played much of Tommy on tour and the album eventually sold well, i think "Quadrophenia" was an even bigger risk but many people today rate this dark work above Tommy, it took me some time to "get" but i still prefer listening to Tommy - definitely not overrated!