All language subtitles for WHO - The Making Of Tommy - Documentary (2013) -ENG

Who are The Who? The Who
are The Who, that's who they are.

A rock group, veterans of Woodstock,

and now they're authors
and performers in a rock opera.

Pete knew that he'd got to write
something more substantial

and he'd always had this thing
about writing a rock opera.

# Ever since I was a young boy
I played the silver ball... #

I felt...
the band, and myself as a composer,

deserved one big last splurge.

If that album hadn't made it,
the band would have disbanded.

# Sure plays a mean pinball... #

Tommy is one of the most important
albums ever made, and was

Pete sitting with his guitar,
trying to make sense of the universe.

# Tommy, can you hear me?

# Can you feel me near you? #

When we played it live
it changed me completely.

I just grabbed it by the scruff
of the neck and said,

"Right,
let's make this person live."

# I'm free

I'm free... #

I'm fed up with talking about it. I'm
certainly not fed up with playing it.

We always had an idea that Tommy
was going to mean something.

It was a series of great hit singles,
it's a great concept album,

it's a rock opera, it's a great
concert vehicle for The Who.

# Listening to you... #

I just knew we were good.

I didn't quite know how or why
or what, but I knew we were good.

The reviews they got
were overwhelming,

and so they'd suddenly arrived,
and Tommy changed everything.

Tommy was the first time
that we really tackled

the idea of doing an album
as a piece of art.

It was meant, in a sense,
to hold a mirror, you know,

to what we were doing at the time
and what was happening to us.

And when you look
at sort of what was happening,

it then starts
to really take on extra resonance.

By '68, they seemed to be
running out of steam.

They were in trouble, really.

We were afraid that we were
losing our touch.

We'd had a series of successful
hit singles, you know,

from I Can't Explain,
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,

My Generation,
Pictures of Lily, I'm a Boy.

We were a singles band
going nowhere,

and occasionally we might come up
with a hit single now and again,

but on stage we had grown immensely.

# I can see for miles and miles
and miles and miles and miles... #

They were the group
that took the power of rock'n'roll

most seriously.
I love the early Who singles.

I think, you know, to me

maybe the greatest rock'n'roll record
of all time is I Can See For Miles.

I Can See For Miles,
which should have been number one,

there's no question about it -

it's a masterpiece as a pop song of
our genre - and it didn't do that.

I think Pete thought
we were running out of steam,

but then I always believed
in the chemistry of the band.

There's something about the
mathematics of Who music, within it,

that knitted it together,
and it had an incredible strength.

# Talking about my generation

# Talking about my generation

# Talking about my generation

# Talking about my ge-ge-ge...

# Talking about my generation

# My generation
This is my generation, baby... #

They were just a great live band and
that sense of, you know, you just

had this feeling like, you know, at
any moment they could just levitate.

GUITARS SCREECH

It's an image that remains
in my mind about the energy

and danger that he had
in his performance.

Pete was playing
and was bleeding from his hand.

DISTORTED GUITARS

# My generation... #

The Who had this enormous image
set for them in stone, really,

by My Generation

and the Mod connection
and smashing up equipment,

and so they wanted
to destroy that image

and prove that they could do
something of real importance
and value.

And we were writing more

and more stuff that didn't fit in
with the singles market.

The shortcoming was mine.
I wasn't coming up with the singles.

And I knew that I couldn't do better
than I Can See For Miles,

and I was kind of groping,
in a sense, to find

something that would work
for the band at this time.

He knew that he'd got to write
something more substantial

and he'd always had this thing
about writing a rock opera.

Pete obviously wrote the songs,

but it was huge,
huge input from Kit Lambert.

And, you know, Kit was always
pushing Pete to write deeper,

write for a bigger stage.

There is more valid, new creative
music being made at the pop end.

I don't see any good classical
composers emerging at the moment.

I certainly haven't heard a decent
new symphony

or a decent new opera
in the last 18 months.

And I think opera, as we know now,
is absolutely defunct.

One needs
a completely fresh approach,

and I think
pop's going to provide it.

There were other attempts
to do similar kind of things,

although nobody took much notice
of them at the time,

it has to be said. There was Mark
Wirtz's Teenage Opera, which was

a single, but was actually intended
to become a full-blown opera.

And then The Pretty Things had been
working on something

called SF Sorrow,
which was a concept album,

and they later claimed
that this was the first rock opera.

I felt we were first anyway
because we'd done, you know,

two operas, we'd done... It's just
that they didn't look like that.

It's a group of numbers off our LP
written by Pete -

it was part of an opera he wrote.

It's a bit shorter
than it was supposed to be.

It's one called A Quick One.

It was a piece that ran about
11 minutes long that really

showed the potential of the band.

The Who told stories.

You know, there was a narrative arc
in all of those songs,

however short.

Cos what A Quick One While He's Away
was, I think,

five or six songs which I was working
on, this story about child abuse.

Mainly it was a story
about evacuees,

because when these kids came home
and they told their parents

about the fact that they'd had
a terrible time,

their parents said,
"Listen, shut up.

"You're alive, you're lucky,
you know,

"you weren't blown to bits in the
Blitz. Just keep your mouth shut."

So everybody went into, you know,
huge denial.

I'm on the stage and we get to the
end - "you are forgiven".

This is at the end of A Quick One,
I went, "You are forgiven.

"You are forgiven. You are forgiven.

"Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven,
forgiven, forgiven, FORGIVEN!"

You know. This incredible...

When, of course, no forgiveness
there at all.

And then finally...

# We're all forgiven... #

But we'd also done another one
called Rael, which was...

you know, a full-length,
two-hour epic opera

squeezed down to seven minutes.

# He's crazy if he thinks
we're coming back again

# He's crazy if he thinks
we're coming back again... #

I felt I was in a climate
where everybody was going to be

doing this kind of thing.

Cos it was on an extraordinary
period, that psychedelic period,

of...

Because people were opening up
their minds with psychedelic drugs.

New attitudes
and the whole love movement,

and a sort of philosophical kind of
revolution took place very quickly.

And people were searching
for their own kind of answers.

The Who weren't, you know,
immune to all of that.

I mean, in their own way,

like Townshend himself was very
interested in philosophy

and all kinds of mysticism,
in a sense,

and experimentation with drugs
wasn't unknown to The Who.

Pete had had that LSD
bad trip he took

when coming back from the States.

It was the most extraordinary drug
experience

that I've ever been through.

It was just absolutely bizarre,
like Alice In Wonderland,

like extreme mental illness.

Nothing good about it at all, but
so disturbing that I left my body

and I floated up
on the ceiling of the aircraft,

looking down at myself, and I'm
sitting there and I'm unconscious.

It's extremely disturbing

and I'm very, very frightened
I'm going to die.

And when I get home, I kind of think
about this and I think,

"I left my body.

"I just left my body, so I know
that I am not my fucking body."

And it shook him up,
and from then on

he gave up psychedelic drugs
and got very anti-psychedelic drugs.

There was that sense that
we needed an alternative to this

extraordinary colourful world that
we discovered in hallucinogenics.

At that point
everybody, it seemed like, you know,

was exploring some or one or another
aspect of, you know,

kind of a spiritual development.

You're looking for some answers.

You're looking for some ways
of living.

You're looking for something
that's going to bring you

some peace of some kind,
and I think Meher Baba offered that.

When Mike McInnerney introduced
Meher Baba to Pete,

I think he gave him a book.

It was called The God-Man
by an eminent British journalist

called CB Purdom, and I kind
of immediately warmed

to the way he looked in the photo,

but what really struck me is
as soon as I started

to open the book up, I started to
read things, I felt that I'd found

answers to so many of the questions
that were rolling round in my head.

And the really, really simple thing
is -

and it's really not complicated -
was that he asked you to love him.

It was the simple stuff

that I liked.
It was "don't worry, be happy.

"Do your best,
leave the results to God."

You know what you should do,
basically,

that's why I think he didn't speak.

He took a vow of silence in 1925
or something,

and I think he didn't speak
because he said it had all been said,

do you know what I mean?

There's no point giving
more messages, it's all there.

You can't describe
the kind of the discovery,

the feeling you get when you feel
the presence of someone like

Meher Baba on Earth, on this planet,
at this time, in this universe.

It changed him completely.
He was absolutely fired up by it.

He was absolutely...

I mean, it was the most profound
change he'd ever had in his life.

You impede your own spiritual
progress by doing things

which are against the grain
physically,

by self-indulgence, by indulging
in lust, by indulging in greed.

And we just had to stop fucking
around, you know.

We had to stop taking acid,

stop pretending
that we could have sex

with whoever we wanted
to have sex with

and just get serious about life.

Let your own intuition guide you.

Like, when you're writing
a song or something,

just write it with the best
intentions - probably to entertain

and to please people -

and via doing that,
you might create a spark in them.

When I did discover Meher Baba,
I think all the pieces of the jigsaw

fit into place and then I was able
to start on Tommy in earnest,

and I think I was inspired to write
Tommy as a spiritual story.

The idea was that Tommy would be
a young boy who would grow up

in adverse circumstances,
but those adverse circumstances

would lead him
to a spiritual pathway.

He would then be elected,

if you like, by the masses
as a spiritual teacher

and then he would, in a sense,
misuse his powers and pay the price.

And that was the original story.

This is 1918.

Captain Walker is missing, believed
to be missing with a number of men.

Then Mrs Walker has a child, a son.

ALL: Absent friends.

# Captain Walker didn't come home

# His unborn child will never know
him... #

The war is still on...
you know, it's about to end.

A mother has bore a child.

# It's a boy, Mrs Walker

# It's a boy

# It's a boy, Mrs Walker... #

She doesn't know, you know,
if it will have a father.

She's taken a lover.

# A son, a son, a son... #

I had to create this viable boy
that my audience, Who fans,

could occupy, get inside him,
and then they become the hero.

Then Captain Walker comes back.

Now, the first song is very vague,

you don't really know
what's happened.

# I had a feeling
'21 is gonna be a good year

# Especially if you and me sit in
together... #

All around me, when I was a kid,

there were these intrigues going on,
you know, marital intrigues.

My mum, she fell in love
with this guy

and she wanted to run away with him,
and what she wanted was romance,

and that was the thing
that my dad couldn't give her.

# I had no reason
to be over-optimistic

# But somehow when you smile
I can brave bad weather... #

A smile, a loving touch,
this is what life was about.

# About the boy, about the boy

# About the boy, he saw it all

# You didn't hear it
You didn't see it

# You won't say nothing to no-one
Never in your life

# You never heard it

# Oh, how absurd it all seems
Without any proof... #

It turns out - although you
wouldn't know it from the record -

that the father came back
and found the mother with her lover

and he killed the lover,
and the boy witnessed it.

As a child he sees this murder,

as a child he sees
a reflection of the murder.

He doesn't actually see the murder,
he doesn't see the blood,

he doesn't hear the cries, he just
sees this happening in this mirror.

And as a result of them saying,
"You didn't see it.

"You never saw it. You won't tell
a word about it," he has a trauma

and he withdraws himself
and becomes deaf, dumb and blind.

# That dumb and blind boy
He's in a quiet vibration land

# Strange as it seems

# His music dreams
ain't quite so bad... #

The amazing journey was
the nucleus of Tommy,

as far as I was concerned,
and it sticks in my brain

and has been the song
that kind of said it all.

It's about going through life
in this strange other world.

With the deaf, dumb and blind boy,
I was looking

for an analogy to the fact that it
seemed to me that we are deaf, dumb

and blind, if you like, with respect
to our spiritual genome.

Whatever it is in us that drives us
spiritually

is effectively deaf, dumb and blind.

I think Townshend totally got
how, underneath

all of your aggression
and all of your violence

and all of your anger
is a real sensitivity,

a desire to somehow be accepted.

# Sickness will surely take the mind
where minds can't usually go

# Come on the amazing journey
and learn all you should know... #

I'd written this epic poem,

it was about somebody who gets very,
very, very close to God-realisation

and then makes a disastrous mistake.

"As time passes
boredom forces me to amuse myself.

"I marry and justify a lifetime
of obsessed

"money-making
in order to keep my family.

"I justify an eternity of oblivious
dreaming to counter

"the strain of all my money-making."

The music business itself
would appear to be very shallow

and very kind of one-dimensional
in a way, you know,

leading a lifestyle
that is not always satisfactory.

I don't know how he coped, you know?

This was a guy in two worlds,
you know?

He's in a rock'n'roll world.

He's coping with stardom
and, at the same time,

he's trying to be a boy,
trying to understand himself,

and he's trying
to be a man and be a good husband.

It is a warning that if you don't
use the experience that you have,

if you don't use the qualities
that you develop wisely

and kindly and in a good way,
you know, you end up in shit.

MUSIC: "Eyesight To The Blind"
by Sonny Boy Williamson

There's that brilliant use of Sonny
Boy Williamson, one of the, you know,

original great blues figures, and a
song called Eyesight To The Blind,

you know, a nod to both
where this music came from,

where The Who came from and a perfect
use of an old song in a new context.

I was attracted to it
because it was about...

He refers to a deaf, dumb and blind
guy in his song.

I like singing this...

probably most out of all the things
we've ever done.

It's challenging,
it's incredibly challenging

but, at the end of it,
it's incredibly rewarding.

And it fit in beautifully, I think.

It created a reference
back to our lineage, our heritage,

our influences...
and it's a fucking great song, too.

# You talk about your woman

# I wish you could see mine

# Yeah, you talk about your woman

# I wish you could see mine... #

I don't know why Kit...

It's always puzzled me
why he double-tracked everything.

It's not like I haven't got
quite a fat voice to start with,

but it did give it
that kind of other worldly quality.

# She's got the power to heal you

# Never fear

# She's got the power to heal you

# Never fear... #

It solved a problem in a narrative.

I wanted there to be a pimp.

I wanted the Acid Queen
to have a pimp.

I didn't want the Acid Queen
to be entirely responsible

for corrupting the boy,
sexually speaking.

Pete just has a darker turn of mind

and, you know, addressed
these things, and powerfully so.

Nothing at all could ever be
too strong for an album

and nothing was off-limits.

It was amazing
that the band supported him

and were not anti-critical of him,
Meher Baba and all the rest of it.

Cos the thing was that they could
probably sense that he was

definitely inspired
from his confidence

that he got from Meher Baba.

We were always supportive,

that had been going on for years,
but there was something

in Kit's belief in us that
I always knew that it would be OK,

and that Pete would kind of go on
to write this kind of work.

# Did you ever see
the faces of the children?

# They get so excited

# Waking up on Christmas morning

# Hours before the winter sun's
ignited... #

On Christmas Eve,
I would be left on my own,

and with a fire and all the presents
round the tree. Magic.

Just waiting, waiting while my mum
and dad went to the pub,

got smashed, came back at one
o'clock in the morning,

put me to bed. Then I'd wake up
and open my presents and, yeah,

that was good times.

# And Tommy doesn't know
what day it is

# He doesn't know who Jesus was
or what praying is

# How can he be saved
from the eternal grave?

# See me

# Feel me

# Touch me

# Heal me... #

There is that extraordinary moment
in the recording of Tommy

where I arrive late, looking forward
to doing my bit, you know,

which is singing the emotional bits,
"See me, feel me..."

You know, because, you know,
I had such a tough childhood,

so I would be able
to really sing it.

And I knew that, you know,

Roger had had a couple of goes,
and Kit had kind of gone,

"I don't think you'd better do this,
Rog.

"I think I might better leave this
to Pete."

And I come in and I hear this.

# See me

# Feel me

# Touch me

# Heal me... #

And I realised that Roger has
occupied Tommy,

in such a way, though, that other
people were unable to occupy him.

# Heal me... #

I was just inhabiting the music.

I think everybody has a longing
in them...

..to be understood, to be loved,
and that's what I tried to do.

I was very, very well aware that

it was going to do something
a little bit deeper,

and in that Kit Lambert was
an absolute dynamo of support.

But then, it wasn't just Kit,
we did have Chris Stamp in there

who's, again, very, very
influential on the input of Tommy.

Their partnership
and their work together

was extraordinary and magical.

Tommy was everything.

You know, we were going to...
we were going to sort of

put everything into Tommy.
It was going to be the, sort of,

the great big last-ditch effort,
you know,

of all this sort of creative juice
that we'd had for all these years.

If ever I had any doubts, you
know... If ever I said, you know,

"Oh, God, you know,
it all feels a bit pretentious,"

he would just say, "Oh, fuck them."

You know. "Just fuck them all,"
you know?

"What does anybody know
about opera?"

But the person that was most helpful
to me in constructing

the story was actually the guy doing
the artwork - Michael McInnerney.

As a creative in the band, you know,

Pete needed somebody to be able
to talk his ideas out to.

We were still in the studio
developing the music,

so I would go and I would talk
to him about it,

I would play him my demos.

He often got to hear
my songs before the band.

The cover carried
a kind of symbolic idea

of what I felt the overarching idea
of the album was.

I was trying to carry this idea
of what it would be like,

in a sense, to be this character,

trying to imagine what it's like

if you can't see, you can't hear,
you can't speak, what kind of world

you're in, you know, how infinite
and how large that might be.

I had to try and find a kind
of visual method to sort of do that.

I don't think Mike has ever
surpassed it.

He's done some fantastic work,

but I do think that it's up there
with Magritte.

# Extra, extra, read all about it

# Extra... #

My first major interview about Tommy
was with Jann Wenner

of Rolling Stone magazine
before the fucking album was made,

in which I pitched the album
and he printed it in its entirety.

I didn't know at the time that was
the first time he'd, apparently,

had ever articulated that,

and I think that he might have been
making it up

as he was going along, you know,
it was kind of occurring to him.

But he'd laid it out
in very rational form.

And he said that, really,
that interview cleared it -

clarified it in his head.

What's interesting,
reading that interview

is the conviction that I had
that we, as a band,

could kind of create this journey
for this boy.

We could sort of make this music

that evoked all of these different
aspects of life

and very, very ambitious, you know,

but I was convinced
that we could do it.

# We're on our own, cousin

# All alone, cousin... #

Pete Townshend is one of the most
sensitive souls who's ever

found their way into rock'n'roll.

And I think that's the secret
of Tommy, is he was sensitive

to his own issues and to the fact
that there were probably

other people out there dealing
with some of the same psychosexual

childhood abuse, bullying, all these
themes that are so of the moment.

Young Tommy went through, you know,
sexual molestation, bullying,

drugs and whatever,
that Pete had gone through.

Pete was an unhappy kid, you know,
full of, you know, doubt

and shame and feelings of inadequacy
and the inability to get a girl.

And he's really...pretty
painfully frank in his music...

..at a time
when you're not supposed to be.

# You won't be much fun
being blind, deaf and dumb

# But I've no-one to play with
today... #

Bullying at that time, it was just,
you know, it was just...

It was par for the course. It was
the way that society operated.

Policemen didn't pull you aside
and, you know...

They would just smack you
round the head, you know?

It was just this kind of, you know,
teachers would batter you

with lumps of wood, you know,
and that's what life was like.

# I'm the school bully

# The classroom cheat

# The nastiest play friend
you ever could meet... #

He asked John
to write those difficult songs,

those dark songs,
because when Pete was younger

he had some bad...

sexual experiences
and bullying experiences.

I didn't want to have to write
those songs,

but I knew that they had to be
in the story.

I knew that we had to deal
with the reality

of what a boy like Tommy
would go through.

As I tried to deal with it,

I would either go into kind of
white-flash anxiety or rage...

And I tried a few times...

..but in the end
I just kind of gave John a brief.

I just said, "Do you think you could
crack this?" And he said, "Yep."

# I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie

# I'm glad you won't see or hear me
as I fiddle about

# Fiddle about
Fiddle about

# Your mother left me here
to mind you

# Now I'm doing what I want to

# Fiddling about
Fiddling about

Fiddle about

# Down with the bedclothes
Up with your nightshirt

# Fiddle about... #

What's so extraordinary about
those two songs

is that they're so powerful and
they're so deeply felt

and they're so accurate
that I wonder whether, like me,

John had lots of friends
who had stories to tell.

Child molestation is not discussed,

it's not generally a pop music theme,
you know,

but it's one of the big, you know,
successful themes of Tommy.

Pete was selling us
and sharing with us his pain.

I mean, he had this part of
when he was young,

of his mother and father
not getting on,

and his mother was a singer
and stuff,

and they left him for a time
with his grandmother, this Denny,

who was a little bit strange.

My experience of abuse as a child
is something which

I don't fully recall.

I get the sense that there's
something that has happened

to me as a child,
something that is erotic or sexual,

or disturbing or dark,
or something in nature

because of dreams that I've had
and memories that I have.

But I was very, very young,
you know,

I was between
the ages of 4 and 5½ when I was

with my grandmother, and I just know
that some weird shit went down.

# Fiddle... #

# Your child ain't all he should be
now

# This girl could put him right

# I'll show him what he could be now

# Just give me one night

# I'm the gypsy
The Acid Queen

# Pay before we start... #

I go to a very strange place
when I sing it.

It's like, "Can you give me
permission to sing this song?

"I'm going to sing it like a woman
who's going to rape a child in order

"to make it better."

I'm 68 years old,
there's not much analysis for me.

I've got a pretty picture
of what kind of person my mum was.

I love her, I love the memory
of her, but I also know

that she was a complete halfwit
in many respects, you know.

And she abnegated a lot of her duty
to me as a young mum,

and when I sing the Acid Queen

there's a bit of my mother's voice
comes in there.

I'm kind of... I'm kind of angry
with my mother.

I'm angry with all women
who are mothers.

It's a misogynist song in a way,
you know,

and I can sing it as a woman and...

"If your boy ain't all he should be
now, this girl can put him right."

There's a sense of
"oh, how arrogant you are."

# Give us a room
Close the door

# Leave us for a while

# Your boy won't be a boy no more

# Young but not a child... #

What The Acid Queen represents to me
is that female force.

It's a fairytale figure, you know?

It's the wicked queen,
it's the wicked witch,

and yet, in Grimm's Fairy Tale
language, it's a very erotic figure.

It's erotic, powerful, manipulative,
fixing figure.

"I can fix you. Come in, young man,
I'll show you the future."

And what a great power for a woman
to have over a young man...

..the power to give him
his first real orgasm.

# My work is done now
Look at him

# He's never been more alive

# His hand, it shakes
His fingers clutch

# Watch his body writhe

# I'm the gypsy
The Acid Queen

# Pay before we start

# The gypsy

# I'm guaranteed
to break your little heart... #

Kit Lambert had got me tape-machines

very, very early in my writing
career in 1964, so I'd been

working on tape, and by the time
I started to work on Tommy

I had a fully-fledged recording
studio in my house at home.

I loved it.

And he would come in with a new demo
and we'd write,

and then we'd build up
from a very simple demo...

And slowly, but surely,
the story pieced itself together

in some kind of sense.

# Ever since I was a young boy
I played the silver ball

# From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all

# But I ain't seen nothing like him
in any amusement hall

# That deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pinball... #

Before Pinball Wizard,
Tommy was a kind of rock star.

I saw him as, I suppose,
a guitar-playing rock star,

cos Tommy was about music.

It was about a young man
who is deaf, dumb and blind,

but can hear music
through vibrations,

so he can feel stuff,
so he can feel music.

They wanted some feedback
on how it was going

and the album they were making,
and Kit Lambert knew Nik Cohn,

who was the writer on the Guardian,
and he was a rock critic, and

they brought him in and he listened
to their...what they'd got so far.

I said, "What do you think?"

"And he said, "It's... It's
wonderful. It's really wonderful.

"Wonderful music. I love it.

"But...it's a pity
it's about a guru."

And I said,
"Well, it's not really about a guru.

"No, it's not a guru.
He's not a guru.

"He's somebody who can feel
vibrations and music and through,

"you know... And it turns
into a kind of a spiritual language

"that he understands and that other
people around him can see."

And he kind of goes, "I think
that's even worse than a guru."

He used a wonderful expression,
he said, "It's a bit po-faced."

"And it's a bit heavy, religious
and... But I'll give it four stars.

"It's GOOD, you know, but it's
not..." And that wasn't good enough.

I knew him and we used to play
pinball together quite a bit,

and he'd written a book called
Arfur - with an F - Pinball Queen,

and I'd met this kid who he'd based
the story on,

played pinball with her,

and we used to go out
and play pinball in Soho together.

And Pete said she beat him
every single time.

And so I said, "What about if,
instead of him being, like,

"a, you know, a phenomena,
musically-speaking,

"he's a pinball champion?"

thinking I was kind of like,
lowering the, you know, the...

And you know, "He plays pinball.
He can play pinball.

"He's deaf, dumb and blind,

"but through vibrations he can play
pinball."

I said, "Would you give it a good
review if he was a pinball star?"

And Nik Cohn said something like,

"Ah, yes, I think I would give that
a five-star review...

"with an extra ball."

So I rushed home that night
and wrote Pinball Wizard.

# Ever since I was a young boy
I played the silver ball

# From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all

# But I've never seen anything
like him in any amusement hall

# That deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pinball... #

Pinball Wizard is a crucial song.

It's actually the whole thing
in a nutshell,

and it's incredibly powerful.

The first time I heard it,
I was literally blown backwards,

it was so powerful.

And I felt it was too sweet
and, you know,

so if this is someone singing
about Tommy,

it should have a bit more
meat and potatoes...

..which is what I gave it.

# He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine

# Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean

# He plays by intuition
The digit counters fall

# That deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pinball

# He's a pinball wizard

# Had to be a twist

# A pinball wizard's
Got such a supple wrist... #

I think that it was such a clever
device, a perfect vehicle.

Nothing to do with words,
just to do with feeling the flippers

and feeling the...

And feeling the ball
and scoring a great score.

You don't need words for that.

What it did was inject
this incredible silly, colourful,

daft notion into the whole thing
which, in actual fact,

totally redeemed but also created
a much better focus for my notion

that somebody who was deaf, dumb and
blind could do something miraculous.

# He ain't got no distraction
Can't hear no buzzing bells

# Don't see no lights a-flashin'

# Plays by sense of smell

# Always gets a replay
Never tilts at all

# That deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pinball... #

Listening to the production
on Pinball Wizard,

and it's absolutely genius,
but it's a masterpiece.

# I thought
I was the Bally table king

# But I just handed
my pinball crown to him... #

Next day he brought it in,
played it to everyone.

He thought, "Oh, God,
I'm embarrassed by this."

I came in and I played it,

and the great thing about it
was that it was obviously the hit.

And Damon Lyon-Shaw, the engineer,
said,

"That'll be a number-one hit,
you know."

And they all went, "This is great."
And he went, "Oh, really?"

I think it got to number four.

HE LAUGHS

# That deaf, dumb and blind kid... #

Nik, true to his word,
gave the album a fantastic review.

With Tommy, it was the first time
we used eight-track

and we didn't know
what to do with them.

I've seen the multi-tracks
from Tommy

and there's three tracks empty.

Cos they'd insisted all the way
that they wanted to be able

to play it on stage, cos there was
all sorts of great ideas came up.

Kit Lambert had asked me to dance
around the room

like a ballet dancer holding
a microphone for an effect.

He was wonderful because
he would just try everything.

He'd try the kitchen sink,
he'd throw it all in.

He'd make terrible mistakes.

The next thing we knew,
we'd be marching around the studio

playing trombones, you know?

Would I have changed him
for someone more polished?

No, we wouldn't have been
what we are today

without his early production.

It was quirky, it was cranky,
and it wasn't like anybody else.

In Damon Lyon-Shaw,

he did pick an absolutely excellent
engineer who got fantastic sound

so, you know, he just left
that kind of stuff to the engineer.

He interfered a bit, you know?

Damon Lyon-Shaw talks about the fact
that Kit always wanted

the needles in the red,

and all they did was they turned
down the bit behind the needles,

so that the needles
were always in the red,

but they were
actually recording clean.

So, everybody got what they wanted.

The making of the record

and that period of our career was
the most joyous time -

it was wonderful. And going to work
a lot, working in the studio all day,

going out to do gigs at night -
what more could anybody have wanted?

Kit made recording fun, there's no
question about it, it was great fun.

# There's a man I found
who can bring us all joy

# There's a doctor I've found
could cure the boy

# A doctor I've found... #

What's probably more important
in the context...

and that these songs
I DID manage to tackle, you know,

in the shape of the doctor's song
"Go To The Mirror!"

was the complicity of parents and
social workers,

and doctors and do-gooders,

in a sense, to try to get round the
problems that this child might have.

# He seems to be
completely unreceptive

# The tests I gave him
show no sense at all

# His eyes react to light
The dials detected

# He hears but cannot answer
to your call... #

The reason
why none of the other cures,

the quacky cures or even the,
you know, the credible medical cure,

the reason why none of them work
is that because...

What's actually happened, of course,

is that Tommy is not
deaf, dumb and blind,

he's not even really autistic,
you know?

What's actually happened
is that he's been traumatised

and is in a kind of shutdown state.

# Tommy, can you hear me?

# Can you feel me near you?

# Tommy, can you see me?

# Can I help to cheer you? #

What cures him is that the mother
smashes the mirror

that he's looking at himself in
and breaks the spell.

# Do you hear or fear or
Do I smash the mirror? #

GLASS SMASHES

And when she smashes the mirror,
he not only sees himself

for the first time
in the trauma of that moment,

but he realises the power

of his mother's loving rage
and frustration.

And that's kind of, in a sense,
what brings him to his senses.

And so then, "Da-dah! I'm free."

# I'm free

# I am free

# And freedom tastes of reality... #

The whole thing is metaphorical,
of course.

It's about a coming of age,
you know?

About the fact that each of us,
as young men,

that that happens to us
at some point.

We break away from stuff that
we've clung onto in our childhood

and we...

..assume our power as men,
and that's what happens to Tommy.

It's a pivotal song.
It's the pivotal song.

It's from hereon in that all
the problems need to be solved...

because you're back
in the real world.

# I'm free

# I'm free... #

I think we probably discovered
something about our sound in Tommy

when we played
at the Ronnie Scott's Club.

And they decided to have a proper
full-blown press launch.

They booked Ronnie Scott's Club

which, in itself,
was a unique experiment,

to have a rock band playing
at the famous London jazz venue.

And it was very hostile. They said,
"Well, I know people there

"and they said the press were drunk,
and sort of shouting at them

"and leering at them."

And as we started to play,
somebody shouted out

"Smash your guitar, you sick BLEEP!"

So, I think that's kind of
where we were, you know,

and whoever said that
was drunk on our free booze,

so we didn't really have
many friends.

And so Pete said,
"Right, let them have it."

I turned it up.
I turned everything up.

We played with tremendous vigour
and passion and vengeance,

and fear that it wouldn't work.

And we played to absolute silence...

incredibly loudly,

but the ovation at the end kind of
took us by surprise, I must admit.

That was... That was stunning.

The real change in The Who happened
when they played it live,

not from the album.

That's when The Who sound
really started to bed in.

# I'm free

# I'm free

# And I'm waiting for you
to follow me... #

Several things happened to me
at that time.

I was a Mod with curly hair,
which was worse than having the pox.

And my wife said to me,

"Why are you straightening
your hair? It's beautiful."

She said, "Just let it hang out."

And she, again,
gave me the confidence to do it.

So, I kind of gained
a different physical persona.

# I'm free

# I'm free

# And I'm waiting for you
to follow me... #

He was your archetypical rock star
of the '70s,

with his fringed jacket
and his long hair and his bare chest.

Roger was definitive in the role
and no-one will ever sing Tommy

the way Roger, you know, Daltrey did
and does.

The fact of suddenly realising,
"Oh, my God, we've got

"a rock god as a singer
and not just an annoying fucker

"who disagrees
with everything we say," you know?

It all added up to turning me
into the kind of rock star

that I became. Previous to that,
I was just another pop singer.

Daltrey sort of became the kind
of visual expression of Tommy.

The audience was watching Roger
singing Tommy as Tommy -

it was totally different.

# And I'm waiting for you
to follow me... #

Roger just became this figure
who was at the centre of things...

and it changed everything.

# How can we follow?
How can we follow? #

What we have to accept is that
what he's got a following for

is pretty bloody stupid.

You know, he's got a following,
again, it's metaphorical.

If he's a pinball champion,
it's just about as credible

and valid as somebody, you know,
having a huge following

for writing songs about boys
that wank over pictures

and smashing guitars.

So, you know,
it was quite close to home.

This is about pop culture,

and the people around him,
his pinball fans, see this

and they kind of go, "Wow, you know,
you were deaf, dumb and blind and

"now you're OK and you can see, and
you have this incredible freedom."

That's what his fans respond to

and they kind of go,
"We want what you've got."

He has all these followers and
they're basically in a holiday camp.

# Good morning, campers

# I'm your uncle Ernie and I welcome
you to Tommy's holiday camp

# The camp with a difference
Never mind the weather

# When you come to Tommy's
The holiday's forever... #

The wonderful thing about The Who,
of course,

was that what was
a fairly po-faced idea to begin with

and probably far too...

..far too serious, really,
to have worked for a rock band

was that, as we worked through it,

it got lighter and lighter
and lighter.

Keith Moon came up with the idea
that, instead of Tommy opening up

his home for hundreds
and hundreds of people,

that it would be a holiday camp.

# The camp with a difference
Never mind the weather

# When you come to Tommy's
The holiday's forever... #

So it was lighter and funnier
and more delightful.

Tommy finally turns to the people
around him

and says,
"Listen, this is really simple."

# Welcome... #

You know,
"If you really want what I've got,

"if you want what you THINK I've
got, then maybe you should just live

"the kind of experience
that I lived.

"Pretend to be deaf, dumb
and blind, you know,

"witness a few murders,
you know, do what I did.

"Do as I do
and you will end up where I am."

# Welcome to the camp
I guess you all know why we're here

# My name is Tommy
and I became aware this year

# If you want to follow me
You've got to play pinball

# And put in your earplugs

# Put on your eye shades

# You know where to put the cork... #

Woodstock was the thing
that changed The Who.

There was something
about the gathering of Woodstock

and the message of Tommy.

They all put it into this marvellous
kind of birth, really,

of The Who and Tommy in America,

and it made them legends, really,
that performance.

It broke The Who
definitely in America.

I mean, that's when
they really became an iconic band.

If you look at our gig book,
we're at 2,000- or 3,000-seaters,

but it went from that to 120,00O
overnight. It was ridiculous.

It was crazy.

# We're not gonna take it

# We're not gonna take it... #

Suddenly there was money
and everything, you know, fame,

and it elevated them completely.

And then that period of my life,

that was a bit difficult
to deal with.

One of the things
that I probably knew was that

if it was as successful
as I felt it might be,

it would challenge the life
that my wife and I hoped for.

It would challenge the life that
we were trying to create around us,

which was a very loving,
normal English life.

And it was very difficult to do that
in a band like The Who.

Nothing became real.

No-one was...
People started treating you...

It's not you that changes,

it's the people around you -
everybody, you know,

everyone treats you differently.
So you go, "What's going on?

"Cos I haven't changed,
I'm still me."

# We're not gonna take it

# We're not gonna take it

# We're not gonna take it

# We're not gonna take it

# We're not gonna take it

# Never did and never will... #

I think it's a human thing.

It's something that people do,

building our celebrities up
and then knocking them down.

What society does is it takes
what the charismatic

figure in society can give us, and
then runs with it and takes it away.

And this takes the form
of a kind of a rebellion,

and this is what happens to Tommy.

# See me

# Feel me... #

I started my journey as a fan,
my journey as somebody who was

looking to music and celebrity
and glamour...

..for something.

Where DO you find the answers
and how DO you grapple with them?

And what do you want from artists
or gurus or spiritual leaders?

You know, how much do you need to do
yourself?

Pretty much every great spiritual
leader in the history of humankind

has said, "You know, at the end of
the day look within your own heart."

"The master gravely shook his head

"and I knew that despite his
infinite wisdom, infinite power,

"infinite awareness, that he
WOULD not, COULD not tell me where

"to look or even what to look for.
I had to find the answer myself."

# Listening to you

# I get the music

# Gazing at you

# I get the heat-heat

# Following you

# I climb the mountain

# I get excitement at your feet... #

Everybody!

The prayer at the end is two-fold -

one, we hear Tommy remembering,

"See me, feel me,
touch me, heal me,"

and then going back on his flight,

"Listening to you,
I get the music,"

turning towards the universe
and praising her.

But, also, I get the sense, too...

..that this is the audience,
as well.

They're also singing "See me,
feel me, touch me, heal me."

They're also connecting
with what it is

that is the real fact of the matter.

They are a collection
of individuals,

and each individual
has to live his own life.

And each individual has
a relationship with the universe.

And so the end of Tommy
is about that, you know?

And I think, without having
read what Meher Baba said -

you know, you have to lose yourself
in order to find God,

and you have to lose yourself
in order to find your true self -

I don't think
I could have hit on it.

You could never wish
for a better ending to an album.

And it's about you -

and you, as a listener,

feel engaged and touched and moved.

And I think that's what Tommy did
for The Who more than anything.

It picked our audience up
from being...

...a pop band-loving audience,

and moved them into being,

"wow, this is more than that, there's
something else going on here."

# Listening to you

# I get the music

# Gazing at you

# I get the heat-heat

# Following you... #

We always had an idea that Tommy
was going to mean something.

You know, we liked the album

and we knew it was going
to be...kind of important.

People can find
more and more meanings in it,

and more and more levels of stuff

as they hear it again and again
and again.

You listen to Tommy now
and it moves you,

and it moves you because
the things he's writing about

are absolutely eternal.

He was, without question, a pioneer,

and I would say this is a
quintessentially important creation.

There was a feeling that it was
actually something that would last.

It's true, I think we had shifted.

At that point, the centre of gravity
had moved from popular culture,

from something
that was just throw-away

to something that really started
to mean something and had purpose.

The pre-Tommy Who, the '60s Who,

were a great gimmicky, clever,
intelligent pop band.

Post-Tommy,
The Who were heavy, serious rock,

up there amongst the top three.

Afterwards, for a period, probably
the top rock band in the world.

Pete's music will be performed
as the new classical music,

cos it's, in some ways,
classically structured,

and, lyric-wise and emotional-wise,

they're timeless,
and they always will be.

It does appear to be
the only topic of conversation

that we've had
for the past three years, erm...

so I'm fed up
with talking about it,

I'm certainly not fed up
with playing it.

As Bob Dylan so eloquently said
when he came to see Tommy

for the first time at the Filmore,

"I've got another appointment."

But Leonard Bernstein
got me by the shoulders

and said,
"Do you realise what you've done?!"

So, somewhere along the line,
I don't know.

# You feel me coming

# A new vibration

# From afar you'll see me

# I'm a sensation, I'm a sensation

# They worship me and all I touch

# Hazy-eyed,
they catch my glance... #

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