The classic concept album Lou Reed slated as “philosophically boring”
While the concept album might seem like the most obvious development for a full-length LP – to curate the material into a linked sonic tapestry or novelistic work like most media that came before it – owing to the way modern technology and pop culture arose alongside each other, this was not necessarily the case. The reason is evidenced by this archival article from 1929: “Gramophone records are a very expensive item, and the music-lover who is not particularly rich must often survey his small and slowly growing collection with feelings of pain”.
Radios, however, were far more commonplace and affordable. This meant that early pop music – music for the people – was predominantly single-based and radio-friendly. Moreover, they were usually only two minutes long so that DJs could talk more and establish their own careers. Thus, turning a simple song into a long, over-arching album and shunning the immediacy of popular tropes was a no-go if you wanted to be successful (which, during the Great Depression, you most certainly wanted to be).
This was amplified further by the advent of 7-inch singles, which first arrived over 70 years ago in 1949. Now, even Gramophone records were quick school-yard-swappable single-oriented. However, these kids got older, and they couldn’t listen to wham, bam, two-minute blasts forever. They wanted something with a bit more substance for a change. These youngsters had grown up in the wake of World War II and all the nuclear panic that came along with it. Flippant, upbeat 45s didn’t match the uncertain zeitgeist.
Pete Townshend knew this more than most. “I was the child of the guy who played saxophone in a post-war dance band. He knew what his music was for – it was for post-war and it was for dancing with a woman that you might end up marrying. It was about romance, dreams, fantasy,” he told Apple Music.
With riots running rampant, Presidents being assassinated, and the world looking for direction amid an explosion of pop culture, he set about a new type of song. “Music, even today, is about much more than that. It has a function, which is to help us understand what is going on in the world and to help us understand what is going on inside us, so the purpose and the duty of somebody who makes music is very different to the way it used to be. […] And I think I was the first to articulate that and try to explain it.”
Lou Reed figures he wasn’t the first, and moreover, he articulated it in a manner that was ”profoundly talentless”. The Velvet Underground frontman had his own unique ideals about music—mostly that it should reflect the world with a literary truth. The gritty New Yorker shone a spotlight on the underbelly of bohemia, refused to prettify it and adorned it with an avant-garde sound borne from a desire to reflect the world in a musically innovative fashion.
In his view, Tommy didn’t do this. In his view, the classic 1969 album by The Who was ”talentless” and ”philosophically boring to say the least”. His cutting decree in Creem saw him tear apart the concept album, seemingly figuring it was just a stupid extension of the hippie fad rather than anything of timeless truth or substance. As he adds, ”like the record ‘The Searcher’; ‘I aski Timothy Leary…’ I wouldn’t ask Timothy Learty the time of day, for crying out loud”.
As it happens, the song is actually called ‘The Seeker’, and it didn’t even feature on Tommy. However, you suspect that both of these facts weren’t lost on the wry Lou Reed, whose purposeful inaccuracies serve as a further insult. To him, the album was a flippant flash of pretence, and ”how people got sucked into that”, he couldn’t understand.
What was the meaning of Tommy?
The message behind The Who’s rock opera Tommy was heavily based on the teachings of Indian spiritualist Meher Baba (1894-1969). The concept of Tommy, the story of a deaf, dumb and blind pinball champion, therefore, closely mirrors Meher Baba’s idea of awakening to a higher realm. Meher Baba’s message was that the goal of life was to realise the absolute oneness of God, a presence from whom the universe emanates as an unconscious whim, materialised into conscious divinity. In turn, to reflect his own teachings, Meher Baba lived in silence for the final 44 years of his life. The muteness of Tommy as a character reflects this.
As Pete Townshend told Rolling Stone back in 1969 upon its release, “Tommy’s real self represents the aim – God – and the illusory self is the teacher; life, the way, the path and all this. The coming together of these are what make him aware. They make him see and hear and speak so he becomes a saint who everybody flocks to.” The offshoot of this was that Tommy as, a character, experienced the world through the vibrations of a pinball machine, which would figuratively be reflected in the vibrations of music.
Lou Reed thought this was stupid, untrue and The Who should’ve stuck to two-minute wham-bam hits in the first place. If they were to reflect any spiritual virtue in their music, then it ought to have been the silent side of Meher Baba’s practices. But as a spiritual fellow once said, ‘That’s just, like, his opinion, man’. There are some folks out there who think it encapsulates the 1960s, perhaps why Reed was so disdainful towards it.
