The Who song inspired by a shocking encounter with Jim Morrison
Smashing up your guitars and lining bass drums with explosives is an enticing quirk, but an artist must establish creative nuance to contend in the long game. Where The Rolling Stones dominated blues-rock and The Beatles embraced psychedelia, The Who found its identity in storytelling, thanks to Townshend’s insatiable appetite for fantasy fiction. ‘My Generation’ turned the eyes, but Townshend’s famous rock operas kept the show on the road.
During a 2023 interview with Far Out, the guitarist discussed his new graphic novel, Life House, which finally tied up the loose ends of a long-abandoned rock opera. The project was audacious, to say the least, and was ultimately shelved, with fragments of its musical material contributing to the 1971 masterpiece album Who’s Next. Although Who’s Next is a solid favourite among fans, it reminds Townshend of a failed follow-up to 1969’s Tommy.
As far as Townshend is concerned, his greatest contributions to rock music were his completed rock operas, Tommy and Quadrophenia. The former was a major breakthrough for The Who and satiated Townshend’s desire to blend the mystical with the painfully real. The story revolves around a “deaf, dumb and blind” child called Tommy Walker, who endures much hardship on his way to becoming a widely adored spiritual leader and rock star. “It is so successful and so far-reaching and is probably deeper in meaning than most critics allow,” Townshend reflected, picking the album out as a favourite from his own oeuvre in a 2007 interview with JamBase.
Spread across two LPs and 75 minutes, Tommy is full of intriguing sonic and thematic ideas. On Side Four, the song’ Sally Simpson’ is one of the album’s tightest narrative pieces. It tells the story of Sally, who is infatuated with Tommy. Despite her parents’ wishes, she sneaks out to one of Tommy’s shows, where she finds herself at the front of the audience. “Sally just had to let him know she loved him / And lept up on the rostrum / She ran across stage to the spotlit figure / And brushed him on the face / Tommy whirled around as a uniformed man / Threw her off the stage,” the lyrics detail.
Tragically, Sally is left with a nasty injury after her scuffle with security and recedes from her infatuation in humiliation. “Her cheek hit a chair and blood trickled down / Mingling with her tears / Tommy carried on preaching / And his voice filled Sally’s ears / She caught his eye, she had to try / But he couldn’t see through the lights / Her face was gashed, and the ambulance men / Had to carry her out that night,” the lyrics add later in the song.
As it happens, Townshend was inspired by real events when writing ‘Sally Simpson’. In 1968, The Who toured in America and joined the bill with The Doors, who had broken through in 1967 with their eponymous debut album, for an evening at the Singer Bowl, Queens. During one performance, Jim Morrison became one of several people who inspired Tommy Walker. “The event actually was taken from The Doors in a concert where I did actually see a kid rush up and try and touch God, Jim Morrison, and get hurled off by a policeman and a metal chair leg go right through her cheek,” Townshend once recalled, detailing the events behind ‘Sally ‘Simpson’.
The Who guitarist continued, revealing how, like in the song, the girl was taken away crying out the name of her messiah. “The point of Sally Simpson is that the kid has really missed the point about Tommy,” Townshend added. “She’s built him into the wrong thing. She hasn’t realised why it’s good, for example, to go and hear him speak, because of what she can gain from it – She is not religiously selfish enough, as it were. She’s built him into too much. Whereas what he’s trying to do is give… even to a degree, he’s not even trying to do that. He’s slightly confused by the whole thing.”
It is fitting that Jim Morrison inspired the story of Sally Simpson’s brush with Tommy Walker. The late rock star was built up in the hearts of thousands of young Americans as a messianic figure. As The Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek once said, Morrison “embodied hippie counterculture rebellion” for many. Like the story of Sally Simpson, his struggle with fame and subsequent death underscored the pitfalls of icon worship.
