Was ‘Tommy’ from The Who’s 1969 album based on a real person?
In May 1969, The Who transformed from a noisy British invasion group to rock’s first opera stars. Their 75-minute double album Tommy was years in the making, but it paid off, going double platinum in the US and serving as the band’s pioneering contribution to the burgeoning hard rock genre.
Spanning 24 songs covering a coherent narrative thread, the LP tells the story of a “deaf, dumb and blind boy” stuck “in a quiet vibration land” due to his physical disabilities. He’s the eponymous Tommy of the album title, named after the nickname in Britain for army soldiers during World War Two.
For the songwriter behind the album Pete Townshend, the war plays a central role in the fictional Tommy’s struggles. “Tommy was suffering the result of his parents being brutalised by the fact that they fell in love during a war,” Townshend explained in a 1993 interview with Wayne Robins. It’s almost as though Tommy has inherited the emotionally dissociative state his parents’ generation were forced into by the war in physical terms through the non-functioning of his senses.
As if the adversities he’s born with aren’t enough, Tommy then has to go through the horrors of being tortured by his cousin Kevin and sexually abused by his uncle Ernie in John Entwhistle’s disturbing composition ‘Fiddle About’.
When things seem at their worst, though, Tommy discovers that he has superpower of sorts. A natural talent for the arcade game pinball. The song which reveals this talent, ‘Pinball Wizard’, has become one of The Who’s most recognisable songs.
Through his miracle ability with the “silver ball” and his decision to take a stand for himself, Tommy becomes a messianic figure, gathering a group of followers behind him. The story culminates in the epic two-part finale ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, in which the heroic protagonist casts off his traumas and accepts the “glory” coming his way.
But whose life inspired Tommy’s story?
There are two main inspirations for Townshend’s depiction of Tommy. The first is his own life as a child of post-war Britain and the “decaying neglect” he felt from his parents. “You always felt you were in the chorus,” he explained to Robins, using a musical metaphor. “That you weren’t one of the principal players in your family.”
Worse still, the episode Tommy suffers at the hands of Uncle Ernie was based on a real experience of Townshend’s childhood. “I was tickled by this friend of my father until I thought I would die,” he recalled, “and I started screaming hysterically. He was a bit drunk and didn’t realise it.” While nothing explicitly sexual took place, there’s certainly something deeply unsettling about Townshend’s recollection.
The second inspiration for Tommy is far removed from Townshend’s own childhood experiences. It’s the Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba, whom he followed devotedly at the time he wrote the album. In fact, he dedicates Tommy to Meher Baba in the album’s gatefold.
Meher Baba believed himself to be an avatar for God on earth, elected to remain silent from the age of 29, not speaking a word until his death, as a reflection of humanity’s ignorance towards the teachings of God. “One should approach me as if deaf, dumb and blind,” the spiritual figurehead once wrote in his text ‘Absent When He Knocks’. “Only he who turns a deaf ear to others, speaks of no one else and sees no one else can remain absorbed in God!”
Townshend transferred the esoteric teachings of this mystical guru onto the character of Tommy. His lack of sensory awareness becomes the key to his supernatural ability and his role as a messianic leader.
The songwriter claims to have heard the voice of God when coming up with the idea for the album in a Holiday Inn. In any case, he certainly gave an authentic voice to his make-believe hero, who turns his suffering into a cause with which “millions” can identify. The millions who bought his record, at least.
