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Re: Pinball Wizard An Embarrassment?

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 16:26:00 -0500
From: "Kevin O'Neal" <kevinandt@gmavt.net>


"Pinball Wizard", and the concept of having Tommy become a pinball master,

is an essential part of both the album and its success.

Well, yes, obviously.  That's why I wrote that "it paid off".
Which you disapprove of. You think Tommy's success was purchased at the price of abandoning Pete's artistic vision and the album's internal coherence.

 >Without pinball, Tommy's a much less interesting one-note linear story of a
wounded child who is eventually healed.

Well, yes again.  But, you're presuming that pinball couldn't be exchanged
with some other thing that we experience and appreciate in our lives.
But you don't know what that other thing might be. More to the point, you weren't there to suggest anything, so Pete had to go with who and what was at hand at the time. I say that even if it's DOES seem "out of place", for want of a better phrase, with the rest of the album, the album is better with the pinball-champ thread than without. And given The Who's and Pete's wicked sense of fun, as well documented on The Who Sell Out, I think it appealed to him.

 >He was doing it to masturbate Nik Cohn, if anyone. The masses came (heh)
later.

Good one! But, that's not so.  How can you gear something toward one person
without weighing the reception by the masses?
True, but I don't see the problem. If the album isn't a success, The Who fails to exist. So he HAD to make it appeal to the buying public, and a necessary part of that was getting a good review from the critics.

You apparently think Pete bought Tommy's success by prostituting his vision. Even if that's true, by doing so he cemented their financial success enough that he could write Quad exactly the way he wanted to, and in the process created a better product. I think we're down to "there's no accounting for taste". The pinball thread in Tommy doesn't bother me, but I too think Quad is a better overall work than Tommy. FWIW.

 >And if he HADN'T added in pinball (or something equivalent), there's a
serious question whether the masses would have given a monkey's about Tommy.
And if >the masses hadn't bought Tommy in truckloads, The Who would have
ceased to exist in the late '60s and we'd have nothing but The Stones to
talk about.

But, but....*that's* my whole point!
But, again, same presumption as above (something equivalent).
And, now that truckloads of people have been diddled by pinball, they are
wet for the wonders of the world's first rock opera.
That's what struck me first.  That's what blew me away.
I rarely if ever played pinball, didn't give a fuck about pinball, yet Tommy
immediately struck me as a worldly important piece of music that blew
*everything* before it away.  Pinball was and is totally irrelevant to the
quality of the album.
Now, looking back from a historical perspective, it detracts.
Nik's specific complaint was that the whole work, without pinball, seemed too dark. I don't dispute that Pete was probably more interested in the story of an individual's struggle toward enlightenment than in how s/he deals with public adoration. Think of Tommy as a joint work by Pete and Cohn, if it helps, which allowed The Who's career to continue and made all subsequent pure-Pete compositions possible. Think of Pinball Wizard as the price you have to pay to get Quad.

What's interesting, is that once "famous" from Thomas, I can't think of
another album or song that uses this sort of public diddling.
I presume you mean "another Who album or song." For one, I'd suggest "Squeeze Box". When you work as hard as Pete does at writing the deep songs, it's got to be a relief to just blow one off once in a while. But there aren't many.

Funny how fame releases the artist from the shackles of blatant cow-towing
(mooo?) to the public.
"Kow-towing".

1) I don't believe in an inherent conflict between artistic vision and commercial success.

2) Many who achieve fame by pandering to public lowest-common-denominator go right on pandering to it to maintain their fame. (Not that I put Pete/The Who in this category.)

Cheers,
--
Alan
"That's unbelievable, if that's true"
-- Howard Stern, 5/25/00