Pete interview in Denver Post

[thewho rocks <leb905@yahoo.com>]

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,78%257E312976,00.html?search=filter

'60s' 'Tommy' still speaks to young

Townshend opera anthem for rebels

                    By John Moore 
                    Denver Post Theater Critic

Sunday, January 06, 2002 - When Pete Townshend created a deaf,
dumb and blind pinball wizard turned Messiah, he was just a kid who
was bored by the limitations of three-chord rock music and felt like
fiddling. 

But when his band the Who performed the concept record "Tommy" live in
its entirety at Woodstock, it became the world's first instant
supergroup, and his self-proclaimed "wonky" concept opera went on to
find an essential nesting place in both rock and musical theater
history. 

"Tommy" was written in 1969, brought to the screen by Ken Russell in
1975 and converted to the stage by Townshend and Des McAnuff in 1993. 

Townshend remains the only rock star to successfully write a rock
opera that has worked as a piece of musical theater. The landscape is
dotted with those who have tried but failed, among them Paul Simon
("The Capeman") and Jimmy Buffett ("Don't Stop the Carnival," an
adaptation of Herman Wouk's novel). 

"Tommy" worked musically because it is a complex and substantial
work, but with a backbone of infectious pop songs such as "I'm Free,"
"Pinball Wizard," "Sensation" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" that lend
themselves to lavish stage choreography. Presented live, it is a
brazen, loud stage spectacular with very little spoken dialogue and
choral numbers that are enhanced by the sheer number of ensemble
voices. 

"The Who's Tommy" will be performed Wednesday through Saturday at the
Buell Theatre with Michael Seelbach in the title role.

Though the stage world would be wise to give the Frank Zappa epic
"Joe's Garage" a try, (it is a story set in a totalitarian future where
music
is outlawed to control the population), the most recent comparison to
"Tommy" would be the lukewarm stage version of "Hedwig and the Angry
Inch," which was not written by a rock musician but is nevertheless a
true rock musical. 

"I saw "Hedwig' (live) and I didn't like it, but I think it is
successful artistically," said Townshend, who, for this tour, consented
to consider e-mailed questions from a panel of three pre-selected
reporters. 

"Hedwig' does do what Tommy does - to some extent - which is to use a
single character to carry the entire weight of a tortured slice of
society." 

The 56-year-old Townshend believes "Tommy" has endured simply
because people relate to the (rather sketchy) story of a young boy
who is traumatized at an early age but finds Christlike redemption in
his pinball prowess. In truth, "Tommy" is a literate, thoughtful - and
yes, wonky - commentary on the psychological damage Townshend
saw as prevalent in post-World War II England. 

""Let's face it, Tommy's mother and father are typical of immediate
post-war parents," Townshend said. "They are romantic, war-torn,
lonely and vulnerable. They are also capable of being fairly cold and
somewhat selfish. Thus, people who grew up in my time identify
strongly with the piece on that level alone. 

"It has held up well over the years because the societal mores of my
childhood were so deeply ingrained by two world wars, and we were
all in such denial about our psychological damage for so long." 
"Tommy" in all its various forms has always drawn a pendulum of
reaction, which still amuses Townshend. He had a favorable impression
of Russell's film, which featured the Who's lead singer Roger Daltrey
as Tommy and the Oscar-nominated Ann-Margret as his mother. It was
hailed by some as brilliant and dismissed as incomprehensible by
others. 

"Ken Russell made a movie of my "opera,' " Townshend said. "It is, like
any opera, absurd and exaggerated in places. But it is a wonderful
British film. A curio, in some respects." 

Though the '93 stage adaptation has been well-received by the
theater community, Townshend took criticism from rock critics for
changes he made for it. The song order, for example, was slightly
rearranged to lead to a more understandable storyline. Townshend
also felt a need to tone down some of the absurdity in Russell's film. 

"Des and I concentrated on fixing the time-frame and the family,"
Townshend said. "The setting is still capable of some contemporary
resonance, but it no longer needs to be so broad . . . (In the film),
post-war Britain looked rather silly. Des took it more seriously." 
Russell only showed the alcoholism and drug addiction in Tommy's
family on the fringes. "In the play, we had to deal with this head-on,"
Townshend said. "It would be insane to go into parody, comedy or
any approach to satisfy the intellectuals now. I have had thousands
of letters from people abused as children who found "Tommy' allowed
them for the first time to acknowledge the reality of their own "small'
problems. I have also heard from hundreds of recovering alcoholics
and addicts that they see the story as that of a textbook self-obsessed
addict." 

Though "Tommy" has been written off as often as it has been written
of, it continues to resonate specifically with young people because of
its inherent rebellion, as well as history's tendency to repeat itself.

"I would like to think that 12- to 17-year-olds listening to "nu-metal'
are now free from the echoes of the damage and denial that ravages
families over many generations of heroism, futility and apparently
pointless death," Townshend said. "But I suspect these kids are
smarter than to believe they will get away with it. It sometimes seems
to me they invite the drama." 

Townshend's lyrics have often spoken directly to the angst of young
men ("See Me, Feel Me"), but he admits as he gets older he
understands kids, and Americans in general, less and less. 
"Along with its friendliness, generosity and courage, America has a
streak of isolated cowardice that runs so deeply through its psyche it
is hard to analyze," Townshend said. "It is, of course, exemplified by
the glorification of the handgun. In my business, musicians who sing
about the "valor' of drive-by shootings are obviously not quite getting
it. I'm certain that some of the huge blokes I see on MTV would be
perfectly capable of singing about beating my brains out by hand, but
they choose instead to sing about the glory of shooting me from the
safety of an armored car and then running away as fast as they can.
Long distance, unemotional. Detached. Cool, not cold. 

"Their threats are empty and valueless, based on no thesis other than
they have come to take from their neighbor. 

"They are, after all, only singing. When they actually shoot, they
shoot each other. When kids bring guns to school they are guilty of a
single minor misdemeanor. I call it "American School Bullying.' Take
away the gun and you have a regular yob who will grow up with a
chip on his shoulder and start a successful rock band. You people
must get rid of handguns in your daily lives." 

Townshend has backed off from daily involvement with various tours
of "Tommy," saying the tinkering he undertook in 1993 was it from
him. But he was particularly pleased with the recently restored movie
version on DVD, which includes a completely re-made, five-channel
track for Dolby Digital. 

"It is extraordinary," he said. "It is incredible to hear how much
better the movie works when the music - and there is no dialogue at all
- is properly balanced. And as the very first ever true 5.1 project
(conceived as "Quintaphonic" by John Mosely of London's Command
Studios), it will go down in history." 

Townshend is concentrating again on the Who, which will tour the
U.S. next summer. 

"We're playing the old stuff, as usual," he said. "We have some
recording planned, planned, but I am still scribbling away at
"concepts.' These are of course what other writers call "treatments'
or "novels' or "short stories.' I am stuck with "concepts.' 

"Never mind . . . I make a profit."



=====
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