The Who’s Tommy at the Lyric Theater

Last week I started working on a “blog meme” entitled “20 Albums”, the goal of which was to list 20 albums that “sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, or years.” I arranged my list chronologically, and the first album that appears on it is The Who’s Tommy.

Tommy had such a profound affect on me that I’m not even sure where to begin. I got my first record player around first or second grade and immediately started spending my allowance on singles. I could buy two records with a week’s allowance, which I often did, and before long I had amassed an impressive stack of 45s, mostly rock songs that were being played on the radio around that time (J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold”, Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll”, Queen’s “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions”, etc.) Around that same time, my parents started letting me borrow records from their collection to listen to as well, so while most of my classmates were listening to pop music of the era, I was listening to stuff like Queen’s “Live Killers”, Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland”, and Blondie’s “Parallel Lines”. Not that I didn’t listen to tons of pop music too, but musically the bar was set for me pretty high, pretty early.

One of the first (if not the first) albums I remember listening to was The Who’s Tommy. From a bird’s eye view I can see a younger me, sitting in the corner of my room on my old brown beanbag and holding my dad’s over sized headphones to my ears with my hands as The Who blasted Tommy’s story directly into my brain. The album’s jacket sits unfolded in my lap as I run my fingers over each picture from the movie, trying to figure out who each character was and which pictures went with what songs. That feeling of focusing on nothing but an incoming audio signal is a very powerful memory for me. If you ever see me in my car singing and/or screaming at the top of my lungs as the music blares and escapes through the vehicle’s cracks into the outside world, now you know what I’m reliving.

Tommy, for those of you who haven’t heard/seen/experienced it, was a concept album (and the first official “Rock Opera”) released by The Who in 1969, which was made into a movie in 1975 and a Broadway musical in the 1990s. Tommy is the story of the Walker family. In the opening, Captain Walker gets his wife Mrs. Walker pregnant shortly before going off to war. Captain Walker is captured, and presumed dead. Mrs. Walker delivers her baby Tommy the day the war ends, and gets remarried. Four years later, Captain Walker is rescued and returns home only to find his wife in bed with her new lover. In a fit of rage, Captain Walker then kills/is killed by Frank (depending on whether you’re listening to the album or watching the movie), an act that Tommy witnesses. The adults scream at Tommy “You didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it, you won’t say nothing to nobody,” and he doesn’t. Tommy is rendered “deaf, dumb and blind” after witnessing the murder. Before the end of the story Tommy is physically abused, molested by his uncle, given LSD, and subjected to multiple horrors before he eventually regains his senses, opens a camp, and starts his own cult, while his mom rolls around in beans and chocolate. Oh yeah, somewhere in the middle of all of this Tommy becomes the pinball champion of the world. (I know’s it’s weird; it was the late 60s.)

(“Tommy can you hear me?” “Not yet, come back in Act III.”)

This month, The Who’s Tommy came to Oklahoma City’s Lyric Theater. Susan managed to score two second-row tickets for the closing show — one ticket for me, one ticket for my dad. The show was Saturday, February 21st. When dad and I pulled up to the Lyric Theater, he smiled and said that years ago the building had been a movie theater — the exact movie theater he originally saw Tommy in, over three decades ago. It was an amazing coincidence.

And, it was an amazing experience. Watching the events of Tommy’s life unfold right in front of me was almost overwhelmingly emotional. It didn’t matter that the people were actors, or that most of them weren’t alive when Tommy was originally released. Getting to see the musical performed live was something I thought I’d never see — especially sitting there next to my dad, the person who introduced me to Tommy all those years ago. It was very moving.

The band, while not The Who, was actually very good, as were most of the performers. The main four characters (Tommy, Captain Walker, Mrs. Walker, and Uncle Ernie) were played by Broadway talent, while the rest of the cast consisted of University of Oklahoma Theater students. The worst thing either of us had to say was that the girl who played “The Acid Queen”, while still very good, did not have quite the same vocal range as Tina Turner (who played the Acid Queen in the film). Of course, for those of you playing along, here’s what a Venn diagram of that situation looks like:

(Is Venn diagram humor funny? It is to me, perhaps sadly.)

While the Broadway talent was of course excellent, I have to say that Jason Grauerholz’s performance as Cousin Kevin was fantastic. Dad and I both thought for sure he must’ve been one of the Broadway performers, but he’s actually one of the local performers! Also, I was surprised to find out the show was choreographed by Oklahoma’s own Amy Reynolds-Reed, whom I graduated with from Yukon High School back in 1991. The dancing and choreography were terrific; it wouldn’t surprise me to see Amy’s name on Broadway someday herself.

Dad’s review of the production was only one line (“One hell of a show!”) and I couldn’t agree more.