Record Review

By Douglas Watt

Rock Opera

The other night, I put "Tommy the Who" on the phonograph and sat back in a mood of pleasant anticipation. "Tommy the Who" is a fancily packaged Decca set of two long-playing records devoted to an "opera by Peter Townshend" and my interest was aroused because it promised to be the first rock opera, and I was curious to see if this was the breakthrough.

It isn't. "Tommy the Who," whose folder is almost startlingly devoid of credits, is a collection of fairly ordinary rock numbers strung to a "libretto" that suggests the story of a young man in the 1920's who is misunderstood by his parents and practically everybody else, runs afoul of evil people and eventually becomes a kind of pinball-playing deity.

Since it doesn't make much sense and since most of the "roles" seem to be sung by the same person, to a rock band accompaniment, it is difficult to understand how "Tommy the Who"--an English production, by the way--got here in the first place.