By Paul Loader

Don’t ask me how he did it, but one of my band of 14 year old mates managed to get tickets for the premier night of the 1975 rock opera ‘Tommy’ at the Bristol Odeon in Broadmead. Not that we knew it was the premier night of course, and we must have looked well out of place sat between the dinner jackets and bow ties, dressed all in our best denim jackets and basket ball boots. Perhaps they thought we had been invited as local rock stars or something (fat chance).

Mind you, that wasn’t the only thing we were unaware of. What the film was all about was also unknown to us and I remember sitting there wondering when the hell the music would stop and somebody would say something.

Well of course I was blissfully unaware that ‘Tommy’ was an opera and people don’t talk in operas, they sing.

The brain child of rock icons ‘The Who’, Tommy had originally been penned as an early concept album. Now it had been put onto the big screen by indie director Ken Russell.

The plot has several very large messianic themes, which revolve around Tommy a man made deaf, dumb and blind when as a boy he witnesses the murder of his father by his step father. In his silent world he discovers pinball, which eventually takes him to stardom.

When he falls through a mirror following an encounter with his mother who tried to gain his attention by rolling in baked beans (it was a Ken Russell film after all) he regains his senses and from there he sets up a cult that encourages his disciples to cover their eyes, plug their ears and mouth and play pinball as a path to enlightenment.

Of course it all ends in tears. The disciples revolt and the film ends with Tommy, silhouetted in a huge sunset, arms stretched towards the heavens.

It all sounds rather pompous I now, and as 14 year old it lost me completely. However, don’t let that put you off as musically, theatrically and film wise it’s got some great moments.

The film begins with the father played by a young Robert Powell, stood in that sunset stretching his arms to the heavens, just as Tommy (played by the Who’s Roger Daltrey) does at the end the film.

Dad has to go off to war, but not before impregnating Tommy’s mother (Ann-Margret) and promptly gets killed. Tommy is born. Mum remarries (to a brilliant over acting Oliver Reed). Dad returns from the dead, he had been missing in action not actually killed after all. Mind you, the resurrection theme is kind of fitting given the messianic themes of the film and it is also ironic that 2 years later Robert Powell raises from the dead rather triumphantly again when he played Jesus in Frano Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth. And poor old Rob got the same treatment as he did from Oliver Reed. They killed him. 

The child Tommy witnesses the whole thing and is struck deaf, dumb and blind. 

Classic moments from ‘Tommy’ are a young ‘Paul Nicolas’ performing ‘We’re on our own cousin’, and beating the crap out of ‘Daltrey’. ‘Keith Moon’ as Tommy’s ‘Evil Uncle Ernie’ makes your skin crawl as he ‘fiddled about’, the themes of abuse being rampant in Tommy covering  all the basis from physical, sexual, emotional and neglect as his parents ‘dump’ him on an ever increasing array of weirdoes and perverts. 

Oliver Reed could not sing to save his life, however he makes a brave attack at it as he drags the hapless Tommy to a variety of doctors (Jack Nicholson) and alternative therapists (Tina Turner playing an outrageous drugs therapist – by that it would appear they meant drug crazed lunatic). 

However, things move briskly on and Tommy discovers pinball and probably one of the most famous songs from the film ‘Pinball Wizard’ when Tommy goes against pinball champion Elton John, and of course trounces him. 

‘I’m Free’ is another iconic song from the film when Tommy regains his senses and runs like a lunatic through a badly overlaid landscape of scenery and situations, (hey it was 1975, they didn’t do CGI back then), calling people to share in his new found freedom. The most striking image being two gangs of snarling Hells Angels hell bent on killing each other and Tommy flying over them on a hang glider calling for peace. Jesus with the Sermon on the Mount anyone? 

Tommy’s rise or decent into cult icon is underlined by Oliver Reed selling the commune that Tommy aspires to in much the same way as he was selling a holiday camp at the beginning of the film. Keith Moon belting round on a Wurlitzer organ on wheels accentuates the campness and sideshow aspect of it all. 

The disciples realising that they have been conned, not so much by Tommy, but by his lieutenants, who included his stepfather run riot and smash the place up and the film ends with the beautiful lament of ‘Hear me, see me, feel me’ as ‘Tommy’ cries out to be understood and reaches to the heavens. 

It’s a touching tale of a man that has been abused all his life and even when he reaches so called enlightenment he is still used by those that claim to love him. 

You can see why as 14 year olds me and the boy ‘Bassbin’ were totally mystified by all of this. However, as more mature adults (okay, forget the mature bit, just older) the qualities of the film become more apparent and merit repeat viewing.  

It is also a fantastic film to watch on a Friday night with a beer and a takeaway. Just don’t expect to the get the image of ‘Uncle Ernie’, draped in women’s underwear, rubber tubing, his best flashing Mac and reading a copy of the ‘Gay Times’ out of your head for the rest of the night that’s all.