THE WHO TOMMY SONGS PLUS

The middle part of the story - the original album - is all you really need. The set's concert disc gathers 21 previously unreleased live recordings from the band's massive 1969 tour in support of 'Tommy.' They're mostly supplemental, completing the arc started with the spare demos. The album's key songs - 'Pinball Wizard,' 'Go to the Mirror!,' 'I'm Free' and the climatic 'We're Not Gonna Take It' - remain '60s milestones.

If parts of it come off showy and scattered, the Who's performances rarely are. Pepper''s challenge to give pop music some respectability was met with a truly operatic work that brought thousands of years of musical storytelling to a new realm. The original album still sounds like a watershed moment in rock history - when 'Sgt. Stripped of the group's ornamental settings, Townshend's spare demos - often just him and his acoustic guitar - give 'Tommy' a less epic scope, bringing the story of the deaf, dumb and blind kid to a more human level and leaving its messianic implications to the full-band recordings found on the remastered album, its new hi-def remix and the live versions found elsewhere on the box.

THE WHO TOMMY SONGS PLUS

The 25 songs that make up the second CD of this four-disc box (most of them Townshend's previously unreleased original album demos plus a studio outtake from the era) are the most revealing elements of a set that aims to be the definitive word on the subject. For another, its story actually followed a narrative that most concept records typically strayed from, if it even bothered with one in the first place.Īnd as the new 'Super Deluxe Edition' of 'Tommy' proves, Townshend pretty much had that narrative fully formed as he pulled together the demos for the band's landmark LP. For one thing, he called it a rock opera - itself a term of clashing styles and temperaments. Several, and many great ones, had been released by the time Townshend finished 'Tommy.' But his sprawling, double-album opus was different. Picture: Instagram Molly-Mae said in an Instagram story after the fight. These songs, which were being recorded at the time of the festival, were intended for an upcoming project known as Lifehouse. Rock concept albums were nothing new in 1969. What songs did Tommy Fury and Jake Paul use for their ring walks She shared a sweet tribute to Tommy after his win. By August 1970, Pete Townshend was already introducing new songs to the setlist including 'Water', 'I Don't Even Know Myself' and 'Naked Eye'.

The who tommy songs