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Tommy by The Who (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Tommy
  • Group name: The Who
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Decca Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “Goldstein” is written on the inside spines of the album and on the LPs, as with another iconic double album from the same era, the Grateful Dead’s Skull Fuck.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $37.99

Tommy by The Who

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I didn’t grow up knowing who The Who were or what Tommy was[1], though in high school I did understand that it was a musical[2] beloved by “artistic” types. It was only in college that I fell in love with The Who and, since then, have listened to Tommy a few hundred times, and even watched the movie[3].

This is my fourth review of a record by The Who, and the previous three were:

What I expected

Tommy.

What it was actually like

My favorite songs from side one were Amazing Journey and The Hawker.

Side two was my least favorite, with a particular dislike for The Acid Queen and Cousin Kevin. Those parts in the opera were also pretty traumatic.

My favorite songs from side three were Pinball Wizard, Go to the Mirror! and Tommy Can You Hear Me?.

My favorite songs from side four were Sally Simpson, We’re Not Gonna Take It and I’m Free, which is the best song on the record.

Tommy’s Holiday Camp is also one of the most Oompa Loompa songs in existence.

I love this record, but am prepared to die on the hill that the hard rock versions that they performed live in the early 1970s, particularly on Live at Leeds (which, I may add, is a desert island record for me), blew the studio version away. See what I mean?

Grade

5/5: love it

References

References
↑1 “He doesn’t know who J*sus was or what praying is.”
↑2 Actually an opera.
↑3 I can still recall exactly the first time I learned about the existence of Tommy the movie. It was June 2000 and I was home from college for the summer. I had spent the evening with friends, came back after midnight, and was flipping through the channels on the television in my parents’ family room, which is something that people used to do to pass the time before youtube and tickety tock. I stopped flipping when I reached that scene, as perplexed and as appalled and as intrigued as Ignatius at the Prytania. Wikipedia did not exist yet, and 2000 Google was not like 2023 Google, so I could not figure out right away what it actually was, but once I did figure it out, I was immediately a fan.

The Story of The Who (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Story of The Who
  • Group name: The Who
  • Year: 1976
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Polydor Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: I think I bought this one!
  • Buy it on Amazon: $8.99

The Story of The Who

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

My recollection is that I probably bought this record around 2000, probably at a used record store on East Gude Drive in Rockville, Maryland.

That, however, was exactly what I thought about Hooligans, when I reviewed it last summer.

Did I actually buy two double-album compilations by the Who at the same record store – which I do not believe that I visited more than once – which would hardly make any sense? Or could I have picked up one of these records at a different time and place? I have no idea, but I do think it’s unlikely that either of my parents would have bought either of these compilations.

At any rate, I know most of the songs on it, but I have no clear memory of ever listening to it, and may only have played it once or twice after buying it (and leaving it in my parents’ basement with their record collection, since I never owned a turntable until my parents gave me theirs).

What I expected

This is four sides of the Who, and I expect to love it because the songs are weighted much more heavily towards their better music: sides one and two are pre-Tommy, side three is material from Tommy and side four looks like Who’s Next and Live at Leeds.

What it was actually like

This was a phenomenally great compilation, because the Who were a phenomenally great band, and it would be difficult to make a bad compilation of their work, except by focusing on whatever they were doing in the mid 1970s and later. It was far better than Hooligans.

Live at Leeds, however, remains the greatest Who record, and the greatest live rock record, and one of the greatest records ever made, and anyone who wants to listen to the Who at their best should go straight to it – with the understanding that it unfortunately came before Who’s Next, so necessarily leaves out songs like Baba O’Riley (that would not have sounded good on a live record, anyway). It still includes lots of songs from Tommy, though.

As for this one, though, here is the order of excellence of the four sides: two, one, four, three.

And here is how I ranked each song by excellence, within each side:

Side one

  1. My Generation
  2. Heat Wave
  3. Substitute
  4. Magic Bus (this version did not sound familiar to me, but it was good)
  5. Boris The Spider
  6. I’m A Boy
  7. Run, Run, Run

Side two

  1. Pictures of Lily
  2. Squeeze Box (I have always loved the banjo in this song)
  3. I Can See For Miles
  4. Happy Jack
  5. Bargain
  6. The Seeker

Side three

  1. We’re Not Gonna Take It
  2. I’m Free
  3. Amazing Journey
  4. Pinball Wizard
  5. Do You Think It’s Alright?
  6. The Acid Queen
  7. Fiddle About
  8. Tommy’s Holiday Camp

Side four

  1. Summertime Blues (this was the version from Live at Leeds)
  2. Baba O’Riley
  3. Won’t Get Fooled Again
  4. Behind Blue Eyes
  5. Slip Kid

Grade

5/5: love it

Hooligans by The Who (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Hooligans
  • Group name: The Who
  • Year: 1981
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: MCA Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: I think I bought this one!
  • Buy it on Amazon: $10.99

Hooligans by The Who

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve been a fan of the Who for decades, and I’m pretty sure that this record was part of my parents’ collection because I bought it and left it in their basement (as I never owned a turntable until my parents gave me theirs when they moved). It’s a compilation and I know most of the songs on it, especially the earlier songs, but I don’t have any clear memory of ever listening to it.

What I expected

Four sides of The Who, but focusing much more on their 1970s era music than on their earlier eras.

What it was actually like

If you name your band “the Who,” you’re obviously doing it for the puns, and for other people to use a lot of puns about you. In this case, the name of the record, “Hooligans,” is an obvious example, and then to take it a step further, they even named the four sides “First Bunch of Hooligans,” “Second Bunch…,” &c.

First Bunch of Hooligans

This was the most varied and excellent side, covering a very small sampling of their Maximum R&B era (I Can’t Explain), extending through the “Tommy” era (Pinball Wizard) and “Live at Leeds”[1] (Summertime Blues). I have always loved the Who’s reinterpretation of Summertime Blues as a hard rock song.

The Relay was the only song I didn’t already know, and also the only song I didn’t enjoy.

Second Bunch of Hooligans

It’s just four songs from Who’s Next (Baba O’Riley, Behind Blue Eyes, Bargain and The Song Is Over), so it might be easier just to read what I wrote when I listened to it last month.

Third Bunch of Hooligans

Slip Kid is an astonishingly bad song, and in fact, this is really the era of the Who that I enjoy much less, and I know very little about it – as far as I’m concerned, there was redeeming value in “Quadrophenia,” but so much of their work from the mid 1970s was highly questionable.

Join Together and Squeeze Box are both good, but I have a difficult time listening to Squeeze Box because it’s so over the top. The Real Me was also all right.

Fourth Bunch of Hooligans

I did not like side four of this double LP.

Who Are You is annoying, but doesn’t really bother me, except that it’s somehow treated as one of the Who’s better known and/or more important songs, but all three other songs – Drowned, Had Enough and Sister Disco were abysmal. Rock bands should not play disco music, period. And with extremely rare exceptions, such as “Who’s Next,” they should just avoid any and all techno music.

I really wish The Who had retired after “Quadrophenia.”

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 “Live at Leeds” is a desert island record for me, and that was probably what I was listening to on repeat, on the CD player in my mother’s Volvo, around the time that I bought “Hooligans.” I’m guessing it would have been around summer 2000, at the used record store around East Gude Drive in Rockville.

Who’s Next by The Who (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Who’s Next
  • Group name: The Who
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Decca Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it:

Who's next by The Who

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve been a fan of the Who since college, and this is one of the few records from my parents’ collection to which I listened more than once in the basement of their house around that time.

What I expected

A couple of iconic songs, a couple of pretty good songs, and some filler.

What it was actually like

The opening of “Who’s Next” is a classic moment of classic rock, permanently seared into the memory of generations of young men – and probably some women, too, though I haven’t known many female fans of the Who. It was in that moment that the group who invented the highly idiosyncratic “Maximum R&B” in the early 1960s, and then helped to invent hard rock and the antecedents to heavy metal in the late 1960s, proceeded to give the world the precursor of techno music in the early 1970s. And if only the rest of techno music had sounded anything like Baba O’Riley, popular music in 2022 might be a lot better than it actually is. Alas.

I’ve always wondered whether I like Won’t Get Fooled Again or Baba O’Riley better, and I like them both a great deal; the other hit on this record is Behind Blue Eyes, and I used to be a big fan of it too, but I’ve never been able to hear it the same way after seeing Pete Townshend claim in an interview in the early 2000s that its lyrics were a reference to fascism.

Bargain, Going Mobile and Getting in Tune are all also quite good songs, and on a weaker record, they might have been a lot more prominent.

The filler: Love Ain’t For Keeping, My Wife, Song is Over.

Grade

5/5: love it