Tommy: The Album Vs. The MovieTommy: The Album Vs. The MovieTommy the album was a groundbreaking record put out by The Who in 1969. It was groundbreaking because it was a concept album that was dubbed the first “rock opera” which followed the story of a deaf dumb and blind man from childhood to adulthood. His life is met with many strange occurrences from being shocked as a small child into a psychosomatic state, becoming a master of all things pinball and finally becoming a Christ-esque figure of a new age cult.
The album was met with two completely different camps. The first of which said that the album was a masterpiece, and haled it as an ushering in of a completely new genre of music. Others felt that it was sick and exploitive, and many people were outraged at the Who for bringing out such a dark and twisted album. The album was evened banned from the air by the BBC. But despite the controversy, the album was a hug success and in 1975, some six years later, someone thought it to be a good idea to turn the rock opus into a feature film.
It is interesting to note that George Lucas was originally approached to direct the film, but he turned it down because he was in the middle of pre-production for American Graffiti. Instead, the project was handed over to the flamboyant British filmmaker Ken Russell.
The film version managed to keep the same overall story as the album, but was different in almost all other aspects, for better or for worse, in which I’ll be discussing and outlining in this comparison.
The first major difference when they adapted the album to the movie is that they changed the time the story takes place from 1921 (which was the setting for the album) to 1951 for the film version. From what I read, Russell did not want to make a “period”piece, and by changing it to 1951, Russell was then able to film more modern images for when Tommy is an adult.
The next major difference from album to movie is the fact that in the album, Tommy’s father comes back to kill the mother’s new lover. In the film version, Tommy’s dad, thought to be dead, comes back and is then killed by the lover. This totally changed the plot of the film, and also the catalyst for Tommy’s journey of discovery. In the album, the track Amazing Journey alludes to the fact that Tommy is peering inside himself and he sees a magical wise being inside himself that will eventually lead to enlightenment. In the film, his fallen father now serves as the sought out being, taking Tommy on a journey to self discovery but also to come full circle to find the part of himself that was left by his father. This was a good choice I think. Not only for the reason just mentioned, but it also makes the lover (played by Oliver Reed) into a villainous figure, and helps the viewer cope with the fact that when this funny looking man starts to sing, it’s ok…because he’s an asshole that killed Tommy’s pops. It also makes more sense that Tommy would be affected that much more by seeing his biological dad die. He already lost his father once when they thought his plane was shot down by the krauts. Then he comes back, and before Tommy can even be all happy and excited, he looses his dad again. Had his real father killed the lover it would just be another movie of the week. Tommy would just be an angry teen. Maybe shoot up a high school. He certainly would not have been deaf dumb and blind. So that was a good adaptation choice in my humble opinion.
Another very obvious difference lies within the music itself. The album is composed by Pete Townshend and performed entirely by The Who. The soundtrack of the movie is totally overdubbed and while Pete Townshend also composed the music, all of the singing was done completely by the actors, including Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson. Ann-Margret actually won a Golden Globe Award for her performance, and Pete Townshend was also nominated for an Oscar for his scoring of the film.
This also drastically changed the mood and style of the film from that of the album. Listening to the album, I felt a very stark and brooding mood and all of the characters were not as diverse because they were all portrayed by one voice, which was that of Roger Daltrey. It made it harder to imagine these characters as people…they seemed more like ideas. But for the film, this is where the directing of Russell really shined. He was able to take the ideas of Daltrey’s characters, and turn them into living breathing flamboyant entities on screen, and with great effect. On the album the Gypsy Acid Queen and Pinball wizard are integral parts of Tommy’s story, but in the music they do not come off as necessarily exciting. But Russell made them forces to be reckoned with on the screen by casting an incredible Tina Turner for the Acid Queen and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard, which easily stole the show in the movie. This made an otherwise morose moment in the album a ridiculous spectacle
The Rolling Stones
This music also brought an end to the idea of an “old” rock band, one that had evolved from a band that had grown out of a “small” band. Rolling Stones. That was the idea behind the band and that was the only reason the band was called Rolling Stones, though it became known that they were part of the Rolling Stones family when they disbanded. That album is basically what the group did in 1992 to the current band: it was a return to form (and, on top of that, a whole new approach to music as well). They were the last surviving band, and this is where they were once more, and the only band that could ever get a break from this, even as it got under way to make the album a success. I won’t go into what the band did with the album or the band at all, but it would be a great introduction to them. Although, as is often the case, they were also very unhinged about it.
I’ve always said that this is not a band that I necessarily liked, but I thought they were still fun and engaging and you can really see that under the band’s name, with their name being associated with a particular story and style.
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The Rolling Stones were the group that grew out of The Rolling Stones, being a band that changed the way music became the thing they wanted it to be. They all grew out of John and Paul McCartney, with Paul McCartney being one of the early Beatles (who went on and on and on), and Paul being a vocalist of sorts (who was also a vocalist of sorts). This was a group that got together again in 1992 to try to break the mold. In the early days here, they were the first band with a true, serious approach to music (like all the other young bands doing it today) and that’s what they did. In terms of the songs that they wrote, they wrote them in the name of the Stones’s song: John the Baptist and this is how I got into this. That was their first true effort with a true record name: the Rolling Stones.
Russell was a big advocate of the “old” bands and they did some crazy things with that. Sometimes they put the rock and roll record companies together and they had the money and even some people would give them money. But when they did the actual songs that got in the bands hands, they got the songs recorded and released and started to push for the younger groups. The Rolling Stones had a great record writing, recording and release and that’s what they eventually did with the songs, and now I’ve known a great number of younger people who grew up listening to the band in “50 Cent” and then this, just really having a great approach to the songs, is an incredible thing with it. And then of course, there have been a lot of other bands (like The Beatles, The Doors, Stone Age…) that do this kind of thing. There were other band that wrote with The Rolling Stones on their record, that was probably about a thousand other bands of that era when they did their first record in rock rock bands. It wasn’t until the Stone Age that The Stones did the kind of music that they did on their record.
The Rolling Stones had almost a complete lack of style in their music, in a way. Of course, they didn’t even have the lyrics for that very long, so there was a lot of writing that they didn’t put in. But they had a very good style of music (the Stones had a very good style of music and they had a very good style of style of music too. They wrote every song that they wrote on the album, which is a huge achievement for a