"Listening to You": Revisiting an Oldie But Goodie

Recently, I listened to a favorite recording again from the early 1970s, the rock opera Tommy, by The Who, a favorite band from that era. I'm not talking about the movie version with Jack Nicholson, Ann Margret, and Elton John, which I've never really liked. No, it was the original Who recording, which I hadn't listened to in its entirety since  1972. I haven't owned a copy since the late '70s, when my copy of it was stolen from a theatre house I was staying at at the end of my college years.

Listening to Tommy again recently, however, I realized how deeply spiritual its message is. In many ways, it is a statement of its time, a commentary on the spiritual trends of the late 1960s. I think it also speaks to why there is so much hardness toward spiritual thinking today. Peter Townshend first composed the music, telling the story of a boy who becomes deaf and blind after witnessing the murder of his father, who is returning from war. In the ensuing years, Tommy's mother seeks cure after snake-oil cure. When Tommy is suddenly healed, he becomes a sensation, followed by millions who want to be improved by his ministrations. Finally, though, he exploits his followers with his new-found power and is revealed as another flawed, broken human being, as he lapses again into a kind of spiritual blindness, in need of the help of others again--like all of us.

The late 1960s were a time of spiritual searching. Jesus was often quoted and often had songs sung about him. Many young people were leaving traditional religions and traditional ways of looking at religion to try to find their way, to find themselves, to be authentic. Many were the gurus. Many were the followers who gave up an old life to imitate someone else on a commune somewhere where people chanted and smoked weed. And many were the frauds.

Tommy offers a commentary on the guru trends at the end of the '60s, and a bit of light humor. At the height of his fame, as Tommy begins to express his freedom from his blindness, his followers ask how they can follow. Tommy's answer is blindfolding them, putting corks in their mouths, and stuffing their ears so that they resemble his former state. And then he puts them in front of pinball machines.

This is a parody of religious imitation, but it is more accurately abuse and exploitation of people's trust. This is how we tend to look at religion today. In many ways, this is the side of our natures that Tommy still speaks to today, the side made cynical by watching all of the frauds, the Jimmy Joneses, the Charles Mansons, and the Jim and Tammy Bakkers of the world. Today we are not going to be exploited and made out as fools. Yet we are all asking and saying, however subconsciously, the same things that the blind, deaf, and dumb boy Tommy is saying throughout most of the piece.

I don't think that Peter Townshend was making light of spiritual needs as much as he was exposing some of the "answers" people sought out. And this is important. But I still think that we do well to certainly continue to question a lifestyle that is about little more than consuming goods and entertainment. What about purpose and how to love our neighbor? We are not in the 1960s any longer, but these questions remain important. They do not come from catalogues or TV shows. They come from the church I attend every weekend and from the conversations I have with others who are convinced that their lives are more than just a fortunate collision of random chemicals.

Today, listening to this piece of classic rock (a rock opera, nonetheless), I reflect that I should not let distrust of others, especially distrust of spiritual leaders who will prove eventually to be hypocrites,  keep me from seeking answers.

"Tommy can you hear me?"