Tommy by The Who

Tommy, the Who's fourth album, is where Pete Townshend's ambitions finally outran the three-minute single: a double album, a rock opera, the story of a boy named Tommy Walker who grows up to become a messiah. Townshend wrote most of it after discovering the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba, and with Kit Lambert producing, the band spent six months from September 1968 arranging and recutting the material until it held together.

It does more than hold together. Roger Daltrey sings it with total conviction, John Entwistle and Keith Moon thunder underneath, and "Pinball Wizard" hands the whole grand design a slashing hit single. Critics hailed it as the Who's breakthrough, and the band took it on the road through 1969 and 1970, from Woodstock and the Isle of Wight to the Metropolitan Opera House, shows that put fresh blood in their career. A ballet, a film and a Broadway musical followed, and the Grammy Hall of Fame took it in in 1998.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.