Tommy Dee Songs Mp3 Download VERIFIED
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The Who comprises the skeleton band for most of the songs. All instrumentation (both credited and uncredited) on each song is by them, except for additional or alternate musicians indicated below for individual songs in which the lineup is wholly or partially different.[3] Six tracks have The Who as their explicit instrumental credits. Lead vocals are as indicated in track listing above.
Townshend had been looking at ways of progressing beyond the standard three-minute pop single format since 1966.[5] Co-manager Kit Lambert shared Townshend's views and encouraged him to develop musical ideas,[6] coming up with the term "rock opera". The first use of the term was applied to a suite called Quads, set in a future where parents could choose the sex of their children. A couple want four girls but instead receive three girls and a boy, raising him as a girl anyway. The opera was abandoned after writing a single song, the hit single, "I'm a Boy".[7] When the Who's second album, A Quick One, ran short of material during recording, Lambert suggested that Townshend should write a "mini-opera" to fill the gap. Townshend initially objected, but eventually agreed to do so, coming up with "A Quick One, While He's Away", which joined short pieces of music together into a continuous narrative.[8] During 1967, Townshend learned how to play the piano and began writing songs on it, taking his work more seriously.[9] That year's The Who Sell Out included a mini-opera in the last track, "Rael", which like "A Quick One ..." was a suite of musical segments joined together.[10]
By 1968, Townshend was unsure about how the Who should progress musically. The group were no longer teenagers, but he wanted their music to remain relevant.[12] His friend, International Times art director Mike McInnerney, told him about the Indian spiritual mentor Meher Baba,[13] and Townshend became fascinated with Baba's values of compassion, love and introspection.[14] The Who's commercial success was on the wane after the single "Dogs" failed to make the top 20, and there was a genuine risk of the band breaking up.[15] The group still performed well live and spent most of the spring and summer touring the US and Canada,[16] but their stage act relied on Townshend smashing his guitar or Keith Moon demolishing his drums, which kept the group in debt. Townshend and Kit Lambert realised they needed a larger vehicle for their music than hit singles and a new stage show, and Townshend hoped to incorporate his love of Meher Baba into this concept.[17] He decided that the Who should record a series of songs that stood well in isolation but formed a cohesive whole on the album. He also wanted the material performed in concert, to counter the trend of bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys producing studio output that was not designed for live performance.[18]
The album was recorded using an eight-track system, which allowed various instruments to be overdubbed. Townshend used several guitars in the studio but made particular use of the Gibson J-200 acoustic and the Gibson SG.[25] As well as their usual instruments, Townshend played piano and organ and bassist John Entwistle doubled on french horn. Keith Moon used a new double bass drum kit owned by roadie Tony Haslam, after Premier had refused to loan him any more equipment due to the items repeatedly being abused.[23] Though Townshend wrote the majority of the material, the arrangements came from the entire band. Singer Roger Daltrey later said that Townshend often came in with a half-finished demo recording, adding "we probably did as much talking as we did recording, sorting out arrangements and things."[26] Townshend asked Entwistle to write two songs ("Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About") that covered the darker themes of bullying and abuse. "Tommy's Holiday Camp" was Keith Moon's suggestion of what kind of religious movement Tommy could lead. Moon got the songwriting credit for suggesting the idea, though the music was composed and played by Townshend.[27] A significant amount of material had a lighter style than earlier recordings, with greater prominence put on the vocals. Moon later said, "It was, at the time, very un-Wholike. A lot of the songs were soft. We never played like that."[28]
Some of the material had already been written for other projects. "Sensation" was written about a girl Townshend had met on the Who's tour of Australia in early 1968, "Welcome" and "I'm Free" were about peace found through Meher Baba and "Sally Simpson" was based on a gig with the Doors which was marred by violence.[29] Other songs had been previously recorded by the Who and were recycled; "It's A Boy" was derived from "Glow Girl", an out-take from The Who Sell Out, while "Sparks" and "Underture" re-used and expanded one of the instrumental themes in "Rael".[30] "Amazing Journey" was, according to Townshend, "the absolute beginning" of the opera and summarised the entire plot.[30] "The Hawker" was a cover of Sonny Boy Williamson's "Eyesight to the Blind". A cover of Mercy Dee Walton's "One Room Country Shack" was also recorded but was scrapped from the final track listing as Townshend could not figure out a way to incorporate it in the plot.[31]
Recording at IBC was slow, due to a lack of a full plot and a full selection of songs. The group hoped that the album would be ready by Christmas, but sessions dragged on. Melody Maker's Chris Welch visited IBC studios in November and while he was impressed with the working environment and the material,[32] the project still did not have a title and there was no coherent plotline.[27] The Who's US record company, Decca Records, got so impatient waiting for new product that they released the compilation album Magic Bus: The Who on Tour which received a scathing review from Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone over its poor selection of material and misleading name (as the album contained studio recordings and was not live).[33]
By March 1969, some songs had been recorded several times, yet Townshend still thought there were missing pieces.[38] Entwistle had become fed up with recording, later saying "we had to keep going back and rejuvenating the numbers ... it just started to drive us mad."[25] The final recording session took place on 7 March, the same day that "Pinball Wizard" was released as a single.[39] The group started tour rehearsals and promotional activities for the single and Lambert went on holiday in Cairo. The mixing was left to Damon Lyon-Shaw and assistant engineer Ted Sharp, who did not think IBC was well suited for the task.[40] The album overshot its April deadline, as stereo mastering continued into the end of the month.[41]
According to music journalist Richie Unterberger, Tommy was hailed by contemporary critics as the Who's breakthrough.[54] Robert Christgau wrote in 1983, "Tommy's operatic pretensions were so transparent that for years it seemed safe to guess that Townshend's musical ideas would never catch up with his lyrics."[63] In his review for AllMusic, Unterberger said that, despite its slight flaws, the album has "many excellent songs" permeated with "a suitably powerful grace", while Townshend's ability to devise a lengthy narrative introduced "new possibilities to rock music."[54] Uncut wrote that the album "doesn't quite realise its ambitions, though it achieves a lot on the way", and felt it was not as well developed as their later album, Quadrophenia.[62] Mark Kemp, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), felt that "in retrospect, Tommy isn't quite the masterpiece it was originally hyped to be", suggesting The Who Sell Out was better, though because of Townshend, it produced several "bona fide classic songs".[64] "Rock opera may seem like a laughable concept these days, but when the Who brought it to the world via Tommy in 1969, it was an unmatched thrill", writes Mac Randall of Rolling Stone in 2004 in a more positive appraisal. "Almost thirty-five years later, this classic-rock touchstone still has the power to enthrall."[65]
Tommy was originally released as a two-LP set with artwork designed by Mike McInnerney, which included a booklet including lyrics and images to illustrate parts of the story. Townshend asked McInnerney to do the cover artwork for Tommy in September 1968.[75] Townshend had originally considered Alan Aldridge for the cover.[75] The cover is presented as part of a triptych-style fold-out cover, and the booklet contained abstract artwork that outlined the story.[3] Although the album included lyrics to all the songs, indicating individual characters, it did not outline the plot, which led to a concert programme being prepared for shows, that carried a detailed synopsis.[3]
Townshend thought Mike McInnerney, a fellow follower of Meher Baba, would be a suitable choice to do the cover. As recording was near completion, McInnerney received a number of cassettes with completed songs and a brief outline for the story, which he immediately recognised as being based on Baba's teachings.[76] He wanted to try and convey the world of a deaf, dumb and blind boy and decided to "depict a kind of breaking out of a certain restricted plane into freedom."[77] The finished cover contained a blue and white web of clouds, a fist punching into the black void to the left of it.
In 2003 Tommy was made available as a deluxe two-disc hybrid Super Audio CD with a 5.1 multi-channel mix. The remastering was done under the supervision of Townshend and also includes related material not on the original album, including "Dogs-Part 2" (the B-Side to "Pinball Wizard"), "Cousin Kevin Model Child" and "Young Man Blues", plus demos for the album and other unreleased songs that were dropped from the final running order.[84] Rolling Stone considered the disc sonically "murkier" than the 1996 CD and was critical of the absence of the original libretto.[65] In 2013, a super deluxe version of Tommy was released as a 3-CD / Blu-ray box set. As well as the original album, the package includes additional demos and a live performance mostly taken from the Who's show at the Capital Theatre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on 15 October 1969. The live disc was significant, as it debunked a long-standing myth that the tapes for the tour were burned in preference for the Leeds University show in February 1970 that made up Live at Leeds.[85]
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