Once the album replaced the single as the coin of the rock-star realm with the arrival of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the concept album (a cycle of thematically linked songs) and the rock opera (a story told through music) became the great white whales that every ‘serious’ artist chased. Such ambition – or was it pretentiousness? – ruled the 1960s and ’70s. It dared to call itself an “opera”, and it turned Townshend’s UK quartet into stadium-filling heavyweights around the world. But 45 years ago on, when it first arrived as The Who’s fourth studio album, Tommy was a radical statement: a story spread across two vinyl LPs that aspired to the heft of Wagner and the spirituality of Meher Baba. It has gone to Broadway and its best-known songs, from Pinball Wizard to The Acid Queen, have become pop standards, thanks to covers by Elton John and Tina Turner. Townshend’s Tommy is the mother of all rock operas – not the first, but certainly the first famous one. Even in an age when portable playlists seem to be on permanent shuffle, there’s still room for a magnum opus or three. The same might be said of the rock opera. “Rock is dead, long live rock,” Pete Townshend once declared.
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