Like so many ’60s pop bands, The Who was a singles band. Albums were often an afterthought, and the rest of the songs on the records were nothing more than filler. Radio play drove the sales. Songwriter Pete Townshend first toyed with the idea of composing an opera in a project called Quads. A story set in the future where parents would be able to choose the gender of their children.
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A couple of parents envision four girls but are blessed with three females and one male, raising him as a girl anyway. Quads was abandoned, but the hit single “I’m a Boy” was the result. When A Quick One was short on material, the band’s manager suggested Townshend write a mini-opera to fill out the album. He resisted at first, but then Townshend wrote “A Quick One, While He’s Away, which linked musical segments to tell a story.
The Who Sell Out included another mini-opera titled “Rael (1 and 2),” which was much shorter. This was less well received as it came across as a collection of verses that flowed from one to the other. There is some foreshadowing of Tommy in some sections, but it is not fully formed. The concept of a full rock opera with a story arc eventually turned into the classic double album featuring the hit single about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid with a supple wrist. Let’s look at the meaning behind “Pinball Wizard” by The Who.
Ever since I was a young boy
I’ve played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played ’em all
But I ain’t seen nothing like him
In any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
The Concept
Townshend started following the Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, the self-proclaimed Avatar of the age. As the story of Tommy came together, Townshend wrote songs and envisioned Tommy, the character, as a kind of rock star who played guitar even though he was deaf, dumb, and blind. He could hear music through vibrations.
He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean
He plays by intuition
The digit counters fall
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
Hoping For Five Stars
The Who’s manager brought Nik Cohn, music critic from The Guardian, in to listen to the rough mix of the album, hoping for a five-star review. The journalist heard the entire album and seemed less than impressed. He told Townshend it was wonderful but complained that it was about a guru. Townshend recounted the conversation in the documentary Sensation: The Story of Tommy, “Well, it’s not really about a guru… He’s somebody who can feel vibrations, and it turns into kind of a spiritual language that he understands, and the other people around him can see.”
Cohn felt that was worse than a guru. Townshend played pinball regularly with Cohn, who wrote a novel about a teenage phenom named Arfur: Teenage Pinball Queen based on a young girl they encountered in Soho.
In his memoir Who I Am, Townshend said, “One day Nik brought Arfur, the real girl who was his inspiration, to meet me. She was short, with short dark hair, pretty rough-cut in a tight-fitting denim jacket. We would play pinball furiously and competitively, and she slayed me.”
He’s a pinball wizard
There has got to be a twist
A pinball wizard’s
Got such a supple wrist
Tommy Needed One More Song
So, Townshend offered to make Tommy a pinball champion rather than a musical phenomenon. Cohn was receptive to that idea, which sent Townshend rushing home to write the song “Pinball Wizard.”
Townshend said in Sensation, “What it did was inject this incredible, silly, colorful, daft notion into the whole thing, which in actual fact, totally redeemed, but also created a much better focus for my notion that somebody who was deaf, dumb, and blind could do something so miraculous.”
Nik reviewed the album and did give it five stars (and a bonus ball), “Tommy is just possibly the most important work that anyone has yet done in rock.”
How do you think he does it? I don’t know
What makes him so good?
Ain’t got no distractions
Can’t hear no buzzers and bells
Don’t see no lights a-flashin’
Plays by sense of smell
Always gets a replay
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
The Final Ingredient
The addition of “Pinball Wizard” solidified the project. Other pinball references were sprinkled into the remaining songs, bringing it all together. The single became a huge hit for the band, and Townshend would go on to compose another rock opera called Quadrophenia, which is not related to Quads but is about a mod with four personalities trying to cope with his everyday struggles.
I thought I was
The Bally Table king
But I just handed
My pinball crown to him
Tommy‘s Legacy
The Who debuted songs from Tommy at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit on May 11, 1969. The album was released a week later. In 1970, a Montreal ballet group, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, created the first ballet adaptation. The following year, Richard Pearlman produced a fully staged production at Seattle, Washington’s Moore Theatre. In 1972, an all-star cast was assembled to perform the opera with the London Symphony Orchestra. Rod Stewart performed “Pinball Wizard.” 1973 saw the show performed in both Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. A feature-length movie was released in 1975, with Elton John singing the song. His version was a big hit as well. In 1993, Tommy opened on Broadway.
Even on my favorite table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest
He’s got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball
(Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for The Who)
