Who's Best Top Ten: Listening to You (#3)

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Halfway through the week already! Just think, in two weeks we'll be back to normal! JJ is cheering, and all the Ebeneezer Scrooges of the world as well. But if you want to cheer, cheer for the legendary band The Who! Here's another song on my list of favorite songs by them. #3: Listening to You I'm sure everyone (both of you) have been wondering, "Where's Tommy?" Problem solved! Of course, I'm sure everyone (both of you) were waiting for another song rather than this one. Sorry. TILT. Probably to nobody's big surprise I went to see Tommy in 1975 because Elton John played the Pinball Wizard. I left a Roger Daltrey fan. (As you can see in the clip below, the final song in the film, he spent a lot of time in the water in that movie!) I mean, that's a pretty, pretty man right there. Pete's quite the rock opera writer: in addition to Tommy and Quadrophenia, there was Lifehouse, which spawned several songs that would later appear on Who's Next and Odds & Sods. Tommy is about an abused child who grows up deaf, mute ("dumb" in the story didn't mean "not smart"), and blind, becomes a pinball wizard, has an encounter with a mirror which frees him from his sensory prison, and becomes a religious leader. The movie featured a number of rock stars in roles (scene stealer: Tina Turner as the Acid Queen), and a few major mistakes (Oliver Reed, who played Tommy's stepfather, couldn't sing for poop....neither could Jack Nicholson, who played the Specialist), but I enjoyed it. (Okay, I enjoyed Roger having his shirt off a lot. I was 15 when this movie came out!) "Listening to You" is the finale of the rock opera and movie, after Tommy's followers turn on him ("We're Not Gonna Take It"). It's a spiritual song, leaving one open to interpret who the "you" in "Listening to You" is. (Personally, for me, it's God.) It's one of the great classics of The Who's career. Listening to You Written by Pete Townshend From Tommy, 1969 Also from the Tommy soundtrack, 1975 I get the story: