Entertainment news and discussion on TalkFuse.
“Everything is incredible”: the 1969 album Pete Townshend called “meaningless beauty”
This retrospective piece from Far Out Magazine looks back at The Who's 1969 album Tommy, the rock opera that guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend once described using the phrase "everything is incredible, meaningless beauty". The article argues that Tommy marked a pivotal moment for the band, following on from the postmodern experimentation of The Who Sell Out and cementing Townshend's ambition to move beyond straightforward hit singles into more complex, narrative-driven songwriting, which the piece credits with helping the group avoid the decline suffered by contemporaries such as The Kinks.
The piece draws on a 1969 Rolling Stone interview in which Townshend explained the mindset of Tommy's title character, a boy left "deaf, dumb, and blind" who experiences abuse and trauma in a strikingly unfiltered, non-traumatised way within the story. Townshend described this as a kind of pure, spiritual response rather than distress, framing the character's journey towards becoming a messianic figure. The article situates Tommy as a landmark of late-1960s rock, released as The Beatles were nearing their end, and credits it with pushing the boundaries of what a rock album could achieve narratively, including via well-known tracks like "Pinball Wizard".
In short
- Article revisits The Who's 1969 rock opera Tommy and its legacy
- Pete Townshend explained the album's themes in a 1969 interview
- Tommy is credited with helping The Who avoid a 1970s decline
Explained simply
Tommy is a 1969 album by the British rock band The Who, written mainly by guitarist Pete Townshend. It tells the story of a boy who becomes deaf, unable to speak and blind after childhood trauma, then grows into a spiritual leader. Songs including “Pinball Wizard” help carry the story from one stage to the next.
Townshend had been exploring new forms of songwriting, moving beyond the stand-alone hit single towards albums with connected stories and ideas. Tommy followed The Who Sell Out, an earlier album built around a mock radio broadcast, and became one of rock’s best-known concept albums. It showed how an album could work as a sustained narrative as well as a collection of songs.