Posted on 12/20/2022 8:44:04 AM PST by dangus
It never even mentions NINETEEN twenty-one, as opposed to 2021. I think this must've been secretly the Biden campaign's theme song. If you don't recognize it, it's from The Who's rock-opera, "Tommy." It's how Tommy, the "Pinball Wizard" ended up rendered psychologically "blind, deaf and dumb.":
Got a feeling '21 is going to be a good year
Especially if you and me see it in together
So you think '21 is going to be a good year?
It could be good for me and her but not for you, no never!
I had no reason to be over optimistic but somehow when you smiled I could brave bad weather
What about the boy? What about the boy? What about the boy?
He saw it all!
You didn't hear it, you didn't see it
You won't say nothing to no-one never in your life
You never heard it! Oh, how absurd it all seems without any proof!
You didn't hear it; You didn't see it
You never heard it, not a word of it; You won't say nothing to no-one
Never tell a soul what you know is the Truth.
Got a feeling '21 is going to be a good year especially if you and me see it in together
I always took ‘21’ to be Tommy’s age that year...
Actually, that’s PRECISELY why I never connected it, come to think of it. It was only when I was recently playing it on YouTube did I realize it was NINETEEN twenty-one... especially since that’s an odd year for the story setting. You’d think it would’ve been MUCH more modern. That makes Tommy a pinball wizard screening out lights and bells and buzzards from what, 1935? And why not WW TWO??? FFS, this was written in 1968, it could’ve been VIET NAM!
How about Arizona in 1916?
https://arizonaagenda.substack.com/p/the-1916-election-sounds-oddly-familiar
Tommy was a boy who witnessed his mother’s murder in 1921 when his father, who was presumed killed during WWI, found her with her new lover.
Mother’s murder? I thought his father was killed when he walked in on her and her lover, after coming back from the war? Now I’m going to have to watch the movie again... and the war in the movie appeared to be WW2...
On the original album, it is the lover who is killed by the father (Capt. Walker). In the film, it is Capt. Walker who is killed by the lover.
Thanks. I didn’t know they switched that. To be honest I was more familiar with the movie version because of my age... (14 when the movie came out)...
"fiddle about, fiddle about"
I didn’t think the album has any indication of who killed who at all? Or is the “father” somewhere identified as “Captain Walker”? The Overture says Tommy never knew his father, “His unborn son will never know him.” This is ambiguous, because it CERTAINLY is an unreliable narrator, but it COULD’VE been worded in a way that doesn’t set up the confusion.
Uncle Ernie was just a M.A.P., stop being a bigot!
Yeah, it sure would be weird if with a couple of months of this coming out, some children’s show named a major character, “Ernie.” ;-)
Mom was pretty upset when she read the lyrics on the album cover.(it had a flap included)
Cousin Kevin was left HOME ALONE with Tommy, allowing him to invent all sorts of sadistic ways to torture Tommy.
I never saw the movie, so I didn’t realize they had switched it.
It is definitely confusing. The Overture says his unborn son “will” never know him because Capt. Walker went missing in the war. But he later turns up and finds his wife with the lover she has taken on, setting in motion the emotional trauma that causes Tommy to become deaf, dumb, and blind. Much of this was not really spelled out in the lyrics and had to be explained by Townshend.
Just…huh?
Poster meant the pinball wizard was 21. Whenever. Calendar year doesn’t matter.
The name of the song is 1921. The pinball wizard is a young child. I once thought that the number, 21, referred to the age of the parents, which would be very young for the parents of 2- or 3-year-old, but plausible. (The real Dad might be slightly older. It wasn’t odd to marry an 18-year-old back then.)
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