Tommy: My First Album Love

by editor Michele Catalano

The first record I ever owned was “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, fashioned from a piece of cardboard cut out from a box of Super Sugar Crisp cereal. I adored that piece of cardboard and played it constantly on my Fisher-Price record player. I collected those paper songs from the back of Honeycombs and Alpha-Bits boxes. They would sometimes be real pop records; sometimes, it was just the cereal’s theme song from their ads.

But the first record I fell in love with was not a cereal jingle, not a children’s album or a pop song. When I was nine years old, I fell in love, hard, with the Who’s Tommy.

The album belonged to an older cousin. I remember pulling the record out of its sleeve and my cousin showing me how to properly handle a record album. I read the titles as he placed my hands around the edge of the record and explained about fingerprints and dust and grooves. I asked him what “Overture”meant. This was an opening for him, an opportunity to educate his younger cousin in the way of rock music. We packed up some albums and headed over to my house to listen to them together.

Mom and Dad had this stereo at the time (this was 1971, we’re talking Stone Age here) that was part liquor cabinet, part music machine. It was a piece of furniture, an oblong, wooden box plunked down on spindly legs. On the top of the box on the right was a hinged door. Opening that revealed a turntable and a radio tuner. The box also had a sliding cabinet on the front, which, when opened, revealed several bottles of gin and Harvey’s Bristol Cream.

My cousin showed me how to drop the record on the turntable. Until then, I had been using the Fisher Price system and was a bit haphazard about how I handled my cardboard records. He was reverent about it, holding the edges with his palms, placing the album gently on the turntable, dropping the needle on the groove by hand because he didn’t trust the automatic arm to do it right.

He turned the volume up. The room hissed with the unmistakable crackle and hiss of needle upon vinyl.

We listened to the overture. He explained that each time the music changed, it was a piece of another song on the album. As the overture ended and “It’s a Boy”came on, my cousin’s friends appeared outside, and my music lesson abruptly ended. I asked, and he left the record with me.

I sat on our overstuffed living room couch that afternoon and listened to Tommy in its entirety. When the first side ended, I grabbed the vinyl with my palms, just like he showed me. I felt so much older than my nine years as I flipped the record over and gently laid down the needle. No more cereal jingles for me. No more Banana Splits or whatever cartoon music I had been listening to before then. I had discovered a new world.

I listened to the album all the way through, twice. It wasn’t until the second listen that I figured out there was a full story going on and not just random songs. I played it again, sometimes skipping over songs (“Go to the Mirror”), sometimes playing a tune twice (“Acid Queen”). On the third listen, my cousin came back and was stunned to see that I was listening to the album, and not for the first time.

For the next few hours, he sat down with me and went over the whole story, one song at a time. I fell in love with the music, the words, the imagery. Up until then, my sources of music ranged from David Cassidy and sugary pop to the doo wop music my parents played on the radio. This was so different. It took me to an entirely different place. I wanted to put away my Fisher-Price record player forever, just borrow albums from my cousin and play them on my parents’ stereo, so I could hear music the way it was meant to be heard.

Tommy opened the door for me. It allowed me to be receptive to listening to all kinds of music. It played a role in my discovering Black Sabbath two years later, which changed my life. It made me a lifelong fan of the Who. It told me a wild, bizarre story I would never forget.

It wasn’t until five years later, when a bunch of us went to see Tommy the movie together, that my cousin and I talked about it again but on a deeper level. To a 13 year old, a soaring rock opera is about as deep as it gets. We both hated the movie but loved what they did with the music, making it all sound so new and fresh.

 We went back to my house and put on the Who album, reveling in the same vibes I felt the first time I listened. We talked about the differences in the performances between the record and the movie. We talked about how much the movie sucked. I thanked him for being so kind to my nine-year-old self after she showed an interest in his favorite music. That kindness, and his willingness to satisfy my musical curiosity, opened new doors for me and gave me the first album I ever loved.

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