I saw Tommy in 1975 when I was 10. It completely blew my mind. A total absorbing experience. Back then you saw a film once in the theater and then moved on. Tommy's images stuck with me for a long time. Like seeing The Wizard of Oz for the furst it had a profound impact on me. I had also seen Alice Cooper Welcome to my Nightmare live at about the same time and music became my sole passion.

As was stated in Amadeus, true opera has no dancing, just drama, so in that sense itS True. Tommy was the first musical with no choreography.

It took me a while to get into "Tommy." I wasn't at all familiar with Ken Russell's work at the time, so when I first saw it at age 14, my immediate reaction was, "What the hell was that?" So for the longest time I insisted that Russell bastardized Pete Townshend's vision and they should have gotten a better director. Now that I'm more familiar with Russell's work--and kinda like it actually--I've learned to love "Tommy." In fact, I think Russell made the right decision altering the inciting incident because by having the lover kill the father, it plays into a lot of children's fears of having a wicked stepparent come into their lives.