USA*If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high,
you’d laugh and say nothing’s that simple.
But you’ve been told many times before, messiahs pointed to the door, no one had the guts to leave the temple.
Pete Townshend
During the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I listened to Tommy by the Who almost constantly...but I don’t think I really understood why....never mind that I was listening to the story of a kid who went deaf dumb and blind to block out the world following a traumatic experience...written by the dorkiest looking guitar player to ever lead a rock band...and sure, the music rocked... and Roger Daltry looked so fucking cool in the Woodstock movie waving the long fringe of his hippie jacket like wings singing see me feel me touch me heal me listening to you I hear the music gazing at you I get the heat...and I myself an painfully lonely alienated kid locked in my room blasting music loud enough I hoped it might block out the rest of the world...possibly even make it disappear...of course Pete Townshend...even as his own left-over-from-mortally-wounded-adolescence pent up frustration and rage windmilled and destroyed an endless series of guitars...had something loftier in mind...like any ‘60’s rock star whose acid experiences led him to India, he created Tommy as a metaphor...deaf, dumb, and blind but staring at the mirror...unable to perceive anything but his own ego...so smash the mirror and he’s free to become...another rock star.....I, alas, never got to be a rock star...and, at 42, with guitars I rarely play and never played well, am thinking it may be time to throw in the towel on that particular dream...don't cry, don't raise your eye, it's only teenage wasteland...
2 comments:
I have a few of those guitars that you have. I never stoped playing, and I never got any better. But when I play along with a CD, I turn it up loud enough so that no one knows.
Pink Floyd makes The Who look like Menudo. ;)
Follow your dream--the world be damned.
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