No sooner had our friends at Junkmusic declared that I maybe ought to write about pop someday, when I got the most peculiar commission from my editor at The Indy. The result is published today, complete with photo of Roger Daltrey, who's my new pin-up (at least, as he looked in 1996). Here it is.
What I love about writing for the Indy is that it's a constant challenge. The learning curves move rapidly and are sometimes steep (this certainly was), but always stretch my brain in one way or another. The complete opposite is writing the novels, poring for days on end over whether I really ought to have a particular phrase on the first page...although that's the biggest stretch of all.
For the moment, I've discovered rock 'n' roll. And I love it.
3 comments:
Well Done! Jessica from the team at Musical Opinion.
I love both of Townsend's pieces, "Quadrophenia" especially; I think it has some of his very best songs ("The Real Me", "The Punk Meets the Godfather", "Love Reign O'er Me"). They both work as stage works too, though "Tommy" has the risible bits you mention.
My one gripe about considering them operas is, like you said, they're just a collection of songs. I wish he'd eschewed fade outs and other studio tricks and wrote connecting music between the songs.
BTW, The 'oo weren't the first band to do a rock opera, The Pretty Things beat them to it with "PF Sorrow" almost two years before "Tommy". Townsend freely admits that "PF Sorrow" was a big inspiration for "Tommy".
Actually, there's another Townsend piece that is really interesting and that's the "Lifehouse" project, which collapsed under its own ambitions and was cannibalized for the great "Who's Next" album. I'd *love* to see that fully staged.
I await your reviews of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and Genesis' profoundly amazing "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". :-)
No plans to review them at the moment, but love Genesis & would like to hear it. Thanks for the tip!
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