AMG Review of Tommy [Deluxe Edition]

Richie Unterberger
All Music Guide

The two-CD deluxe edition of the Who's masterpiece -- a hybrid playable on both SACD and standard CD players -- is bigger, but not necessarily better. Audiophiles with the appropriate equipment will welcome the chance to hear it as remastered and remixed by Pete Townshend himself, in both stereo and (with the exception of five Townshend solo demos on disc two) 5.1 Surround Sound for SACD. And everyone, of course, gets the chance to hear not just the original album in all its glory on the 75-minute disc one, but also 17 additional tracks (many, though not all, of them previously unreleased) on disc two. It's the additional material that's rather disappointing, for a few reasons. First, most of it really is marginal, even for the kind of fans who thrive on hearing outtakes and demos. A bunch of the cuts are merely vocal-less alternate backing tracks, similar to the ones on the official Tommy album but a little sloppier. As for the two songs previously unavailable in any form, "Trying to Get Through" is a not terribly melodic, repetitive hard rock move-the-plot-along number that Townshend and the Who were wise to cut from the final running order, while the 16-second "I Was" is a lyric-less vocal cacophony whose purpose is unexplained by the liner notes (which, in fact, don't comment in detail on any of the bonus material). Alternate versions of "Sally Simpson" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are welcome for aficionados, but not that radically different from the ones that made the final cut, except that they're less tightly organized. The mediocre outtake "Cousin Kevin Model Child" already appeared on the CD version of Odds & Sods, and while "Version 1" of "Young Man Blues" and the instrumental "Dogs, Pt. 2" (the non-LP B-side of "Pinball Wizard") are cool hard rock tunes, they don't have anything to do with the Tommy project. Finally, though it's nice to hear five Townshend demos of Tommy tunes, hardcore Who fans know that there are at least a couple of dozen such demos. It would have been great to hear all of them (particularly as the sound on the demos here is better than the fidelity in which they're presented on numerous bootlegs), but that probably would have meant a three-CD deluxe edition rather than a two-CD one, which might have been too much for the market to bear. This deluxe edition is still worthwhile for aficionados (though certainly the liner notes could have been more extensive), but the more general Who and rock fan probably won't be missing anything, and will be saving some money, by sticking with the album in its original unadorned version.