History Music / Tommy

-->I thought I was the Bally table king\\

* GracefulLoser: The narrator of "Pinball Wizard" knows when he's beaten and is in awe of Tommy's skills:

* AbsurdlyYouthfulMother: Ann-Margret is only three years older than Roger Daltrey.
** And in the stage version, Nora Walker is seventeen when she has Tommy.

** "See me, feel me, touch me, heal me..."
** "Tommy, can you hear me?"

** The entire rock opera ends this way. Tommy's followers have abandoned him, because they want a quick fix instead of true enlightenment. In the movie version, they even kill one of his family members. And only then -- broken, alone, possibly dying, and having seen his disabilities basically amount to nothing at all -- does Tommy find God and realize what salvation truly is.

* BreatherEpisode: "Pinball Wizard". Perhaps this is part of how it became a BlackSheepHit.

* ConceptAlbum: One of the early ones.

* {{Fandom}}: Tommy ends up with one in-universe after his story is spread throughout the world.

* BittersweetEnding: "Sally Simpson" ends with Sally realizing too late that Tommy is a passing fad, but she ends up marrying a rock musician she met in California. In the film version, this is averted by giving Sally an obviously fake scar, making her husband a FrankensteinsMonster lookalike, and at the end, having her shrug the whole thing off while dressed in expensive furs and jewels. Though even in the movie, she appears to now be wasting her life raising a child at an extremely young age and living in sloth, the point being that she's probably stuck in a life that will get old when she outgrows her adolescent preferences for rockstar types.

** Sally Simpson is given a bigger role in the stage version, with her getting thrown off the stage being what triggers Tommy's MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, and he tends to her personally. She's also the one who asks how they can all be more like him (Sally Simpson's Question) leading to Tommy realizing that they want him to be their spiritual leader. [[BrokenPedestal You all know how that turns out.]]

* BittersweetEnding: "Sally Simpson". In the film version, this is averted by giving Sally an obviously fake scar, making her husband a FrankensteinsMonster lookalike, and at the end, having her shrug the whole thing off while dressed in expensive furs and jewels. Though even in the movie, she appears to now be wasting her life raising a child at an extremely young age and living in sloth, the point being that she's probably stuck in a life that will get old when she outgrows her adolescent preferences for rockstar types.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: "Sally Simpson" sees the titular girl having fantasies of Tommy ending up with her if she can just get onstage with him. She goes to one of his sermons, jumps up onstage, and brushes him on the face... at which point security promptly throw her off the stage, giving her a cut that requires sixteen stitches to close.

** Also "Sally Simpson."

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. Both machines have a three-reel points scoreboard that flips over (back to 000, and a light up numeral "1" on the backglass, indicating points of at least 1,000 has been scored) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine is able to physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs). [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale However, the production staff seems to have just scraped off or covered the lightup "1" on both machines and replaced it with whatever higher number "2 through 9" between cutaway edits to show Tommy's and The Pinball Wizard's scores rapidly increasing between cuts that are showing the score on the backbox; yet there is also light up board behind each player supposedly tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine, even if those machines were using a four-reel scoring display that the movie was trying to portray]]! [[ExaggeratedTrope In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely, if at all, even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!]]

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. Both machines have a three-reel points scoreboard that flips over (back to 000, and a light up numeral "1" on the backglass, indicating points of at least 1,000 has been scored) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine is able to physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs). [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale However, the production staff seems to have just scraped off or covered the lightup "1" on the machine and replaced it with whatever higher number "2 - 9" between cutaway edits to show Tommy's score rapidly increasing between cuts showing the backbox; yet there is also light up board behind each player supposedly tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine, even if those machines were using a four-reel scoring display that the movie was trying to portray]]! [[ExaggeratedTrope In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely, if at all, even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!]]

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. Both machines have a three-reel points scoreboard that flips over (back to 000, and a light up numeral "1" on the backglass, indicating points of at least 1,000 has been scored) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine is able to physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs). [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale However, the production staff seems to have just scraped off or covered the lightup "1" on the machine and replaced it with whatever higher number "2 - 9" between cutaway edits to show Tommy's score rapidly increasing between cuts showing the backbox; yet there is also light up board behind each player supposedly tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine, even if those machines were using a four-reel scoring display that the movie was trying to portray]]! In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely, if at all, even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. Both machines have a three-reel points scoreboard that flips over (back to 000, and a light up numeral "1" on the backglass, indicating points of at least 1,000 has been scored) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine is able to physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs). [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale However, the production staff seems to have just scraped off or covered the lightup "1" on the machine and replaced it with whatever higher number "2 - 9" between cutaway edits to show Tommy's score rapidly increasing; yet there is also light up board behind each player supposedly tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine, even if those machines were using a four-reel scoring display that the movie was trying to portray]]! In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely, if at all, even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!

* ArtisticLicenseSports: Tommy and The Pinball Wizard are playing two almost completely different pinball machines simultaneously (only similarity are the score reels, with three-reels and a numeral "1" that lights up for points exceeding 999; though the production staff decided to physically change the "1" for the film to show a higher score on the backbox, see ReadingsAreOffTheScale below), when a competition would have them play the same exact machine at different times so no advantage or disadvantage could be claimed by either player. Also [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale the light up scoreboard behind each player displays points scored far beyond what a three-reel scoring game is possible to achieve]], with no indication on how those points are being tracked before the scoreboard lights up showing that particular number of points.

* ArtisticLicenseSports: Tommy and The Pinball Wizard are playing two almost completely different pinball machines simultaneously (only similarity are the score reels, with three-reels and a 1 that lights up for points exceeding 999), when a competition would have them play the same exact machine at different times so no advantage or disadvantage could be claimed by either player. Also [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale the light up scoreboard behind each player displays points scored far beyond what a three-reel scoring game is possible to achieve]], with no indication on how those points are being tracked before the scoreboard lights up showing that particular number of points.

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. The three-reel points scoreboard flip over (back to 000, and a numeral 1 light up on the backglass indicating points of at least 1,000 has been scored) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine is able to physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs); but there is a light up board behind each player supposedly [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine]]! In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!

* PinballScoring: "Pinball Wizard" has Tommy playing a ''Kings and Queens'', while The Pinball Wizard plays a ''Buckaroo''. The three-reel points scoreboard flip over (back to 000 plus adding a 1 to whatever points were scored beyond zero, indicated by a light up '1' to the left of the three reels) when 999 is exceeded and neither machine cannot physically display points achieved beyond 1,999 (the three reels can flip back over and continue scoring beyond 1,999, but the player and/or observer has to track the points scored beyond 1,999, including additional flip overs); but there is a light up board behind each player supposedly [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale tracking points far beyond what is possible to achieve in a single game of either machine]]! In fact, the final score achieved by Tommy is 999,999,999,999 which is barely even possible on modern pinball machines that have high scores usually go into the tens of billions!