The Who at Work on Replacing ‘Tommy’ Show
During the first few months of the new year the Who plan to hide away for several months in the Young Vic Theater to work on a project that involves a film, an album and a road show to replace Tommy. The project is Pete Townshend‘s baby: “I’ve written a loose three-part story to musically recreate, in a cameo form, vibrations from the ground up, developing through a symphonic thing to a full white noise, an everything of sound. The group’s lives are being taken as the blueprint for an experiment. All available data will be taken, totally analyzed and fed through computers and converted into synthesized sound, then enacted by the group in live performances. If we achieve anything it’ll go into the film. If we don’t . . . then it’ll be good science fiction.”
This story is from the January 21st, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone.