The Who "Tommy" [1969]

Pete Townshend may be the biggest asshole in all of 60s rock, and that is really saying something. At the exit door to the 1960s music scene he left the biggest steaming dump of pretension anyone -- including the Beatles -- could possibly muster: the first "rock opera." So instead of allowing rock music to branch out naturally, independent of other previously discarded forms of music, this ugly bastard had to graft the arch, melodramatic, predictable and incredibly out-of-date opera form onto his and his band The Who's "Tommy." (They should have changed their band name to The Why right then and there.) You'd think Townshend could have spent all that time hashing out overtures and reprises learning a new way to play a tonic chord, or teach himself how to execute a fucking solo for once. But not Townshend -- he'd somehow ordained himself to make rock music "important"... with the narrative about some fictitious Helen Keller boy playing great pinball, defeating a wizard and becoming world famous. Geez -- so much for being taken seriously. Why his band members didn't pin Townshend down until he came to his senses none of us can know for sure, but probably he assured them "Tommy" would work. They even played it at Woodstock. And then -- voila! -- the era of Andrew Lloyd Weber was upon us! How Townshend's been able to live with himself with that on his conscience these past 40+ years I can't possibly fathom in the slightest.