PINBALL WIZARD MOD

19 on the Billboard Hot 100, the Who’s second-highest charting single in the U.S. Perhaps more importantly for a band whose penchant for smashing instruments and flashy clothes had put them in considerable debt by 1969, 'Pinball Wizard' gave them a song that could stand outside of the story for radio airplay. Tommy’s skill at pinball, despite being a “ deaf, dumb and blind boy,” provided a way for him to become famous. Even though 'Pinball Wizard' was tacked on, the song turned out to be important to the story.

PINBALL WIZARD MOD

He would later admit to making up the story, basing it on a Shepherd’s Bush mod - the group that were the Who’s original fan base - that he knew in the '60s.Ĭohn proved to be an effective sounding board. His 1976 essay for New York magazine about the disco scene in Brooklyn called 'Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night' was used as the basis for Saturday Night Fever. I knocked a demo together and took it to the studio and everyone loved it.”Īs a side note, 'Pinball Wizard' wasn’t Nik Cohn’s sole contribution to music history. I attempted the same mock baroque guitar beginning that’s on ‘I’m a Boy’ and then a bit of vigorous kind of flamenco guitar. … It was going to be a complete dud, but I carried on. “This is awful, the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done,” he said in 1996. Anything with pinball in it’s fantastic.’ And so I wrote ‘Pinball Wizard,’ purely as a scam.”īut Townshend wasn’t too thrilled with the result.

“I just remember saying to him, with maybe an element of sarcasm, 'So, if it had pinball in it, would you give it a decent review?’' Townshend told Uncut in 2004.

Pinball wizard