![]() And if you’re able to find one these days, we don’t recommend trying to play " by sense of smell. In 1994, Data East created a pinball machine inspired by the Broadway adaptation of the Who's rock opera. Townshend yelled back, ‘Fuck off my fucking stage’” and whacked him with his guitar. Later, "Pinball Wizard" gained infamy at Woodstock when, after the performance of the song, famed radical Abbie Hoffman, ran onstage and shouted: “I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison!” He was referencing to the 10-year sentence given to his friend for possession of two joints. It was also covered by The Harry Roche Constellation, Joe Brown GB, Lynn Blessing, The Dartmouth Aires and other artists. to date, paving the way for the runaway success of Tommy. The Who originally recorded Pinball Wizard written by Pete Townshend and The Who released it on the single Pinball Wizard in 1969. while he played an outsize bovver-booted Pinball Wizard in Ken Russell’s 1975 film Tommy. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, the Who’s second-highest charting single in the U.S. His 32 studio albums include such classics as Honky. It was covered by Joe Brown GB, Norman Gunston, Lynn Blessing, The Dartmouth Aires and other artists. Elton John released it on the album Tommy - Original Soundtrack Recording in 1975. 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. Pinball Wizard by Elton John was written by Pete Townshend and was first recorded and released by The Who in 1969. 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. 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 was the opening track on Elton’s breakthrough album, Elton John as well as his first Top 40 hit on the Hot 100 and it served as the perfect opener, both for an album and a career. “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.
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