• Writer: Pete Townshend
• Producer: Kit Lambert
• Recorded: 1969, Morgan Studios, London
• Released: March 7th, 1969
• Players:
  Pete Townshend — guitar, vocals
  Roger Daltrey — vocals
  Keith Moon — drums
  John Entwistle — bass
• Album: Tommy (MCA, 1969)
• Also On:
  Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy (MCA, 1971)
  The Kids Are Alright (MCA, 1979)
  Greatest Hits (MCA, 1983; CD reissue 1988)
  and many compilations.
• “Pinball Wizard: was the first single from the rock opera Tommy. It hit Number 19 on the pop chart.
• Tommy, probably the Who’s best-known work, was singer-guitarist Pete Townshend‘s attempt at fusing rock-and-roll with more serious, established musical culture. Some critics scoffed, but most were enthusiastic.
• The late Albert Goldman, who later wrote controversial biographies of Elvis Presley and John Lennon, wrote in Life magazine in 1969: “Considered as music, Tommy is magnificent, the final crystallization of the hard-rock style in an art as dry, hard, lucid, as unashamedly conventional and finely impersonal as the music of the most severe classicist.”
• Goldman’s summary of “Pinball Wizard” and its context in the rock opera: “Preserving only his sense of touch (the chief inlet of soul in this age?), Tommy triumphs by becoming a pinball wizard, the idol of a youth cult. When miraculously cured, he subjects his disciples to the same entombment he endured, luring them to a camp where they are ordered to practice pinball wearing dark glasses and earplugs. They rebel.”
• Townshend said, “We made Tommy deaf, dumb and blind so we could give him in the opera everything he hadn’t. He starts off being nothing and ends up being something — divine. People could also be divine if they would listen to him. But they don’t.”
• Elton John performed the song in the 1975 film version of Tommy and on the soundtrack. His version is also included on his albums Caribou, Greatest Hits Vol. 2, and Very Best Of.
• Rod Stewart performed the song with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir in 1973. Stewart has also included versions on My Favourite Songs, Sing it Again, Rod, and Storyteller.
• The album’s storyline is famously convoluted, but “Pinball Wizard” is easy to follow. It’s about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who magically becomes a pinball star and impresses local kids in London.
• The opening strumming chords are a recurring musical theme on the album.
• Earlier Who songs “Rael” and “Glow Girl” contained early variations of Tommy themes.
• At the time, the BBC misinterpreted the song as a mocking of handicapped people. DJ Tony Blackburn and others labeled it “sick” and banned it briefly.
• When the “sick” charge began affecting record sales, Townshend responded. “The kid is having terrible things done to him, because that’s life as it is,” he said. “In fact, what I was out to show is that someone who has suffered terribly at the hands of society has the ability to turn all these experiences into a tremendous musical awareness. Sickness is in the mind of the listener, and I don’t give a damn what people think.”
• “Pinball Wizard” was one of the Who’s key songs at Woodstock, at which their instrument-smashing set stole the show from everybody save the guitar-burning Jimi Hendrix.

FAST FORWARD:

• The Who decided to continue on after drummer Keith Moon‘s death in 1978. They brought in Kenney Jones from the Faces to take Moon’s place. He eventually left and was replaced by other drummers.
• The Who technically broke up with a farewell tour in 1982, but they’ve continued to perform over the years, including a 1989 reunion tour, and a road version of Quadrophenia in 1996 and 1997.
• Townshend oversaw productions of The Who’s Tommy on Broadway in New York City and in London, both of which were hugely successful.
• The Who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
• In 2002, Bassist John Entwistle suffered a heart attack and died in his hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the day before the Who were to start a North American tour. Townshend and Daltrey decided to play the tour in Entwistle’s memory, and they brought in British session ace Pino Palladino for the dates. Palladino has remained with the band ever since.

The band released an album last year called Endless Wire, and recently finished a world tour in support of it.