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In this podcast episode, we’ll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping from vinyl to concert halls, movie screens, and the Broadway stage.

Imagine that it is Post war England and you are in West London
Bomb sites are turning into parking lots and playgrounds. Teenagers caught between their parents’ memories of wartime suffering and a new world of consumer goods, television sets, and American rock records.

Roger Daltrey grows up in a working-class family, handy with his fists and tools, assembling his own future piece by piece.

Pete Townshend, the intense, sharp-nosed kid, is surrounded by music early—his parents are professional musicians—so the idea of a musical life is precarious, but not absurd.

John Entwistle is the quiet one, a brass-band kid who picks up the bass and makes it sing.

Daltrey starts a band called The Detours. He pulls in Entwistle. Entwistle brings Townshend. They grind through pubs, youth clubs, and dance halls. Then, after a name change detour as the High Numbers, shaped by managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they emerge with the name that finally fits the impact:

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