Tommy, can you hear me?

I love being in a theater when the lights drop, the murmuring stops and the audience becomes one in anticipation. The silence is…golden.

It's 1993 and I'm sitting under the balcony of Broadway's St. James Theater to see the recently-debuted "Tommy, The Musical."  Lights drop, murmuring stops. Pause...the orchestra crashes into the overture. It's all an overture should be, giving evidence of specific songs to come and, Tommy being a rock, opera, resplendent with drums and guitars, and even a French horn. Within a few measures, I'm shocked to realize I'm tearing up. Then I get it. And I smile.

The latest incarnation of "Tommy, The Musical" debuted in Cleveland last night, October 7. I was there, no doubt expecting a similar emotional reaction. Surprisingly, the opposite was true, with the absence of the overture being only the first clue that this would not be my Tommy. As the acts slid by, the "huh?" moments multiplied, and the statement "that's not the way it goes!" began to wear on those around me.

It seems that in the few decades since the first Tommy musical, the show had shifted from great music overlaid with a little story, to a Broadway spectacular in which the music was secondary.  It wasn't bad – – some of the numbers, especially those involving the entire ensemble, were overwhelmingly entertaining,  and what glitches popped out could easily be explained by opening night.

But… It's Tommy! The Who! Music of windmills, flailing arms and flying microphones! These songs were not created so directors and choreographers could block out a stage full of orgasmic 20 – somethings prancing and leaping to limp instrumentals played by kids whose grandparents weren't conceived when Pete was smashing guitars. Using the be music as the accompaniment to the show is blasphemy. As if we would stage Amadeus and build the soundtrack around an elementary school kazoo band.

You cannot dance your way through Tommy – – you have to feel it, literally, plopped on the bedroom floor, wrapped in full, ritual adoration. You have to slide the vinyl out of its worn jacket, ignore the scratches and the grooves long ago dug deep by adding a nickel to the tone arm. You have to turn it up so you can hear the hiss and click as the needle slides into the first groove, play it so loud that things shake and sing it from memory, not because you sing well, but because it's your right.

Tears? Hell yes.

Tommy was the first LP I ever bought, and has followed me from city to city, house to house, for almost 60 years. The hundreds of records that followed are now spread across the universe taking up space in others' lives, on their shelves. Only Tommy remains. I'd planned on framing it and putting it on the wall and wonder why I haven't...

No, I get it.

And smile.