![]() We did three or four songs and gave them to Lewis, and he had us in the studio a month or two later. ![]() I went home and started messing around with some of the tunes, and it flipped over to bluegrass so easily. "I was thrilled being a lifelong 'Tommy' fan, I was a 'yes' right away. "He had been wanting to do it for like 20 years, and he just said, 'I think this is the right time, and you're the right band,'" Rea says. It was conceived and produced by SXSW co-founder and longtime musician/producer Louis Jay Meyers, who "just laid it on us one day," Rea remembers. "We all came together with the bluegrass thing," says Rea, but a bluegrass interpretation of "Tommy" wasn't the band's idea. One member came from an opera background, another from rap, a third toured with the Grateful Dead. It's not as fantastic as it sounds, says Jim Rea, HillBenders guitarist and the arranger of the "bluegrass opry." As he explains, the Springfield, Mo.,-born band "all had rock 'n' roll in our history in one way or another." But beyond that was a smorgasbord of influences. Imagine, then, "Tommy" performed on banjo, dobro, mandolin, bass and guitar by a bluegrass band called The HillBenders. 96 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The original album has sold 20 million copies and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "historical, artistic and significant value." In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked "Tommy" No. "In Tommy's mind, everything is incredible, meaningless beauty."īut to the Rolling Stone critic, "on the simplest level, the songs are magnificent, simply as rock." And audiences have agreed for 45 years. Townshend talked to Rolling Stone about the greater meaning of the story of Tommy, a young man left deaf, blind and mute by a trauma he experienced, as a symbol of humanity's own self-imposed handicaps and, at the same time, a way to redemption. For the first time, a rock group has come up with a full-length cohesive work that could be compared to the classics." In 1969, Rolling Stone called "Tommy" - the rock opera written by Pete Townshend and released by The Who as a double-album set - "probably the most important milestone in pop since Beatlemania. WHERE - Faulkner Performing Arts Center on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville
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