Pete Townshend may well have some cause to feel sorry for himself; when the final reckoning comes he's got a lot to answer for—in particular, the Curse Of The Concept Album.

Though concept albums are by no means new to popular music—Gordon Jenkins and Mel Torme were churning "em out almost a quarter of a century ago—it was Tommy (as opposed to Sgt. Pepper) which unleashed a deluge of albums built around one specific theme. These ranged from the Fudge's horrendous Th$ Beat Goes On through to J. Tull's obscure Passion P/ay up to and including Rick Wakeman's Disneyesque King Arthur.

"None of which," says Townshend, , as he bursts into laughter, "work."

When "l Can See For Miles* bombed in Britain, the pressures were really on me to come up with something quick, and that's how Tommy emerged...

Yet as we all know, Townshend himself has had no less than three stabs at the same subject. So how does he view the trilogy in retrospect?