The Who's Tommy - I'm Free (Reprise)/ Pinball Wizard (Reprise) Lyrics

1993 Broadway
The Who's Tommy the Musical - I'm Free (Reprise)/ Pinball Wizard (Reprise) Lyrics


TOMMY: (to interviewer)
I could tell you what it takes
To feel the highest high.
You'd laugh and say "Nothing's that simple!"

(Tommy sings directly into the camera
and a close-up of his face appears on the video screen.)

I'm free...I'm free...
And I'm waiting for you to follow me!

(The studio disappears and only Tommy
and his security guards remain on the stage.
Tommy is inventing a public self, Tommy the star,
as images of the younger Tommys, the murder, pinball,
the brain-scan and finally his new self flash before us.)

TOMMY:
He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine.
Feeling all the bumpers,
Always playing clean.
He plays by intuition;
The digit counters fall,
The deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball!
He ain't got no distractions;
Can't hear those buzzers and bells.
Don't see no lights a-flashin';
He plays by sense of smell.
He always get a replay,
'N never tilts at all.
That deaf, dumb and blind kid ...
Sure plays a mean pinball!

TOMMY & SECURITY GUARDS:
He's a pinball wizard.
There has to be a twist.
A pinball wizard,
S'got such a supple wrist.

COUSIN KEVIN & GUARDS:
How do you think he does it?

TOMMY:
I don't know.

LOCAL LASSES:
What makes him so good?

(A dazzling, mirrored pinball machine rises from out of the floor.
Tommy, in a helmet that makes him deaf and blind again,
staps himself to the machine and
rides it as it twists and turns manically.)

COUSIN KEVIN & GUARDS:
Even at my favorite table,
He can beat my best.
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest.
He's got crazy flipper fingers;
Never seen him fall.
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball!

(The pinball machine faces out with Tommy behind it.
Suddenly, pulsing lights, shrieking buzzers and bells surround us,
as if we were inside the guts of the machine.
Tommy continues to play furiously as the pinball machine gyrates in
an accelerating pyrotechnic fit.
When the pinball machine finally explodes
in a glorious climactic fireball, Tommy steps back victorious.
Silence. A huge audience responds.
Tommy is now performing on a raised platform in a stadium
before an adoring crowd.)

TOMMY:
I'm free...I'm free!
And I'm a waiting for you to follow me!

CROWD:
How can we follow?
How can we follow?

(Multiple video screens display the live action
of Tommy's act before the crowd,
as Cousin Kevin and the lads-turned-patrol guards patrol the stage.)

Album Songs: The Who's Tommy the Musical Songs Lyrics
The Who's Tommy I'm Free (Reprise)/ Pinball Wizard (Reprise) Lyrics