The Acid Queen
| "The Acid Queen" | |
|---|---|
| Song by The Who | |
| from the album Tommy | |
| Released | 23 May 1969 |
| Recorded | 19 September 1968 to 7 March 1969 |
| Genre | Psychedelic rock |
| Length | 3:34 |
| Label | Polydor |
| Songwriter(s) | Pete Townshend |
| Producer(s) | Kit Lambert |
| Tommy track listing | |
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24 tracks
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| "Acid Queen" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Tina Turner | ||||
| from the album Acid Queen | ||||
| Released | 1976 | |||
| Genre | Hard rock | |||
| Length | 3:01 | |||
| Label | United Artists, EMI | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Pete Townshend | |||
| Producer(s) | Ike Turner | |||
| Tina Turner singles chronology | ||||
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"The Acid Queen" is a song written by Pete Townshend and is the ninth song on The Who's rock opera album Tommy. Townshend also sings the lead vocals. The song tells the attempts of Tommy's parents to try to cure him. They leave him with a gypsy, a self-proclaimed "Acid Queen". She feeds Tommy various hallucinogenic drugs.
"The Acid Queen" is often grouped with the album's next track, "Underture", a lengthy instrumental which deals with Tommy's hallucinations and his experience with acid. The one cover song on Tommy, "Eyesight to the Blind," may have been included to introduce the character of the acid queen. Tommy's parents take Tommy to the Acid Queen to see if her "lascivious attentions" can cure Tommy of his ills. However, she is unsuccessful in awakening him.
Several notable singers have performed the song including Merry Clayton, Patti LaBelle, Bette Midler and Tina Turner.
Pete Townshend used Tommy's blindness to represent our "...blindness to reality." The Acid Queen symbolized mindless self-indulgence, and attempted to use drugs to cure Tommy's ailments: deafness, muteness and blindness." Townshend has also said that "The song's not just about acid: it's the whole drug thing, the drink thing, the sex thing wrapped into one big ball. It's about how you get it laid on you that if you haven't fucked forty birds, taken sixty trips, drunk fourteen pints or whatever...society – people – force it on you. She represents this force."
Who biographer John Atkins describes the song as "a distinctive and fully matured song in which Pete's vocals give a fine sense of urgency, suggesting that a sexual as well as drug initiation is being offered by the character. Chris Charlesworth calls it "one of the best songs on Tommy."
"Acid Queen" is the third single released from the Tina Turner album Acid Queen, following "Baby Get It On" and "Whole Lotta Love". It was released in early 1976. A different recording of the song is also included on the soundtrack album to the 1975 film Tommy in which Turner stars as the Acid Queen.
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