"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 vocal. The song tells the attempts of Tommy's parents to try to cure him. They leave him with an eccentric gypsy, a self-proclaimed "Acid Queen", who feeds Tommy various hallucinogenic drugs and performs sexually in an attempt to free him from isolation.
"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.[1] Tommy's parents take Tommy to the Acid Queen to see if her "lascivious attentions" can cure Tommy of his ills.[2] However, she is unsuccessful in awakening him.[2]
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."[3][2]
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.[1] Chris Charlesworth calls it "one of the best songs on Tommy".[3]
Bob Dylan's song "Murder Most Foul"—released in March 2020, but recorded at an unknown, earlier date—references both "The Acid Queen" and "Tommy Can You Hear Me?"[6][7]
References
^ abAtkins, John (2000). The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963-1998. MacFarland. pp. 118, 122. ISBN9781476606576.
^ abcGrantley, S.; Parker, A.G. (2010). The Who by Numbers. Helter Skelter Publishing. p. 65. ISBN9781905139262.
^ abCharlesworth, C. (1995). The Complete Guide to the Music of the Who. Omnibus Press. p. 26. ISBN0711943060.