The Who managed to slowly build a following for Tommy, and the band's manager Kit Lambert helped by booking performances of Tommy into regular classical concert venues, thus enhancing its reputation as a serious work. The Who realized that their fortunes rested on how well Tommy performed, and began to play the whole work through consistently in live shows. Upon the initial release of the album in May 1969, sales figures were disappointing. Townshend had composed "mini-operas" before, but Tommy was a fairly full-length work running over an hour, resulting in a rather complicated and expensive recording project that was completed in March 1969. Townshend adapted the basic idea behind this story and updated it to his own time and circumstance, locating it in the context of "Swinging London" and the drug-fueled popular culture adherent to this era. A couple of years later Baba was painfully revived when hit on the head with a stone thrown by another Perfect Master from that time his work as an avatar began. In his youth Meher Baba had become temporarily unable to respond to the outside world owing to a kiss on the forehead received from a Perfect Master, sending him into a mystical trance.
Throughout 1968 Pete Townshend, chief songwriter of the rock group the Who, composed Tommy, a rock opera inspired by the example of Indian avatar Meher Baba.
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