History
The first track, "Athena", peaked at #28 on the Billboard Pop Singles charts.
The album cover, designed by Graham Hughes, depicts a young boy playing Atari's Space Duel arcade game. It is a reference to Tommy, with the pinball machine that the main character played updated to the times.
In 1997, MCA re-released the album with new mixes for the album correcting problems evident in the original mixes for "Athena" and "Eminence Front".
Pete Townshend has been sometimes noted to give a brief history of "Eminence Front" before playing it in concert. He would explain what the song was about, and finish by saying the album's name ("It's Hard").
Read more about this topic: It's Hard
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)