In 1969 a legendary rock album was released called Tommy. The rock-opera told the tale of young Tommy Walker who becomes deaf, dumb, and blind after witnessing a murder.

This tale of a deaf, pinball-playing kid was given to us by one greatest and loudest rock bands ever to grace a stage: The Who. (named The World’s Loudest Rock Band by Guiness)

The Who’s guitarist, Pete Townsend, is one of the world’s great guitar players and, apparently, he is also now a safety inspector. Townsend has ben going deaf for a number of years. I always belived that the cause of his hearing loss was due to their infamous Smothers Bros. performance. Townsend believes otherwise.

The Who’s live performances were traditionally extremely loud. For most of the 1970s they were listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest Rock band in the world, measured at 130 decibels, though other bands, notably Deep Purple, have since taken over that dubious honor. Townshend’s later partial deafness and tinnitus is well known; popular legends hold that the members of the band suffered permanent hearing loss from their loud concerts, or that Townshend’s right ear was damaged as a result of being too close to the drum kit when Moon detonated an oversized concussion bomb in it at the conclusion of a performance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. Townshend, however, maintains that the true cause was listening to the music at high volume through headphones.

Now Pete Townsend has come out to discuss the dangers of listening to loud rock music…. on your iPod.

According to ABC News,

Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don’t turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.

Townshend, 60, guitarist in the 60s band The Who, said his hearing was irreversibly damaged by years of using studio headphones and that he now is forced to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover.

“I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf,” he said on his Web site. “Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK … But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead.”

Pete, I appreciate your heart-felt public service announcement but if I do shell out the money to see you and Rodger this summer I am going to pay for those extra decibels so CRANK IT UP OLD MAN!!!! My Ge, Ge, Generation likes it loud!