The Bosh

While music drowned out the rumbling of subway trains below, Tommy first-nighters celebrated the film's premiere by partying on the mezzanine level of Manhattan's 57th Street subway station. "I've never been so frightened in my life," said Pinball Wizard Elton John, as more than 700 guests jostled for 600 seats. The celebrators, many making their first trip into the tubes, were treated to something more than usual subway fare: 50 Ibs. of octopus flown in from the Bahamas, 50 dozen oysters from Virginia, five 30-lb. lobsters from Nova Scotia, a 20-lb. Alaskan king crab, 100-lb. rounds of roast beef from Omaha and pastry fantasies as arcane as Ken Russell's own visions. By the subway entrances sat an 8-ft.-long Tommy sign fashioned from 3,000 tomatoes, radishes, cauliflowers and broccoli.

"We have a little bit of everybody here," observed Acid Queen Tina Turner doubtfully, "and not everybody has soul." She spent most of the evening seated next to bugle-beaded Ann-Margret. Invitations called for "black tie or glitter funk," a dress code broad enough to bring put Pop Artist Andy Warhol ("I just wanted to see Ann-Margret"), Marion Javits, wife of Senator Jacob Javits, Actor Anthony Perkins and a sampling of transvestites, tuxedoed Hollywood agents and blue-jeaned rock freaks. The glitter blitz blared until 2 a.m., leaving Columbia Pictures with a bill of some $35,000 for food, flowers and guards. The whole spectacle was unsettling to Tommy Composer and Who Guitarist Pete Townshend, who stood by a turnstile surveying his new underground following. Said he apprehensively: "I just hope none of 'em turn up at any Who concerts."

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