Released 1973
I Am The Sea
The Real Me
Quadrophenia
Cut My Hair
The Punk Meets The Godfather
I'm One
The Dirty Jobs
Helpless Dancer
Is It In My Head
I've Had Enough
5:15
Sea And Sand
Drowned
Bell Boy
Doctor Jimmy
The Rock
Love, Reign O'er Me
The album would have been a disaster if any other music idiom, say like covers or typical 60s music, had been used. People forget that the whole point of Quadrophenia, written in `71 and `72, is that it's a look back, a retrospective. And to arrive at where you were at, you need a vehicle. Pete Townshend's choice of music to journey in that vehicle was spectacular. (Irish Jack Lyons)
It was the summer when I used to listen to it a lot. And all these years later, it's still the summer when it sounds best. Townshend or Daltery or one of them (or both of them) and various rock crits used to complain about the mix, that it was muddy. I never thought it was muddy.
It was oceanic.
From the waves crashing against the rocks, heard as it fades in and between cuts every now and then, right to the end with Moonie's percussion collection clattering against the studio floor and walls, as the rain sounds. You can get lost in it.
From that opening, that stormy sea, waves crashing, wind howling, and you can hear voices in the tumult, snatches of song, before you hear Roger snarl(entreat) "Can you see the real me?" and the band crashes in, Entwistle playing the most amazing bass, still to this day, soloing behind the slashing chords, driving. Teenage angst personified as our hero rails against parents, shrinks, and preachers, none of whom can understand his inner turmoil.
At the time I was heavily into Quad I was also heavily into punk rock. And while it was obvious that this was very different from the crash-and-bash of Black Flag or The Sex Pistols, you could hear it was really the same thing, arted-up sometimes, with its operatic and theatrical choruses, yet even something like "The Punk Meets The Godfather", told the same tale. Told it with honesty and truth, just as surely as the young and the artless headbangers did. Perhaps even told it better, for PT was a better writer than Rollins or Ginn ever were.
Roger once said he didn't see how American kids could possibly relate to the film version of Quad. Film critic Danny Peary was sharper. He didn't see how American kids possibly couldn't. You didn't need to know jack about mods or London in the 60's to understand the tale. Frustration, hormones, love requited or unrequited. Getting stoned. Staying out too late. Pissing off your parents and other authority figures. "Why do I have to be different to them/Just to earn the respect of a dancehall friend?" "Why should I care if I got to cut my hair?" "Every year is the same, and I feel it again ... I'm a loser" ... "I see her dance across the ballroom ... I am the face, she has to know me" ... "How come the girls come on oh so cool, but when ya meet `em, every one's a fool?" ... "Can you see the real me?"
It's been a long time since I was a teenager. The turmoil and rage and confusion are (mostly) gone. But I remember them perfectly, vividly. Sometimes I miss them. Sometimes I laugh about them. The things that seemed important. As an "adult" I sneered at those things. In middle age I see them a bit differently. The things might not have been so important. The feelings were. And when I listen to Quad, which is rarely, I recall them ... so vividly, in fact, you could almost say I experience them, all over again. I can still get lost in it.
Quad, to me, though, most of all, will always be an ocean. A great, dark, grey swelling ocean that stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions. A roiling sea, all in mid-60's black-and-white, like some lost film of the era ... maybe The Damned or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. And I can put on the music and for a while, I am in the sea, I am the sea, rolling and roaring, into infinity.
