Note: This is my "magnum opus." I love Quadrophenia to death, and the deep personal connection I have to the album is something I cherish even more than the connection I have with Pearl Jam. Those of you who know me know what PJ means to me so I think that should tell you something. Also, I could not have completed this review without the excellent website http://www.quadrophenia.net, which provided me with oodles of information, some of which I've used in this review.

The concept album. Long hated by casual fans, long loved by critics. It's the album that diehard fans always swear is the best and the album that casual fans scratch their head over. From Pink Floyd's The Wall to David Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, the concept album was perhaps the most memorable musical legacy that the 1970s gave us. And no band did the concept album better than The Who.

In 1969, The Who released Tommy, the famous rock opera about the "deaf, dumb and blind boy." It was met with runaway success and to this day, when you mention The Who, it is the album probably most mentioned. After Tommy, guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend began working on his Lifehouse project. By 1972, Townshend had all but given up on this work, which was really very visionary and revolutionary. Who's Next collected the best songs of what Townshend had and represented a very loose interpretation of what Townshend had in mind for Lifehouse. (In an interesting sidenote, Townshend finally finished Lifehouse in 2000, and made it available at his website.)

In late 1972, Townshend began working on his next large concept project, entitled Quadrophenia. The title is a play on the illness of schizophrenia, with the lead character, a mod named Jimmy, suffering from four different personalities. "The four-personality concept grew out of a naive understanding of schizophrenia, and when he takes pills, his schizophrenia divides up and he suffers from quadrophenia," said Townshend at one point. The band, including Townshend himself, hated the way the album was mixed however. Entwistle tried to improve it for the soundtrack to the 1979 album, but that ultimately proved to be even worse than the original. In 1996, after months of working on it, Townshend and Daltrey finally remixed and remastered this recording to sound the way it always should have. It was their happiness at getting it right that led to the "Quadrophenia" tours of 1996 and 1997.

I didn't even know Quadrophenia at all until 1996. I was introduced to it at Madison Square Garden, on one of the New York dates in July. I just wanted to see the Who. But something happened that night. I felt as if I was the protagonist, I felt like I was the confused teenager who Roger and Pete were singing about. It was a magical performance, and within days I had bought the remastered version of the album, desparate to hear those songs again and again. From July through about January of 1997, I ate, drank, and slept Quadrophenia. One of the two discs were always in my player. I had heard Eddie Vedder's claims that it had saved his life, how he considered Pete Townshend a father figure. I wouldn't go that far, but I can see why Vedder would. This is the most magical teenage angst record ever created. It perfectly captures the confusion, the self-doubt and the self-pity of being a teenager.

To understand the story of Quadrophenia, you first must understand what the term "mod" refers to. Mods were made up of youths who had a deep love for fashion, music, and pills. They had no real social cause, in most cases they were outcasts. Bands like The Who appealed greatly to the Mods, and Townshend himself had a deep fascination with them.

To say that Quadrophenia was a massive undertaking for the Who would be an understatement. In many ways, Townshend wanted Jimmy's four personalities to reflect those of the four members of the Who. To this effect, he created 4 themes for the movie, each representing a member. Helpless Dancer represented lead singer Roger Daltrey, Is It Me? represented the stoic bassist John Entwistle, Bell Boy represented Keith Moon, and Love, Reign O'er Me represented Pete. How well these actually represent all four of the members is questionable at best, although they all do a respectable job to a certain extent.

Forgetting the story, Quadrophenia still stands on it's own as a powerful rock album that never lets up from the time it starts with the overview of the four personalities and the ocean waves crashing that is I Am The Sea to the last Daltrey yowl on Love, Reign O'er Me.

The true beginner is the rocking The Real Me, which is propelled by Moon's driving drum work, and to a lesser extent, Entwistle's smooth bass and Townshend's windmilling power chords. Not many people realize that the horns in the background are actually being played by Entwistle, which only adds to his legend.

The first of two magnificent instrumental pieces that appear on the album comes next, titled simply Quadrophenia. They say that music can well up many emotions in a human being. If this song isn't an example of that, I don't know what is. This is classical music, you'll be hearing this piece played in 200 years because it is that good. It's somber, joyful, heroic, and hopeful at different points. I'm not usually a fan of instrumental songs, as I find them boring, but this is a masterpiece on the same par as Beethoven and Bach. Yes, you read that right.

Cut My Hair plays like a punk rock tune, with it's defiant attitude and it tells of how Jimmy came to leave home. It also quotes liberally from the old High Numbers/Who song Zoot Suit. "Why do I have to move with a crowd/of kids who hardly notice when I'm around. I have to work myself to death/just to fit in." That set of lines is just the first of many that I relate to from this album. As this song plays out, you hear a newscast describing a fight between mods and rockers (rockers would be an English version of the Hells Angels). This leads directly into the next song.

The Punk and the Godfather details Jimmy going to a rock concert, where one of the stars tells him to "f*ck off." I've never truly understood what the point of this song was. Perhaps it represents all that is fake and ugly about rock and roll, I'm not sure. It's a nice song, full of great lyrical quips, I just don't understand it's purpose.

This leads directly into I'm One. In this reviewer's eyes, I'm One is the finest teenage loser anthem ever written. "Every year is the same/and I feel it again/I'm a loser/no chance to win." It's a song about being yourself, being proud of who you are, and not giving a sh*t about what other people think. "I got a Gibson/without a case/but I can't get that even tanned look on my face/ill fitting clothes/and I bend in the crowd/fingers so clumsy/voice too loud, But I'm one." Not to mention that the music on the second verse will make you dance like no other. This is the type of self-deprecating song that Townshend is the master at writing.

The Dirty Jobs is one of my least favorite songs on the record, although by the end, it usually has put a smile on my face with it's refrain of "I'm not going to sit and weep again" is as uplifting as it gets. The purpose of this song is to represent the type of work that a young mod like Jimmy could get: that is to say, not much, usually as a dustman.

The next song is the first of the four themes. Helpless Dancer is Roger's theme, and it's actually rather short. This represents Jimmy's anger at the world and how he feels it isn't going to change, making him a helpless dancer at the world's mercy. It's also here that part of Townshend's ideas about technology, first explored with Lifehouse, come through here with his line about fighting "computers and receipts."

Is It In My Head? is another song that has Jimmy searching for answers, as he does throughout this whole work really. This song continues the very theatrical feel that Quadrophenia takes on around the time of The Dirty Jobs. For some reason, I've always thought of this as being more of Pete's theme than the closing Love, Reign O'er Me. It just sounds very Pete-ish, very unsure, very confused, and yet, very curious.

This leads to I've Had Enough, which incorporates some of the music that has already happened in short bits, as well as a short preview of the previously mentioned closing number. When you're as angry, confused, and even depressed as I was at 16, the lines "I'm finished with the fashions/and acting like I'm tough./I'm bored with hate and passion./I've had enough of trying to love" hit you incredibly hard. I don't think I realized it at the time, but this song probably moulded me into who I am today more than any other song that I've been influenced by. It's not necessarily my favorite song, but I can see it's influence now. That is how disc one of this two disc set ends.

Disc two opens up with a certifiable Who classic, 5:15. By far the catchiest song on the record, 5:15 is a silly lyrical number about a train journey ("out of my brain on the 5:15"). It opens with a soft piano intro and Townshend crooning "Why Should I Care?" only to be counted down into a piano, horn and drum driven classic rock and roll song. By the end of the song, it becomes an out and out rock and roll jam that features the greatest bass solo in the history of rock and roll by one John Entwistle.

Two acoustic numbers about the water and the sea follow. The ocean plays a large part in the story, mostly because that's where many mods would gather in England in the mid 1960s: the beach. Sea and Sand represents Jimmy going back to the beach to remember the good times he had there, and he reminisces about some of his fights with his parents at home. I've always loved the bridge, which I've come to look at as a play on the Who's classic My Generation with the lines "Come sleep on the beach/keep within my reach/I'm feeling high with you here/I just want to die with you near/I'm wet and I'm cold/but thank god I ain't old!"

Drowned is the other number, and this has proven to be a favorite of Townshend's. While it's a full band number on the record, it has developed into a solo acoustical number that Townshend sings when Quadrophenia is performed. Townshend has always considered it a song that stands wonderfully on it's own, and to a large extent it does. It's message about being at one with the sea is both gorgeous and poetic.

While upbeat and kind of catchy, Bell Boy is, storyline wise, a very depressing song. The Bell Boy is an old "Ace Face" (I've never been clear on what an Ace Face is, but I've always assumed it was a leader of some sort of the mods) who is now working at a hotel the mods had once destroyed. In Townshend's words, the Ace Face tells Jimmy "lok, my job is sh*t and my life is a tragedy. But you, look at you, you're dead!" Bell Boy is ironically, the Keith Moon theme. I've always looked at this as kind of a joke, given Moon's own rampages in hotels, one of which got the Who banned from Holiday Inns for life.

The rock opera takes a turn back to the much darker side with Dr. Jimmy. It's a song about how Jimmy is self destructing so severely that he actually has to step back for self reflection. The whole song sounds very theatrical to me, but it's a very driving rock song, which I know sounds contradictory but just go with it. The bridge of the song is John's theme, and it is positively gorgeous. "Is it me, for a moment/the stars are falling/the heat is rising/the past is calling." I don't know what it is about those lines, but they've always hit me like a ton of bricks. As the song ends, it previews the next song, which is the second instrumental, The Rock.

The Rock is very similar to Quadrophenia (the instrumental song), but rather than being the foreshadowing it was, it's now much more of a review of the entire story line. No words, just music. Once again, I will say that this is classical music done with rock instruments. An orchestra could play this tomorrow and get a standing ovation. There's so many emotions, the instruments, especially Pete's lead licks, just sound like they're singing. The music not only takes into effect the 4 personalities of Jimmy, but the impact that water has on this story, and the impact that the other characters have.

After close to ninety minutes, the album closes with Pete's theme, Love, Reign O'er Me. This is a song about maturing, and in this writer's opinion, it is Roger Daltrey's greatest vocal performance ever. He sings with the passion and abandon of a wild man, yet underneath it is a hidden sensitivity. The bridge, which has some nice ringing guitar tones, is one of the most uplifting vocal moments in rock history. "On the dry and dusty road/the nights we spent apart alone/I need to get back home/to cool, cool rain/I can't sleept and I can't think/the nights are hot and black as ink/oh, God I need a drink/of cool, cool rain!" The ultimate message is the same as Drowned, except now, Jimmy wants to drown in the "cool, cool rain." To me, it's also always represented how he wants his pain washed away, but that's just my opinion.

Quadrophenia isn't just an album of music. It's a definitive story of teenage confusion, lust, love, and sorrow. In no way do I mean any disrespect to artists like Pink Floyd or David Bowie, or even the Beatles, with what I'm about to say. But to me, this is the greatest work in the history of rock and roll. It's scope is grand, and it's messages are timeless. Because, in the end, I think there are times when everyone "needs a drink of cool, cool rain."





Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving