Sept 9 AOTD: The Who - Quadrophenia

The Who - Quadrophenia

1973



Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyN7WUKRicw&index=1&list=PL705A234F43DA0E34


My last AOTD of the summer has been reserved for my favorite album of all time: The Who's Quadrophenia. Hands Down. PERIOD! (.) . It's the story of Jimmy the Mod, and the story of all mods and all teens, the story of the Sea or nature or God, and how that all works on our minds, on our sould.  It's a story of firsts: loves, drugs, jobs, identities, and spiritual awakenings.

I can't cover most of the material on this, one of the most packed, complicated albums out there; so I'm going to just start the album and give a running stream-of-conscious commentary:


PART ONE ...

I Am The Sea: The album opens with the sound of the sea, recorded by Townshend himself. Over the crashing of the waves, you hear the four themes of the album, the disparate personalities of our hero (actually an anti-hero), Jimmy. Growing up in Duluth, on the edge of Lake Superior, I can immediately identify with this opening.  In nature, especially near any moving water, I find my real self - both a part of the nature around me, as well as dwarfed by the size of the lake, a river, an ocean or a mountain.

The Real Me: This is it, taking us back to our most primal state of teenage maturation, struggling to figure out who the hell we really are?  We act one way for our parents, another for our friends, and then our teachers or preachers get another view, and maybe our bosses and co-workers at our minimum-wage jobs get a fourth view.  All the while we are struggling to decide WHO we want to be.  Check out the Gibson Thunderbird bass in this song! The playful bubbling was done in one take by John Entwistle, a "joke," he said.  Meanwhile the rest of the band loved it and demanded they go with that take.

Quadrophenia: you will hear all four themes again in this song.  And here's that makes it so clear why I love the mind of Pete Townshend - the most creative use of synthesizer, the simplicity of the piano carrying a theme, guitars and drums dually scaling peaks, circling up like wind swirling cathedral spires.

Cut My Hair: A cymbal wash ushers in (like water or like waves) Pete Townshend's vocals - and this is really the secret weapon of The Who and of this entire album.  Whenever a plaintive voice, a bemoaning consciousness - under the lion bravado - is needed, you will hear Pete singing.

The Punk and Godfather: imagine finally meeting your rock star idol.  Pete says that's what Jimmy does, and then this singer he worshipped just tells him to bugger off! And the disconnect between fan and star begins.  Disillusionment.  And we find the disconnect between ourselves, our newly forming ideals and the commercially-driven, self-centered politics of our heroes.

I'm One: This is the song I loved WHEN I WAS A YOUNG teen (I really came to love the full album as a masterpiece later in high school and then more in college).  Honestly, I always misunderstood the chorus. I took "I'm one" to mean "I am an individual," but it's really Jimmy saying he doesn't fit in anywhere else (not coordinated enough, not athletic enough, not good-looking enough), but he DOES fit in with his Mod friends.  Either way, and most times both ways, I love the song with its honest discussion of come downs, autumn (always a depressing time of school starting), feeling like a loser, loneliness, jealousy of another's style and look, but still struggling to put your personal stamp on the world. Maybe, as a teen, it is done in the company of a group or maybe you do set out as an individual. This is MY song, I can play it repeatedly and every line takes me to a moment in my life where I tried something and failed (playing an instrument or singing), looking awkward (I was nicknamed throughout my life various things like "Dumbo" and "coyote" due to my big ears and nose), never having the good clothes or not having them fit me right (I actually stole my older sister's "Levi" jeans at one point just so I would not have wear the ill-fitting Tough Skins or Wrangler jeans I was given as hand-me-downs from the neighbors).  For me and so many others (like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, this song screamed to us that we were not alone, that someone understood us: Pete Townshend, at least.

The Dirty Jobs/Helpless Dancer: I love these two songs back to back because it gets the nastiness, dirtiness, lowness of our earliest jobs or stations in life. Also, its one of the few places on the album where various minor characters seem to speak to Jimmy and say "you're one of us," a reminder that he's not special - neither as a hero nor as a victim. I also love his response to buck up and stay determined.  Helpless Dancer is one of the most interesting tracks due to the double vocals of Daltrey - as one line comes out of the left speaker (sounding a little more subdued), and then another immediately follows springing out of the right speaker, nastier, almost snarling - and back and forth - as the left voice rises to meet the intensity of the right channel voice.  This is Roger's theme and the explanation of why Jimmy loses his "toughness": he's just too disillusioned in the face of dashed hopes.

Is It In My Head/I've Had Enough: Two songs that remind us of the beauty of the band - the first song always reminds me that so many of our problems ARE in our heads - and we need to get OUT of our heads - out of the paranoia.  What happens next sounds like a modern day Walt Whitman, with his I hear America Singing - his listing - I've had enough of living, dying, smiling, crying ... childhood, graves ... It also contains a verse I've constantly found myself living to:
"Get a job and fight to keep it
Strike out to reach a mountain
Be so nice on the outside
But inside keep ambition"

Half the time I live that sardonically and the other half? ... Seriously! I want to say that my outside and inside are matching, for the purpose of integrity, which I so dearly cling to, but are they???  It's why Pete's theme (Love Reign O'er Me), which he describes as a "hypocrite" and a "beggar" is so appropriately embedded in here.

PART TWO ...

5:15: Jimmy is on the train, leaving town, heading out to seaside towns he used to haunt with his old Mod buddies. He's pilled up and "out of his brain on the train."  Another great bass line from John and more drums that pound and scamper with frenetic urgency, evoking the anxiety of our hero as he ponders his situation.

Sea and Sand/Drowned: some of Townshend's best lyrics - and that's really saying something for an album that is four sides long.  Sea and Sand once again gets at reality - some of the most-straightforward lyrics on the album - the disfunction of his family, the lust for a local girl, the repeat of the style theme with the "GS scooter" and "jacket cut slim." The song is filled with yearning, punctuated with more illusion-splitting realizations - none of the girls are as cool as they seem - but neither is Jimmy!

Drowned is a spiritual twin to the material Sea and Sand: when he says "let me be a drop" in the ocean, "let the tide set me free," he's referencing God's love - the ocean - and His love for EACH of us - the drops (that will return to the sea) - another type of yearning.  I get this one, too, but will leave those thoughts for another day.

Bell Boy: imagine meeting someone that you once knew - that you once thought was soooo cool - and now, years down the road, that person is just like every bloke working a humbling job, kissing up to a boss, "running at someone's heels," "keeping his thoughts to himself, "licking boots for his perks" just to get by...! and where do you get relief from such a heavy let-down?  Another favorite line: "The beach is the only place where a man can feel like he's real."  Props to Keith Moon for his gruff, broken-down cockney delivery of the chorus!

Dr. Jimmy: This is the song I chose to play on my headphones to get myself pumped up for playing in football games in my senior year of high school.  Maybe it was just the line "I'll take on anyone/ ain't scared of a bloody nose."  This is Jimmy's last stand it seems - with everyone - complete abandonment - letting it all hang out - dangerously, violently and self-destructively.  It worked for me when I needed to summon my bravado, when I needed to put it all out there, on the field, with no fear. Listen to this and listen for the note bend - or maybe Roger's voice cracking  - on the world "hold" in the last line of the verse:

"I'm going back soonHome to get the baboonWho cut up my eyeTore up my LevisI'm feeling restlessBring another score aroundMaybe something strongerCould really hold me down"

The amount of aggression in Roger's voice wouldn't be matched until some of the punk bands of the late 70s and early 80s, but that it's juxtaposed with his sweetness in singing "Is it me?/For a moment/The stars are falling/The heat is rising/The past is calling" makes it an unparalleled delivery in all of rock.  Pete wrote for that voice with its rang. And Roger delivered.

The Rock/Love Reign O'er Me - 2nd song from the end, and it's a return to the instrumental, Quadrophenia-style, heard 2nd song in from the start.  All the themes are here - the guitar is singing, drums are crashing, synths are swirling, and that french horn keeps floating in. It sounds like The Who are intermittently marching off to war and into the sunset - a perfect intro into the finale delivered with thunderous punch and into the rain that begins "Love Reign O'er Me."  A finale like no other - Try it!! - go listen to the end of the Wall or Dark Side of the Moon (a close second, I'll give you that) - nothing stands up to this tour de force of Roger's roar, his soul-rending plea - Pete eloquently ramping up to the ending with woeful guitar - and then Daltrey letting rip his impassioned repeated delivery of the word "love," the final word shredding. That would be enough indeed, but then Keith Moon unleashes, stealing the final act of the  show with the most thunderous drums ever recorded (as far as I am concerned), even kicking over a stand of tubular bells for final crashing effect!  The Greatest Band. The Greatest Album.

  

Gratitude:

First: thank you to anyone who has read any of my posts on this blog.  Sharing my love of music, especially rock and roll, has re-energized me, my love for music, my love for writing, and especially my love for the art form of the album.

Second: I would like to thank Zach Palmer for first inspiring me to 1) suggest an album a day to write about, and 2) write about that album for others to gather a sense of why it might be worth listening to. He also made an archive list of the earliest albums of the summer that I recommended.

Third: I would also like to thank Jake Lindberg who about 2/3 way through this project saved me from writing an essay a day as texts on my phone ... and got me to this much more comfortable format of the blog.

Fourth: I would like to thank my sister, Melinda, who salvaged (via transcribing them to google docs) many of my texted essays before I started the blog.

Where would I be without my friends and family?  Probably ... "out of my brain, on the train."