Quadrophenia is the one Who album embraced by progressive rock fans for its non-linear story and almost classical structure. (“I’ll bet she’s a virgin/Well, I’m gonna be the first in!/Her boyfriend’s gonna kill me/Oooh! Fuckin’ will he?”) He flees to a beach, depicted by the epic instrumental “The Rock” and Jimmy’s fate is left ambiguous in the album’s finale, “Love Reign O’er Me.” Did he kill himself? Townshend says only the listener knows for sure. Jimmy”), boasting, even threatening people. He gets drunk and takes on all comers (“Dr.
Moon switches with to a quiet lament about wandering in early to work “spending days licking boots for my perks.” It shatters Jimmy’s illusions about the world. Jimmy is treated to Moon’s loud, cockney bravado (“You should see me dressed up in my u-nee-form!”). Ace is played both boisterously and sadly by Keith Moon, one of his few lead vocal turns with The Who. Ace, who was something of a god to Jimmy, turns out to be a lowly bell boy at a hotel. He tries everything, wearing all the right fashions and driving GS scooter “with my hair cut neat.” A double album, the final side shows Jimmy’s ultimate deterioration when he meets Ace (the name given in the 1979 movie, but not on the album). Jimmy can’t handle his alcoholic parents. A preacher “full of lies and hate” is only scared of him. The girl he used to love doesn’t give him the time of day. His mother tells him insanity runs in his family. The album opens, first with Jimmy walking along the beach, snatches of the songs from the album fading in and out before Jimmy (or rather, Roger Daltrey) growls “Can you see the real me? Can you? Can you?”Īnd then the real beginning of the album thunders from John Entwistle’s bass. Jimmy is having a helluva time trying to figure out who he is. The title, in fact, is a play the word “schizophrenia,” the “Quad” referring to Jimmy’s for distinct personalities, all based on members of The Who. Pete Townshend describes Jimmy as a thoroughly screwed up individual.
Roger daltrey under a raging moon rare mod#
Jimmy gets kicked out of his parents house after a fight, falls in love with a girl who rejects him, and is disillusioned to realize his Mod idol is working as a bell boy “licking boots for my perks.”
Roger daltrey under a raging moon rare mods#
The album tells the tale of Jimmy, a teenaged boy in mid-60’s London who is caught in the middle of the violent rift between Mods (the fashion-obsessed fans of The Who’s style of music) and Rockers (leather-jacket clad blues lovers). It is, in fact, probably a far superior album to the rock opera Tommy. I played the hell out of that album in my early 20’s. When I wrote about The Who a while back, somehow, I managed to leave out their masterpiece, Quadrophenia, which is stunning. I highly recommend doing this book on audio as his lyrical prose really comes to life. I listened it on Audible, which let me hear him read what he’d written. Townshend’s recollection of his life is refreshingly honest and self-deprecating. We’re also treated to a dismal childhood that went into much of The Who’s music, his parents contentious and adulterous relationship, probable sexual abuse at the hands of an increasingly demented grandmother, and the friends he ran with in postwar Acton, part of London. And yet, Townshend fretted over Moon’s emotional state and his bad habits, which ultimately killed him. The Keith Moon we have been treated to over the years was a whimsical man, the lost Monty Python member, and someone for whom being seriously was glaringly missing from his skill set. At the same time, he worries about others. He admits to being a horrible husband to former wife Kathy and worrying how leaving her might affect her. He even says, “I hope he writes his version of The Who’s story someday.” Daltrey is a rare island of stability in his life. And yet he seems to look up to Roger Daltrey. He has one of the most ambitious imaginations in rock, perhaps exceeding the flights of fancy of Roger Waters.
His solo albums, when taken as a whole instead of a collection of songs, each are organized like novels. Here is the man who created Tommy, the aborted Lifehouse (which spawned the classic Who’s Next), and Quadrophenia.
If you know anything about lead singers, narcissism is part of the job description.Īnd this is one of the amazing parts of Townshend’s autobiography. All rock stars, he posits, are a bit narcissistic, and while he doesn’t say it directly, he believes he is more narcissistic than Who lead singer Roger Daltrey. Ego? I don’t think Townshend is denying that. He also says he decided to write this book when he was 21. The creative mind behind most of The Who’s music pens his autobiography, a project he admits took sixteen years.
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