The Who Album: “Quadrophenia”

I love this album. It connects somehow, the frustration of My g-g-g-generation extended to an entire double album, played with the frenetic energy and genius of The Who, and intermingled with a dash of Pete Townshend's mystical leanings. I am the sea.

It is not only the music, the whole package was perfect when it arrived in autumn 1973. The black and white cover with the scooter and the four faces of the band reflected in its mirrors, and a breathtakingly good series of monochrome photographs. If any record deserves a deluxe edition, this one does.

And here it is - or is it? What we have is something half-way between the sumptuous, informative, historic collector's edition which the album merits, and the kind of money grabbing release you get when some record company notices how much people are paying for boxed sets these days and says, "Quick, let's get Quadrophenia out before the CD market disappears completely".

Because there is a lot wrong with this release, though I still cannot give it less than four stars. Still, time to stop rambling and tell you what you get. Within a very solid slipcase you will find a poster advertising the original double album (actually this is a fine reproduction and one of the better things here), a colour envelope holding various bits of memorabilia: reproductions of some of Townshend's draft lyrics, a rather darkly reproduced colour photo of Jimmy (the central character) on a scooter, and a 7-inch single of 5.15 backed with the slightly rare track Water.

Then there is the main event: a 100-page hardback book of photos and an essay by Townshend, within which nestle the original double CD remastered, a DVD with 8 tracks remixed for 5.1 surround sound, and two CDs of Townshend's demos for the album.

The book is certainly nice to have, though bear in mind that the original album came with a 46 page insert which is all included in the book, so that accounts for nearly a quarter of it. I am also upset to report that the quality of those wonderful photographs is poor; I was really hoping that I would get better copies than those in my falling-apart LP but in fact these are noticeably worse; they have that grainy look you get when photos are reprinted from a print rather than from the originals.

Still, the *other* photos in the book are nicely reproduced and the essay is fascinating if you love Quadrophenia half as much as I do. Townshend recounts how he came up with the story that is printed in the front cover of the LP (and also here), when remembering how he slept under Brighton pier once "after a riotous night at the Aquarium ballroom." He also describes how the album came together, how it was recorded, and adds notes on the songs and demos.

If you are a fan, you will definitely want to hear the demos too. They form a sort-of alternate version of the album, lacking the Who's energy but with its own appeal. There are also songs here that are not on the album, and others that did not show up until the soundtrack of the Quadrophenia film. Some of the songs have overdubs which I personally would rather had been omitted.

Note that the standard-price 2CD set has 11 of the demos as bonus tracks. This box has 25 demo tracks.

The 5.1 mix is enjoyable too. This album is ideal for surround sound, especially at those moments when sea noises swirl around.

It's curious though that only 8 tracks have been mixed to 5.1. Why? But the rest of 5.1 Quadrophenia is not the only thing missing.

The important thing to realise is that this is Townshend's deluxe box, rather than The Who's deluxe box. I have not spotted any contribution to the package from Roger Daltrey, despite his massive contribution to the quality of the album, nor even any attempt to collect existing quotes from the two members of the band who are no longer with us, Keith Moon and John Entwistle. There are no outtakes from band sessions, nor are there any live tracks from when Quadrophenia was performed live back in the day; yes I realise that the concerts at the time had some problems but I would still love to hear how they sounded.

Quadrophenia was remixed in 1996 and it is the remix that is offered here (there are small differences in the remaster including a new train noise in 5.15 but no big leap in sound quality), but for completeness I would have liked both mixes to be included, in line with what has been done in deluxe boxes for other classic albums such as Jethro Tull's Aqualung and King Crimson's In the Court of. To my mind the original mix is still important, the Quadrophenia that is as I first heard it in the seventies.

So this is a frustrating production, much less than it should be; but then again frustration is what Quadrophenia is all about so that is curiously fitting. Fans will still want this package, hard though it is to justify the cost. And I suppose when and if the full 5.1 release is done eventually we will be asked to pay again.

Even though Quadrophenia is my favorite Who album, this remastered version pales in comparison to the original CD version released in the early 90's. It's actually muddy in spots, and as a result sounds that you're used to hearing have been quieted or lost altogether. For example, in "The Dirty Jobs," after Daltrey sings, "You men should remember how you used to fight," there used to be what sounded like seal noises (which fit in well with the ocean and water images and sounds of the album), perhaps to indicate how spineless these "men" have become. In the remastered version, these noises are gone. Later, in "Drowned," the piano is reduced to a less prominent role, particularly in the central section where the horns come in and overpower the piano, and that's a shame since the playing on the original is so inspired and thrilling. But, perhaps the greatest tragedy of this remastered version is how forced to the background Townshend's rhythm guitar is during "Love, Reign O'er Me", especially in the solo--and we're talking ferocious, adrenaline-causing strumming in the original. Find a used CD copy of the original or buy the gold CD. Anything but this mangled version. It's as if the person in charge of remastering the album didn't appreciate the finer points of the original production or wasn't even a Who fan. Maybe, in overseeing this, Townshend didn't have his hearing aid in, and Entwistle was too busy snorting coke. Either way, they goofed.

I was very excited to hear that Pete Townsend was remastering the original vinyl mixes for this re-release. The original mixes haven't been available for years on CD, and the original out of print CD version was poorly mastered, leaving the MFSL Gold disc as the only way to obtain a decent copy of the original mix on CD, which is also out of print and costs $200 plus for a used copy on ebay. This was supposed to be the definitive version, I quote from the introduction printed in the booklet that comes with this package "The time has come to for me and my team to honor Quadrophenia with a carefully presented package that features examples of the impact surround sound would have on the music, TO REMASTER THE VINYL MIXES, and to collect and restore my demos." This was also stated in the press release info months before this release. Based on that info I placed my pre-order over a month ago, very happy to finally have a remastered copy of the original mix. To my dissapointment, these are not the original mixes. I believe these are the exact mixes as the 1996 remixes. In "The Dirty Jobs" the "seal" sounds are still missing immediately after the line "you men should remember how you used to fight", that is the most obvious way of telling this is not the original mix, along with various guitar and piano parts that used to be louder and up front are buried in the mix, exactly like the 1996 remix. I'm so glad I didn't spring for the Super Deluxe Edition, and waste more money. The demo versions are interesting, but I don't see myself listening to them more than a few times. I just want the original mixes that I grew up listening to and loving, and this isn't it.

...and for the 17 year old male in ALL of us. Forget the specifics of mods and rockers or details of British teenage life circa 1964. This album is about that awful period between being a teenager and being a real adult. And it captures that bewildered RAGE and FRUSTRATION that goes with that whole stage of life. Songs like 'The Real Me', 'The Punk and the Godfather' and 'Dr Jimmy' boil with anger; others, such as the suicidally tinged 'Drowned' (for my money the best song on here and one of the mosgt beautiful melodies songwriter Pete Twonshend ever came up with), and 'Bell boy' the pathos. Townshend was approaching 30 at the time, but, as he observed somewhere, being in a rock band was about extending your adolescence. That's probably why he was able to convey the emotions of a teenage bloke so well. Drawbacks? Possibly not as many as there seemed at the time of release: the album was panned by critics at the time. That's only in part due to the fact that it followed the incomparable 'Who's Next' album. The fact is, Quadrophenia takes a bit of getting used to, but the effort is worth it. However....it misses a fifth star because musically it gets overblown at times - Townshend himself conceded that the songs were touch 'Wagnerian'. And the attempted plot gets clunky at some points (though not as much as with 'Tommy', the band's other, the more successful though vastly inferior rock opera). If you like The Who, it's one of their best albums - but it may pay to start with one of the others (Who's Next, maybe)

It's the greatest rock album of all time. I don't think there's any higher praise I can offer it than that. I've spent my money on thousands and thousands of CDs, covered the entire spectrum of popular music from metal to ambient to folk to country to prog to pop to punk to lo-fi to you-name-it, and Quadrophenia still stands out for me as the most ambitious and fully realized project anyone's ever pulled off in the genre at large. Moreover, it does something that I think all truly profound art ought to: it deeply involves the listener emotionally. Lots of intellectually impressive music and art keeps its audience at an enforced distance (it seems to be the modern aesthetic), but Quadrophenia engages you in both your head and your heart without ever sinking to cheap or manipulative levels. There's a term for what this album evokes, and uncoincidentally it's also what Townshend and his creation Jimmy are both searching for: the experience of the sublime.

And man, that's no mean feat. Townshend was writing about the early '60s "Mod" youth culture over a decade later AND from the point of view of an outsider, and yet his lyrics (and liner notes - brilliant character writing) are miraculously free of cliches or patronization. They're not poetic in the same way as Dylan's could be, but then Townshend's not writing about psychedelic jesters and two-wheeled gypsies, rather about a lower-middle class malcontent kid. And these lyrics depict the emotionally chaotic mind of a moody, dreamy, confused adolescent with sharp and subtle strokes. ("Cut My Hair" in particular is underappreciated in this regard: it captures the poignantly real ambiguity in Jimmy's relationship with his parents; they're NOT monsters - which is how most lyricists writing the same song would portray them - and Jimmy recognizes this even as he fights with them.)

I could spend all day raving about how perfect Townshend's lyrics are on this album - he's working on levels most can only dream of attaining and many remain unaware of - but I have to pay tribute to the music as well, which expresses Townshend's tangled thematic and structural ideas brilliantly WHILE carrying the weight of the emotionally searing storyline AND also while, y'know, just totally effin' rocking. "The Real Me," "The Punk And The Godfather," "5.15," "Drowned," "Doctor Jimmy," and (the underrated) "I've Had Enough" are the true heirs of the musical breakthroughs of "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Bargain." On songs like these intelligent hard rock fuses with indelible melodies and commanding performances to form an edifice that builds logically upon the best of Who's Next and that remains unsurpassed to this day. Of the four musical themes that stand in both for aspects of Jimmy's fragmented personality and the members of The Who, only Roger's "Helpless Dancer" theme is less than perfectly suited to its placement and the album's overall mood - it's a touch too baroque - and even then, the "Helpless Dancer" motif returns to form an integral part of the instrumental finale. And that finale, "The Rock," really encapsulates for me all the ways in which this album is Townshend's triumph. To be sure, Daltrey sings brilliantly, Moon gives his final hurrah as the world's greatest rock drummer, and Entwistle plays bass as effortlessly as light plays upon the water. But "The Rock," which reprises each of the four themes and then brings them together in a fusion of four into one, is microcosm of all the emotional highpoints and climaxes of what's come before, and is a tour-de-force in terms of writing AND arranging.

When I think about how Quadrophenia comes together in so many different ways, how it simultaneously engages the listener on so many different intellectual, musical, and emotional levels, and how it manages to gracefully execute so many tricky conceits solely at the service of a larger spiritual and narrative purpose...well, it's at times like these that I begin to toss around the much-abused word "genius" with respect to Pete Townshend. He manifestly suffered for his art, both before, during, and after the recording of this album (he burned out in a major way after Quad). But not in vain. Clearly not in vain.

Because he did it! That's the most amazing thing of all, really - the way Quadrophenia vindicates all the artistic and psychological torture Townshend subjected himself to as he desperately chased down his elusive muse. He finally did it: he managed to create the musical, lyrical, conceptual, and emotional masterpiece that he had been striving to realize for nearly a decade. After years of his reach exceeding his grasp, years of falling short with spectacular "failures" like The Who Sell Out, Tommy, and Lifehouse/Who's Next (none of which, of course, are "failures" at all, save in comparison to Townshend's original vision), he finally put it all together. In a world of disposable pop music, Quadrophenia looms large as something incalculably more profound and long-lasting: as a monument to a bygone era, as a tribute to the power and glory of a great band, as a paean to the crazy contradictory emotions beating in the heart of every intelligent adolescent, and finally as proof that all-consuming artistic ambition can result in something truly inspiring. Five stars, 10/10, whatever - it's simply the most treasured thing in my entire collection.