Fifty Years of Music • October, 1973 • Quadrophenia • The Who

Quadrophenia is The Who's sixth studio album. Pete Townshend has called it, their last great album. As a double-album and rock opera, it follows Tommy and Who's Next, two back-to-back rock 'n' roll classics filled with hit songs. 

Like many great albums of the 1960's and early 70's, I didn't fully appreciate Quadrophenia until later. It tells the story of a young Mod, Jimmy confused about his identity, worth, and purpose.

With regard to British culture, most Americans were focused on how the "British Invasion" bands of the 1960's affected American music and culture. The Who give us a story of early/mid-1960's culture in England where class, fashion, and music collide to become a culture war between two young unsatisfied working class groups, the "Rockers" and the more progressive, "Mods."

Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in London and spread throughout Great Britain and elsewhere, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries, and continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz. Elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits); music (including soul, rhythm and blues, ska and mainly jazz) and motor scooters (usually Lambretta or Vespa). In the mid-1960s, the subculture listened to rock groups with mod following, such as The Who and Small Faces, after the peak Mod era. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs. One notably instrumental figure in the movement's origins was British fashion designer Mary Quant. Wikipedia

In 1979, Quadrophenia became a movie that until this past Saturday I had never seen from start to finish. I think Quadrophenia does a good job in depicting post-World War II conditions in Britain where England's war-babies have grown into a stalled economy with little opportunity and options other than to be a day labourer. Ray Davies of The Kinks and Pete Townshend of The Who are two such post-war children who turned that angst into pop-culture hits. 

Townshend's duality of the Rockers representing the 1950's youth rebellion of James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause and Marion Brando's brash-biker in The Wild Ones is dated and out of touch for the upcoming Mods. These kids want more from their society as communicated in The Who's 1965 song, My Generation. 

It's all a motor scooter preamble for what's coming as London becomes the center of change with "Swinging London" and the dawn of modern drugs, sex, fashion, music, and all things psychedelic in the swinging sixties. 

So, with the 50th anniversary of the October, 1973 release of Quadrophenia, I present you with a couple of shiny little pill options.

First, here is the Super-Deluxe double-album of Quadrophenia for your listening pleasure this week. If you haven't given it a listen to in a while, well it's certainly worth the revisit, and a rock 'n' roll classic right up there with Tommy and Who's Next. Who could have imagined such a trilogy of greatness!

 

And second, here is the original 1979 movie trailer, followed by a link to Amazon Prime where you can rent the movie for $3.99. I enjoyed this movie as my recent Saturday night feature, and highly recommend it if you're like me and kind of obsessed with this time period in history.

Enjoy my friends!

Quadrophenia on Amazon Prime