The album Pete Townshend considered The Who at their peak: “We blew several studios away”
How do you follow one of the greatest masterpieces of your generation? It may have been a watershed moment for your band and the culture at large, but what do you do when you now have everyone’s eyes on you, expecting the next record to be as good, nay, better than the one you just did? Since Who’s Next came from the aborted Lifehouse project, Pete Townshend saw fit to do everything again with The Who on Quadrophenia.
Then again, any other rock opera Townshend ever put out would be living in the shadow of Tommy. As good as a project like Quadrophenia could have been, how do you divorce it from a story about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who got everything started? Even Lifehouse saw the protagonist, Bobby, as deaf, dumb, and blind to the world around him, so Townshend was in danger of becoming a one-trick pony.
But what if the protagonist is deaf, dumb, and blind to the feelings inside himself? Although most of the album involves our hero, Jimmy, struggling with everyday problems that everyone faces, the choice to give him different sonic personalities was a stroke of genius. Since everything is being reflected by all four band members, we see the slightly manic side of Jimmy’s psyche, from his troubled home life in ‘The Real Me’ to his struggles to find inner peace in ‘I’m One’.
For all of the grace the band showed making Tommy, Quadrophenia may actually be the better album. They were still fairly green to the concept, but with years of playing shows under their belts, Townshend turned the group into a machine while becoming a competent lead guitar player on songs like the title track.
In fact, ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ might be one of the finest operatic songs Townshend ever made. There were still some bugs to work out, to be sure, but there were also more than a few expansive parts that could put it on the same level as classical pieces of music.
It may have been birthed in Townshend’s mind, but he considered the album to be the pinnacle of the band, telling VH1, “That album is a kickin’ studio record. We blew several studios away. We were at our peak as a bloodletting machine, and there wasn’t much subtlety there”.
Is a lack of subtlety really a bad thing, though? Townshend may have been unabashed in his love for extravagant musical pieces, but it was probably better for him to be outspoken and honest than constantly having to reel himself back from what he was trying to say half the time.
Take ‘Love Reign O’er Me’. As much as it works as a proper ballad, anyone trying to turn it into a softspoken jam is doing the entire track a disservice. It deserves that kind of bombastic delivery, and the fact that Roger Daltrey sounds like he’s about to pop a blood vessel is everything that a rock fan wants to hear from them.
And with the emerging punk movement giving a stiff middle finger to subtlety on their own records, Townshend may not have known how ahead of the curve he actually was. He may have been aching to break out of his typical rock conventions, but by reinventing his way of working on a concept record, he made something that got the respect of the seasoned veterans and the kids on the street.