Pete Townshend discusses the one perfect moment achieved by The Who
There are only so many times artists can play with perfection before they start getting diminishing returns. Most people will try to make the most out of their time in the spotlight, but it just takes a handful of lacklustre albums before people start either getting bored of what you have to say or turning their back on you entirely. While Pete Townshend always kept the big picture in mind with The Who, he admitted that the one perfect moment for them came in Quadrophenia.
At the same time, Townshend’s second massive rock opera probably wouldn’t have happened without albums like Tommy or The Who Sell Out coming first. While the latter was a zany look at what the Mod rockers would have sounded like on a pirate radio station, Townshend’s tale about a deaf, dumb and blind kid making his way through the world became synonymous with blending rock and roll with sophisticated forms of music.
By the time he got to Quadrophenia, though, Townshend was completely dialled in. He wasn’t going to drop the ball again like he did with the failed Lifehouse experiment, and giving his protagonist, Jimmy, a split personality made each of the band members’ songs play off each other perfectly.
Despite being known as a songwriter first, this is also where Townshend really found himself as a lead guitarist. He was never looked at as an Eddie Van Halen or Jimmy Page-style guitarist, but hearing him create different melodic fragments on ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ and the title track can only come from someone who understood their craft on a much deeper level.
Although Tommy might have a greater impact on the rock world at large, Townshend singled out Quadrophenia as a landmark period in their recording career, telling The Montreal Gazette, “[The perfect moment was] Completing Quadrophenia as a record in 1973, then finally performing it in its first theatrical incarnation at Madison Square Garden in 1997.”
Regardless of the amount of ink spilt over Tommy, Quadrophenia also works much better as an ambitious project. Townshend’s first attempt was always going to be rough around the edges since it was his first time, but hearing him go from tunes like ‘Go to the Mirror’ to ‘The Real Me’ was a stroke of genius that no one saw coming.
When you look at the number of bands that came out after The Who, many of them have cited Quadrophenia as a prominent part of their upbringing. Considering how open he is about his emotions in his music, there’s a good chance that Eddie Vedder got the courage to write something like ‘Alive’ from hearing about Jimmy’s struggles and wanting to channel his own frustrations in song.
Quadrophenia will always be looked at in the shadow of Tommy, but it’s far from a lesser album than its predecessor. If anything, this was proof that The Who was more than just a rock band. They were a well-oiled machine and they were going to stretch their music into any genre that they liked.
