‘Gordon Is A Moron’: the song that made Sting’s ‘Quadrophenia’ experience a living hell
No other film has managed to define a generation quite like 1979’s Quadrophenia. Not only did The Who’s tale of mods and rockers capture the spirit of the 1960s, but it also reflected the revolutionary time period in which it was made. The rise of punk rock during the late 1970s saw youth, subculture, and rebellion come into fashion once again, and Quadrophenia capitalised on that renewed interest perfectly. Along the way, it made an acting star of the ‘Ace Face’, then-emerging Police songwriter Sting.
Casting Quadrophenia was, by no means, an easy task for director Franc Roddam or the production team. Fraught with all the difficulties of working with young people during the age of punk, the production cycled through various different actors for virtually all of the main roles – Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten was the original choice to play the lead role of Jimmy before it was given to Phil Daniels. However, the ‘Ace Face’ role seemed tailor-made for Sting, whose sharp sense of style and air of superiority made him the natural choice.
Although the film, based on Pete Townshend’s rock opera, was centred around the rise of youth subculture during the 1960s, the production was largely defined by the blossoming punk subculture of the late 1970s. The bulk of the main cast was captivated by the sneering sounds of punk, worshipping the likes of the Sex Pistols and The Clash.
Toyah Wilcox, who starred as Monkey in the film, was already on her way to becoming a punk icon in her own right by the time the film hit the silver screen, and Johnny Rotten’s near involvement in the film speaks to its punk credentials.
Sting and The Police certainly took some of this inspiration from punk when establishing their band, although their sound was always much more expansive than the ‘here’s three chords, now form a band’ manifesto of the movement. However, the prevalence of punk attitudes made the songwriter’s time on Quadrophenia less than harmonious. “Because he was so perfect and so beautiful and so clever, we just relentlessly took the piss out of him,” Toyah recalled in the documentary, A Way of Life: Making Quadrophenia.
In 1978, with filming underway on the film, comedian Graham Fellows entered the pop charts with the single ‘Jilted John’. A stunning parody of the punk movement, the titular John’s girlfriend leaves him for a bloke called Gordon. With a simplistic guitar rhythm behind him, reflecting the basic instrumentation of most punk tunes, Fellows’ character bellows the line “Gordon is a moron” over and over. The success of the single, which reached number four in the charts, spelt disaster for Sting, whose birthname is Gordon Sumner.
As Phil Daniels recalled, the song provided the rest of the cast with ample opportunity to get under Sting’s skin. “One day, on the call sheet, they put Gordon Sumner down instead of Sting,” the actor shared. “So, everybody found out his name was Gordon, and they started singing ‘Gordon is a moron’.” Despite Toyah’s claims that Sitng took all the teasing “really well”, Daniels remembers things slightly differently. “I don’t think he was too happy,” he laughed. “That’s all I remember.”
Sting’s time on the set of Quadrophenia was already difficult enough as, according to Daniels, the Police singer struggled to ride the shiny silver Vespa he owns in the film and could not master the 1960s dance sequences which featured throughout – go and watch the film again, you only ever see Sting dance from the waist up. So, the popularity of ‘Jilted John’ merely added insult to injury. Nevertheless, his role in the final film was essential for its enduring success, and the ‘Ace Face’ remains an icon of British cinema to this day.
