The Who album that Pete Townshend calls “pure music”
The importance of music went beyond mere melodies for Pete Townshend, even when he was a kid. “I was the child of the guy who played saxophone in a post-war dance band,” he said. “He knew what his music was for – it was for post-war, and it was for dancing with a woman that you might end up marrying. It was about romance, dreams, fantasy”.
With riots running rampant, Presidents being assassinated, and the world looking for direction amid an explosion of pop culture, he set about a new type of song. “Music, even today, is about much more than that. It has a function, which is to help us understand what is going on in the world and to help us understand what is going on inside us, so the purpose and the duty of somebody who makes music is very different to the way it used to be. […] And I think I was the first to articulate that and try to explain it,” he told Apple Music.
After he was through with articulating this, he set about expanding it, to go beyond the vivified roar of liberation from early tracks like ‘My Generation‘ and push on to delve into the depths of that new domain. As both a songwriter and a master guitarist, Townshend was unique on this front because he tried to implement his lyrical intent in the arrangements, too. Roger Daltrey would even opine that Townshend is underrated when it comes to ”actual arrangements and the ideas, the harmonies and the structures”.
This is where even Townshend himself thinks he triumphs when it comes to one of his favourite The Who records: Quadrophenia, a concept LP which arrived in 1973. Citing his pride over the album, he said, ”It is pure music, nothing more, and yet so many people have told me it reflects something they felt changed the way they felt about their early years.”
The album was reflective of his own desires growing up. As he would reflect: ”I suppose I did see the desire for some kind of spiritual ideal among my friends in my youth, yes. And I think I experienced it, but only in later years. I set up the longing for spiritual perfection when I was young, not realising that it can be achieved simply by accepting I have a right to be happy,” he told JamBase.
The album’s own soul-searching ways tell the familiar story of a youngster looking for their place in the world, but what makes the album so connective is the way the music perfectly tessellates with the tale to create something emotionally resonant. Indeed, there is a purity to the music, as though Townshend has channelled the endless idealism of opportune youth.
The album is the only album The Who entirely composed by Townshend, and he concludes that ”the band never recorded anything that was so ambitious or audacious again.”
