The Who - Quadrophenia

I have an internet friend (whom I've met in person) that will post "Quadrophenia blows doors!" on message boards and other such places every now and then. I suppose you can take it any way you like, but I'm pretty sure he means it kicks ass and blows the doors off the house when you do it right. I always used to pick it up at the record store, and I never bought it because I had heard it at an older friend's house, and reading the track listing in the store always makes it look like this could easily be a single record.

I suppose that line of thinking isn't too far off, but awhile back I found a really nice copy, but not with the booklet, it's a later MCA copy with blue rainbow labels, but it's a gatefold cover. The records are nice and shiny and flat and if I recall correctly it was less than five bucks. That's a hell of a deal, if you ask me.

I always thought it was kind of funny that when Jimmy goes to the concert in the album, he hears The Who playing The Kids Are Alright, which to my ears is better than anything on this album. But I'm not going to go so far as to say this album isn't really good, because it is a really good album. I just have to be in the mood for it, because there are a few things I can find irritating about it. The first thing is that this is one of those double albums where one record is sides one and four, and the other record is sided two and three. I've had a turntable that only plays one record at a time since I was in high school, so this kind of layout means I have to get both records out of their sleeves twice to listen to the whole thing. It just bugs me.

The contents of the records is generally awesome, but after the first listen or two, I really don't need the ocean sounds, and Love, Reign O'er Me tends to show up in little snippets too often for me. I also tend to think that the whole Rock Opera thing adds some cachet that's supposed to make me feel like I'm listening to something that's much more as a whole entity than it is when I'm listening to the individual parts of it. Pete Townshend is a true legend in the land of Rock N' Roll, deservedly so, but Pete's not one of his generation's Great Thinkers. Sometimes, when he's working on his Great Thoughts, I squirm a little. The story behind the Opera here could literally be told in a single song.

But if you discount all that (Pete's not the one that said he was a genius, it was Rock critics that said it), and just listen to the music, it really works a lot more than it doesn't. The record starts off with ocean noises and a brief look at the music that's to come (no great shakes to me), but then The Real Me fires up, and Pete just has that tone, and John Entwistle and Keith Moon just have that groove and you know there's something special even before Roger Daltrey almost steals the whole show. The song starts strong, and just builds a momentum that helps Cut My Hair and The Punk and the Godfather be better than they'd be on a side without The Real Me.

But then I have to put my record away and get out my other one so I can listen to side two. And side two is mostly disappointing. It goes a long time before it gets good, and it never really gets great. At least for side three I can just flip the record over. And side three is kicked off by 5.15, which is the best song on the album, but then at the end there's more ocean noises and Sea and Sand starts off promising but kind of bums out the high of 5.15. Drowned saves the day, though. It's everything The Who does right, and maybe that no one else ever really even seems to have figured out. You hear people saying a band "did a Stones song," or "rewrote a Beatles song," and even "had the garage feel of early Kinks," but no one seems to quite capture The Who at their best.

Side four is just epic, though. I wouldn't change a thing. It's huge in its approach and in its sound. It touches a little too much on Love Reign O'er Me, but we also finally hear that song as a whole, and it's one of the absolute best songs to ever close an album out with. Dr. Jimmy has always been one of my favorite Roger Daltrey performances, and that's saying something.

Could it be a single album? Probably. But it's fun to listen to the whole thing once in awhile. Side four may be the best side of music The Who ever made, so I think it's probably the kind of record everyone should own. I'm glad I grabbed it. It really does blow doors.