Happy 80th, Pete Townshend!
Inspiring? Pete Townshend, arguably, is the ultimate rock hero. He had the Lennon & McCartney songwriting skills; he played the hell of those guitars he ultimately smashed into splinters (still more punk rock than some poser spitting into the crowd); he had Ray Davies’ lyrical chops and he represented the blue collar sensibility of the down-and-out working stiffs many years before the blokes from Birmingham called themselves Black Sabbath and took on the world one sacred cow at a time. And he was always a thinking man’s Keith Richards, content to swim in the scum but never letting it stall his creative engine. He makes those siblings from Oasis seem like the sissies they are: for all their squabbles did either of them ever beat the other into the hospital as Roger Daltrey did after Townshend whacked him with his guitar in the studio? And I love him for kicking Abby Hoffman offstage, literally, during Woodstock when he interrupted The Who’s set to rant at the crowd.
Immortal? The output from their first decade goes toe-to-toe with any other bands’ best work. And if you want to go deep, what tri-fecta can possibly touch Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia? In terms of albums released in a row, that is a tough list to top.
Influential? This, of course, was the band that made an album entitled The Who Sell Out. Aside from the fact that it was, in many ways, a blueprint for their subsequent masterpiece Tommy, it was an incredible album in its own right. Also important, it displayed the restless sensibility of the band’s principal songwriter, who always had his foot on the pulse and remained a step or two ahead of the crowd. A few years after he sang about hoping he died before he got old on “My Generation” and a few decades before he did get old, and began selling his songs to the highest bidder, he predicted all of it. Of course, he did so tongue very much in cheek, his sardonic wit and impish eye for human foibles firing on all cylinders.
And, not remotely least, he was the heart, brain, and balls behind Quadrophenia, arguably the best rock album ever (a lengthy and loving tribute to this masterpiece here).
A teaser from the complete appraisal:
Quadrophenia is an album that has something for everyone and everything for some people. It concerns itself with virtually all the themes that have defined rock music through successive generations: alienation, rebellion, redemption. Sex. Drugs. And rock ‘n’ roll, as well as Mods, Rockers, punks, godfathers, bell boys, drunk mothers, distant fathers and fallen heroes. The sea, sand, surf and suicide. Rain, uppers, downers and drowning. Zoot suits, scooters, school and schizophrenia. Dirty jobs, helpless dancers, pills and gin. Stars falling, heat rising and, above all, love. Love of music, love of life and the love of possibility. Faith and the attempt to make a cohesive — not to mention coherent — statement on the meaning of all these things. And more.
Is that too much? More like it’s not enough.
Quadrophenia is, in no particular order, The Who album that has best defied time and fashion (one crucial criterion for measuring the ultimate impact of a successful work of art is how it fares over time), a guitar-playing tour de force, and Pete Townshend’s most realized conceptual effort. This is it: he was never this energized or inspired again; this is career-defining music. A double LP that is not as immediately approachable as Tommy, it takes a while but once you get it, it gets inside you — and never leaves.
The genius of Quadrophenia (an album that manages to get name-checked by all the big names and seems universally admired but still not quite revered as much as it richly deserves to be) is certainly the sum of its parts, but also warrants, and welcomes, song-by-song scrutiny. Less flashy than the “rock opera” Tommy and less accessible than the FM-friendly Who’s Next (both masterpieces in their own right), Quadrophenia is, nonetheless, significantly more impressive (and indispensable) than both of those excellent albums.
Everything The Who did, in the studio and onstage, up until 1969 set the stage for Tommy: it was the consummation of Townshend’s obsessions and experimentations; a decade-closing magnum opus that managed to simultaneously celebrate the death and rebirth of the Hippie Dream. Everything Townshend did, in his entire life up until 1973 set the stage for Quadrophenia.
It’s all in there: the pre-teen angst, the teenage agonies and the post-teen despondency. Politicians and parents are gleefully skewered, prigs and clock punchers are mercilessly unmasked, and those who consider themselves less fortunate than everyone else (this, at times, is all of us) are serenaded with equal measures of empathy and exasperation.
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Here’s a link to a longer piece, from 2009, where I took the Great Man to task (a bit) for becoming such a bean-counting curmudgeon, but then and now, the gifts he’s provided me–and the world–are so substantial all I can do is bend the knee and offer my eternal praise.
Long Live Rock; Long Live Pete!
