ABOUT THE SHOW
Romantic. Lunatic. Tough Guy. Hypocrite.
Can you see the real me?
MUSIC, LYRICS AND CONCEPT by PETE TOWNSHEND
Stage adaptation by Jeff Young, John O’Hara and Tom Critchley
Set in London and Brighton at the height of the Mod era, QUADROPHENIA is told through the eyes of Jimmy, a hedonistic style conscious teenager searching for a place to belong and a girl to love. Misunderstood by his parents and stuck in a dead end job, he sets off on a trip to Brighton that will change his life forever.
This compelling coming of age story is brought to life in this original stage adaptation of the legendary album. The evocative world of sixties Britain provides a colourful backdrop to Jimmy’s journey. Pete Townshend’s stunning score pulsates with life and brilliantly captures the excitement of a nation on the brink of change.
Rolling Stone magazine and VH1 have named Quadrophenia one of the 100 Greatest Albums of all Time. The album was released by The Who in 1973 and was followed by the iconic film in 1979.
An exhilarating theatrical experience for rebels and adolescents of all ages!
Background
Quadrophenia was originally released in the U.K. as Track 2657 013 on October 26, 1973. However, it appears that due to a vinyl shortage caused by the OPEC oil embargo, only a limited number of copies got to stores before production had to be halted. Most British Who fans failed to find a copy until after The Who's U.K. tour. In the U.K., Quadrophenia reached the #2 position being held out of the top spot by David Bowie's Pinups.
In the U.S. Quadrophenia was MCA2 10004 released on November 3, 1973. It reached #2 in the Billboard charts being beaten out of first place by Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
Quadrophenia began shortly after the May 1972 session to attempt to create a follow-up to Who's Next. Pete originally intended a mini-opera about the members of The Who called "Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock." Ultimately his attention went more to a central character like Tommy, here called Jimmy, who would be a Who fan of the Mod era but would also embody The Who. Townshend had played with this idea before; at one point in Tommy's genesis, Pete planned to have parts of Tommy's personality represented by The Who. Another part of the form of Quadrophenia came from the failure to film Lifehouse. Instead of creating a filmscript that would probably never be made, Pete planned Quadrophenia as an album that would be the soundtrack to a never-made film with both music and sound effects and a photo album to supply the images.
Pete said that during the mix he had 16-track tapes piled up to the ceiling. Roger also estimated that Quadrophenia was reduced from 15 hours of recorded music. Pete said he wrote "about fifty songs for this and creamed off the best" and that Quadrophenia could have been a quadruple album. What those other songs were is unknown but a few of them turned up on the Quadrophenia Soundtrack.
Pete Townshend: "The whole conception of Quadrophenia was geared to quadraphonic, but in a creative sort of way. I mean I wanted themes to sort of emerge from corners. So you start to get the sense of the fourness being literally speaker for speaker. And also in the rock parts the musical thing would sort of jell together up to the thunder clap, then everything would turn slowly from quad into mono and you'd have this solid sort of rock mono ... then a thunder clap and back out again. We spent months mixing it and then found out that MCA was using the CBS quad system and ... you might as well forget it. So our engineer remixed it in the same manner that it was mixed in stereo, the same sort of creative approach."
How successful he was with that mix is still a matter of contention among Who fans. Is it a good mix, a bad mix or a technically flawed mix? In any case the rest of The Who hated the mix, particularly Roger, and their reaction was the first of several disappointments for Pete stemming from Quadrophenia. John remixed the album for the 1979 film but Roger thought it was worse than the original. Pete and Roger were both involved in the 1996 remix. Their pleasure at the results was one of the primary reasons for the 1996-97 Quadrophenia tour.
