Word: quadrophenia
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...tour is done now. In typically eccentric Who fashion, the concerts were staged only in the New York area, partly to plug a tough and raucous film version of Quadrophenia, Townshend's ambitious chronicle of the battles between the mods and the rockers in the back streets and beach resorts of 1960s Britain. Much more, though, the appearance seems like a testing of the waters that turned into a tidal wave. Word is that The Who will be back in the States come December, making a wider swing along the East Coast and through the Midwest, and demonstrating that...
...MORE performances of "My Generation" than you'll care to count--"My Generation" in front of screaming boppers, circa 1965; "My Generation" on the Smothers Brothers Show; "My Generation" blues-style; and so on. But virtually no tracks from Tommy, Quadrophenia, or Who's Next--except for "Baba O'Riley" and "We Won't Get Fooled Again," the two best sequences in the movie...
...lyrics on Who Are You are as hard-bitten as ever--only the Who would produce two different songs with the title "I've Had Enough." The newer one (the first was on Quadrophenia) reads like an update of "We Won't Get Fooled Again," but the words are even more desperate, the music unsettlingly ambiguous...
...NUMBERS (MCA; $6.98). Following his disappointing rock opera Quadrophenia, The Who's chief composer, Peter Townshend, has his dropout muse back in residence. The British rock quartet, unsettled by internal squabbles and individual efforts at solo LPs and films, pulled together for some properly granitic music making this time. Though there is no formal story line, the album is nonetheless slyly conceptual. Townshend's nine songs, plus John Entwistle's Success Story, evoke a rock star's fight against time. Nicky Hopkins' vigorous keyboards, added to the band's own mix of acoustic...
...campus and into Boston in 1968 to see Cream in a theater that is now middle income housing. And then it struck me. They were five years old in 1965, when the Who released the songs that justified their existence on that stage, that night, for me. Quadrophenia's success is contextual, and The Who in concert are still playing upon sentiments from that context. The kids in front of me couldn't have known that. But they knew what they liked. I think Rock and Roll is here to stay...