Word: townshend
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...there's The Who's new Quadrophenia. It's too soon to grant it Great Moment status, but it certainly extends Townshend's credentials as an innovator, and it sure beats Tommy all hollow as an opera. The album's advantage is that it retains its committment to its music. Tommy's failure was due partially to the absurdity of its scenario and also to its author's over-committment to operatic form--to the detriment of the music. The resulting confusion produced a remarkably uneven work. It had little depth and it was moralistic, even melodramatic...
...symbolism may have destroyed its viability, Quadrophenia's Jimmy is accessible thematically and physically, as far as two dimensions will carry him. The picture book insert not only fleshes out the scenario, but gives the listener an almost tangible hero. At the same time there is that hint of Townshend mysticism. The idea of fusing the band's personality into one character serves as anchor and springboard...
Each of Quadrophenia's successes points back to the real people and locations under discussion. Its scope is limited, then; it has little to say thematically. Only one of the four themes (Peter Townshend's, in fact) is explicitly moral, and the weakest, lyrically and musically, ending the opera with a piece of simplistic fluff called "Love, Reign O'er Me." In the main though, aside from Quadrophenia's socio-historical-contextual significance (which is nothing to dismiss), whatever statement it makes is one of "stance...
...general onstage uglinesses have done more for, say, Alice Cooper's stage show, than is generally thought. The vital difference, of course, is that The Who have something to translate (this is not l'art pour l'art), namely lower class punk arrogance and good old teenage hostility. Townshend has expended the bulk of his creative energy on his working class contemporaries, and succeeded primarily at proving that he's a punk at heart himself. He passes that adolescent arrogance on to his band, and they hand it on to us (and do you have any idea of the power...
...lower class frustration. Which is why these songs perform so well in concert. Because their autobiographical nature, really a secondary feature of the album, becomes dominant. The two-thirds of the opera that are performed is a strong two-thirds, even though two of the four themes are eliminated. Townshend programmed some sound effects for the stage and added two small banks of PA amps to the back of the hall, a real stroke of genius, because filling Boston Garden with sound is no picnic. They filled...