Quadrophenia has had many lives since its release in 1973: first as a groundbreaking concept album, then a 1979 cult film starring Phil Daniels and Sting, before several live revivals, including one for the Teenage Cancer Trust in 2010 that featured Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and the former Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan. When the Who’s Pete Townshend wrote it in the early 1970s, he wanted to release a record that would reconnect the band with its mod fanbase, who had drifted away from the group and were obsessed with soul music, sharp fashion and scooters. More than 50 years later, he’s reviving it again – not as a rock opera, but as a ballet in collaboration with Sadler’s Wells and Universal Music.
“I wanted to remind the band where we came from; we came from west London and the mods were our people,” says Townshend, who thinks in 2024 there are echoes of the mid-60s, when mod culture emerged as a rejection of conservative British norms. “British pop music had this function, which was to tell the audience that there was a possibility of a new world. A new time,” says Townshend.
“Because the old time from about ’64 onwards was just worn out. What we have now is the same boring old shit that was going on in 1964; politicians that don’t seem to understand their own people.” Quadrophenia was ambitious, even for the Who : a double album about a mod called Jimmy who becomes disillusioned and goes on a journey that includes getting “a job as a dustman”, .
