VH1 review of Quadrophenia movie and album

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

On line at:
http://www.vh1.com/thewire/rantsraves/bottomley/who.jhtml

Quadrophenia: The Real Mod
by C. Bottomley

"Listening to bands like the Who," says the Beta Band's Richard Greentree,
"[helps] you grow. There are all different dimensions to their music that
stay with you. But when you get into a band like Limp Bizkit, you might
think it's the greatest thing for a couple of years, and then you're going
to realize eventually [that you're wrong] and just feel cheated."

It took Pete Townshend a long time to realize that being cheated was a
necessary byproduct of rock 'n' roll. He held out longer than many seminal
rock songwriters, and before he allowed the Who to merely traffic in
greatest-hits packages, wrote the definitive musical treatment of the
subject: Quadrophenia. Preceding its DVD release, the movie is back in
theaters as spiffy as a new pair of go-go boots, and although many will
remember the story of the lost mod Jimmy Cooper as a relic of a youth spent
rolling joints over the album's gatefold cover, the film is still a
prescient fable on lost faith.

Townshend wrote the double album at a time when threats to the Who's
existence were stronger than usual. Following 1971's Who's Next, the group
had turned to solo projects, became entangled in building its own studio,
and watched as producer Glyn Johns and manager Kit Lambert clashed over
their particular roles in the band's creative process.

Outside the studio walls, the world was also changing. Peace and love were
never the Who's bag, but by '72, the hippie ethos had taken a beating with
Altamont, Manson, and the grim Isle of Wight festival. The Beatles were
done. The Stones returned to R&B. The Who were left, perhaps unwillingly, in
the vanguard. With typical perversity, Townshend's response was the most
radical trip down memory lane since John Lennon's "In My Life," revisiting a
mythical mod past he had been too old to really enjoy.

Quadrophenia the album is filled with Townshend-ian knottiness. Rather than
simply relate his disillusioned teen's quandaries, the songwriter referenced
old tunes from his early days in the High Numbers, gave Jimmy four
personalities and had him meet the Who themselves in "The Punk and the
Godfather," and poured the Meher Baba's teachings into songs like "Love
Reign O'er Me."

It should have made for a horrible movie. But director Franc Roddam, who cut
his teeth with fly-on-the-wall documentaries like The Family, trimmed the
conceptual fat from the key theme - how kids outgrow the very movements they
believe will guarantee their individuality. When Quadrophenia the movie
premiered in May 1979, mod had morphed to punk, and that idea had renewed
currency.

Add the young actor Phil Daniels as Jimmy and Quadrophenia is a
coming-of-age story as radical as Saturday Night Fever with added salt and
vinegar. Townshend's subject matter is perfect. While the '60s mod cult
engaged in the consumerism denied their parents during the war years, their
attempts to remain contemporary were always being superseded by fashion
itself. Quadrophenia, rife with outdated pop imagery like shrink-to-fit
Levi's and pinups of the '60s Who, is their tombstone.

There isn't much narrative, just the mod tribal codes of sharp suits, pills,
pop, and the endless cycle of weekday toil followed by weekend rumbles with
their greasy rivals, the rockers. Jimmy is a minor scenester, a grumbling
mail clerk by day. He only comes alive during an epic riot of smashed
windows and bloodied noses in seaside Brighton. But the thrill of the
escapade doesn't last through the train journey back to London. When he
learns girlfriend Leslie Ash has found another mate, he smashes his scooter,
dons some eyeliner, and takes the 5:15 back to the beach. Discovering that
his hero, the mod ringleader Ace (played by Sting) is just a miserable
bellboy, Jimmy steals his prized scooter and drives it off a cliff.

Under Roddam's direction, the rock opera becomes a convincing slice of
realism that invokes a faded age. The Who's music is sparingly employed to
comment on the action rather than spur the narrative. The film's imagery
also fleshes out the album's concepts by playing with mythic gestures like
the mods riding their scooters into battle, or Jimmy framed against a sunset
like a figure in a 19th-century Romantic painting.

In place of Townshend's own acute lyrics, Quadrophenia prefers to imply its
ideas. While Jimmy defends his allegiance to mod-dom claiming he doesn't
want to be like anybody else, Phil Daniels uses his gawky body and angular
face to represent how his character is really outgrowing his allegiance to
thin-lapelled suits. By the film's finale, his jerky, nervous energy has
become the contorted rage of an old man.

There's a happy ending of sorts. Quadrophenia became a proving ground for
young British talent. Daniels vanished, but Ray Winstone, who plays Jimmy's
rocker pal Kev, currently stars in the art house hit Sexy Beast. Actors
Timothy Spall and Philip Davis became Mike Leigh regulars and appeared in
the Oscar-nominated Secrets & Lies. Cinematographer Brian Tufano went on to
lens the 1996 hit Trainspotting.

But Quadrophenia was the last time Townshend tried to communicate with his
generation rather than lecturing it. His greatest successes since have been
variations on reunions or reviving war-horses like Tommy. It's the grimmest
irony. Has his work survived because of his fans' need to relive the past,
or because of its own greatness? The guy from the Beta Band knows. Watch
Quadrophenia, and you will, too.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm