Bravado The Who Quadrophenia T-Shirt

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The actors that filled the shoes of these troubled, fun-loving teens are loved for the affection they gave to their roles and their representation of the Mod culture of the 60s. Part of what I wanted to do was re-establish with our fans the principles they themselves had set up when we’d started. I think The Who had been servants of the audience in 1964/65, not the other way around. Our job was always to give our audience something they needed, not make them think we were stars. Whether all this management hoo-ha informed the recording of Quadrophenia in any way is something Townshend rejects out of hand: “I don’t think the trying events around us informed the album. We were at the height of our powers as a business as well as a band. We could make studios appear out of thin air. What we didn’t have enough of was time, so the much-vaunted quadrophonic mix never happened. And neither did the quadrophonic stage act.” The Quadrophenia film follows Jimmy, a young man misunderstood by his parents who loathes his run-of-the-mill day job, working in the mailroom of an advertising firm.

Just north of Shepherd’s Bush, Jimmy’s home still exists if you want to grab a picture-perfect shot. Although not defined in the film, Quadrophenia is mentioned in the album’s sleeve notes and is an amalgamation of two words, Quadraphonic and Schizophrenia.

FISHTAIL PARKAS

To Jimmy, the life he loves begins at night when he hangs out with his clique of Mod friends, rides his Lambretta scooter, takes amphetamines, and parties. The Who began recording Quadrophenia in early ’73. They’d recently bought an old church hall in Battersea, which they planned to strip down and convert into their own, state-of-the-70s recording studio and rehearsal room. But it still wasn’t ready, so they decamped to the mobile studio of good mate Ronnie Lane, then on the verge of leaving the Faces. Townshend singles out those early sessions as being particularly special, the band’s first major undertaking since Lifehouse and its resultant 1971 salvage operation, Who’s Next. The record got delayed because there were certain problems with it,” recalls Barnes. “Roger used to complain that his voice had got lost in the mix. It was a bit of a dense, heavy mix, like an assault on the senses.” At the end of the film, Jimmy spots his idol Ace Face working as a bog-standard bell boy in a hotel and feels crushed. He steals Ace’s scooter and crashes it off the edge of a cliff. Directed by Franc Roddam, Quadrophenia, released in 1979, is a British drama film co-written by Pete Townshend, co-founder of The Who, and is loosely based on The Who’s album of the same name.

My strategy was always to run to Kit Lambert or Chris Stamp to fly new ideas,” Townshend explains. “By 1973 they had both lost interest in The Who to some extent. Kit had long-since left the stage as my songwriting mentor, but I was hoping he would co-produce. He turned out to be too distracted.” Although relatively new and budding actors at the time, Quadrophenia’s cast members featured a stellar line-up of some of today’s greatest actors and performers. This product is in no way associated or endorsed by any of the brands or figures included within the design** The Who’s music and the film’s fashions live on today, as the stylish, music-loving youth still embrace the coolness and the belonging of what it is to be a Mod. In September ’72 Townshend had issued his first solo album, Who Came First, a devotional album dedicated to Meher Baba. Were there certain aspects of himself that couldn’t be accommodated in The Who? “It was mainly my interest in spiritual things, and artistic endeavours, that the band found hard to accommodate without taking the piss.It was, in fairness, hardly unique behaviour. The Who’s formidable reputation was partly based on such wanton acts of violence against unsuspecting hardware, though the sudden assault on Pridden was altogether more extreme. This was different. Townshend’s tipping point was the result of sustained pressure and frustration. Beachy Head near Brighton is the place to visit if you want to see where Jimmy crashed the scooter over the side of the cliff. Press reaction was ambiguous. Writing in Rolling Stone, Lenny Kaye praised Quadrophenia as “a beautifully performed and magnificently recorded essay of a British youth mentality in which [The Who] played no little part,” adding that “it might easily be said that The Who as a whole have never sounded better.” But he was less convinced bythe overall feel of the record, finding little evidence of telling contributions from Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon, and concluding that “on its own terms, Quadrophenia falls short of the mark”. They’re two of my best songs,” Townshend agrees. “ Drowned is wonderful to perform. They belong in Quadrophenia. The songs that have been most cathartic for me are probably the angrier ones. This kind of writing has always been, for me, an attempt to make the spiritual journey accessible as an idea, using watery metaphors. I explain in some detail in the [ Quadrophenia reissue] liner notes how I came to write Love Reign O’er Me. It’s a kind of ‘scoop’, so I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I think Roger has dozens of fine moments, and his many live renditions of Love Reign O’er Me on recent tours have always blown me away. One of the central themes of Quadrophenia is the idea of joining a tribe or gang for the purposes of personal development, perhaps best expressed by the song I’m One. Townshend: “As a young man I needed, and wanted, to be part of a gang of young men. I’d grown up in a gang, one that started when I was a street kid in Acton when I was four years old, running wild when it was still safe to do so.

Mod leader Ace Face is played by Sting, who was about to achieve global success with The Police at the time of the film’s conception. After 40 years since its original release, Quadrophenia is still a cult classic, loved for its nostalgia and representation of an iconic moment in British pop culture.This single jersey T-Shirt is made with 100% organic combed cotton and weighs 190gsm. It features a set-in sleeve, sleeve hem, and bottom hem with wide double-needle topstitch. His parents throw him out of the house after discovering his stash of amphetamine pills, then he quits his job and spends his severance on more, before finding out that his new love Steph is actually in a relationship with his friend Dave. Quadraphonic sound was one of the first attempts at surround sound and typically used four speakers for stereo instead of two. Although the trend didn’t catch on, in the early 1970s, it was embraced by some music lovers who could afford the equipment’s high price tag. Iconic albums, such as Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, were released in the Quadraphonic format.