(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Tue 26 August 2025 17:30, UK
Being in the studio and being a lover of the stage have always been two very different animals. As much as The Who were responsible for reinventing the live show, Pete Townshend was always the technician who sought to push his music into different directions, and that didn’t necessarily mean he had to enjoy every time they walked out onstage.
When looking back on his career, Townshend thought it a miracle that the band was still standing after a year. Outside of the drastic toll they had put on themselves to get every one of their tunes finished, the guitarist felt that it was only a matter of time before he went back to art school and everyone else started using their talents elsewhere, but as soon as Tommy blew up, they were playing a much different game.
‘My Generation’ had been the first taste people had of true rock and roll swagger, but hearing Townshend weave together a coherent story and bring theatre to a rock concert was unheard of at the time. And while he may have needed time to recharge his ambitious batteries on albums like Who’s Next and Live at Leeds, Quadrophenia was the perfect example of him taking the basis of Tommy and making things even more ambitious, complete with horn parts and keyboard lines that made everything feel more grandiose.
Comparing both stories, Quadrophenia is also a touch more interesting from a literary perspective. It’s easy to drape Tommy’s mental struggles as someone shielding their feelings from the world, but following Jimmy is a great way of looking at someone who is either refusing to grow up or not willing to enter adulthood just yet. The whole thing is a lot more dramatic as we wonder which road he’ll take, but whenever the water metaphors start rolling in, that’s when the album leads more ambitious.
His journey out to sea on ‘The Rock’ is among the finest compositions on the record, and even when Roger Daltrey sings about love making the rain wash over him in ‘Love, Reign o’er Me’, it’s hard not to feel every emotion coming out of his mouth. But for Townshend, ‘Drowned’ was the one time where he threw caution to the wind and let the music take over for him whenever he got onstage.
The artistic flair may have gone out of him by this point, but Townshend was still willing to throw all that he had into this deep cut as well, saying, “To be honest, the highest I’ve been on stage last year was when we used to play ‘Drowned’. That was only because there was some nice guitar work in it… Roger [Daltrey] liked singing it, and both John [Entwistle] and Keith [Moon] played together so superbly. Really, that was the only time I felt that I could take off and fly.”
In the context of the story, though, it makes sense why this would be a high watermark for Townshend. Coming right in the middle of the record, this is Jimmy dealing with the idea of accepting love into his life, and while the alternative is for him to drown in cold water out at sea, a lot of the lyrics seem to be Townshend wrestling with his own emotional issues as he assaults his guitar every single night.
That kind of high that Townshend is talking about is what every artist chases for the rest of their lives. Anyone can make a song that’s technically brilliant, but capturing a moment of real human expression is what’s always going to make both the performer and the listener keep coming back to the art.
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