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TETRA_FRENETIC

                                  January 03, 2026

  "Quadrophenia" doesn't come off as a story with
  four voices, but it is a story with with two or
  three seperate elements that coexist uneasily.

  I'm most interested in it as a document of a scene,
  a description of the Mods of the early 1960s.

  Then there's that striking image of Jimmy
  alone on the beach-- thrown out of the             I don't at all have
  house, cut off from his old friends, from          a clear sense of the
  the fading subculture he used to identify          events in his life:
  with... he's left facing the ocean,
  reflecting on the past and thinking about          When was he thrown out,
  suicide.                                           how long has it been
                                                     since he followed the
     "I want to drown--                              Ace, etc.
      in cold water!"
                                                       (I've seen the movie,
                                                        but not since it
  There are a few songs about the split                 first came out in 1979.)
  personality concept-- they work well
  enough, but could easily have been put
  else where and I wouldn't miss them here.


       I think that while it's easy to
       *like* the closing track, I find it
       hard to love "Love Reign O'er Me".
       This is the grand
       finale of the record (which
       for Towsend is a spirtual hymn to
       "nothing and everything").                And I think Jimmy is much
                                                 more likely to feel that
         But the core metaphor (I guess          even love has let him down.
         it's a metaphor) doesn't make a
         lot of sense:                                There are some lines
                                                      in this song that sound
            "Only love can make it rain--"            like they're written by
                                                      some guy in a touring
         Me, I'd say only accumulated                 rock band thinking about
         water vapor can make it rain.                how he should really get
         And it rains on the loved and                home and spend more
         the unloved alike.                           time with his wife.


   Daltrey's interpretation of the lyrics
   *almost* make it fit in with the rest of
   Quadrophenia-- Jimmy coming to an "all you       Similarly, I can well
   need is love" eiphinany seems unlikely, but      understand Daltrey's first
   Jimmy calling on love with desperate             impulse to tell the story
   anguish, that I can buy.                         in spoken introductions
                                                    providing context for the
                                                    songs.

                                                    I've listened to them
                                                    a number of times and
                                                    I still don't quite
                                                    have that down...



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