Quadrophenia is road worthy again
The Who to revive epic for North America
With the theatrical run of The Who: Quadrophenia — Can You See the Real Me? The Story Behind the Album, long-standing rumours that the surviving and central members of the legendary band would take it back on the road were already virtually confirmed.
But recently, via a video press conference streaming live to roughly 275 music journalists, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey made it official: The Who are bringing their massive, influential 1973 opus to arenas in America and Canada (Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton dates have been announced).
“Quadrophenia is something we both felt we could get together on,” Townshend said earlier this month.
“Last time we did it was 1997 (the tour began a year earlier, with Billy Idol in tow as The Punk) and we’ve been anxious to work together ... before we drop dead.”
“Would you describe it as the Who’s Mount Everest?” the moderator of the Q&A posited.
“It is for a singer,” Daltrey replied. “I’m not sure how many more years I can sing this music, but my voice is great at the moment.”
The lifelong musical pairing of Daltrey, 68, and Townshend, 67 — plus the same ace band that backed them live throughout the past decade, including bassist Pino Palladino, drummer Zak Starkey and keyboardist Chris Stainton, who played on the original recording — will embark on this first tour together in four years in the fall, presenting Quadrophenia Plus Who Classics, launching Nov. 1 from Sunrise, Fla.
That initial run lasts a little more than a month, but the second leg starts up Jan. 28 at Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.
What follows is more from the press conference, with apologies to the moderator, whose questions (posed in advance by journalists) are paraphrased here.
Q: It’s a very English piece. What do you think American audiences make of it?
Daltrey: I think it’s easy to understand. It’s that period of your life when you’re going through adolescence, and you’re trying to find out who you are. Hopefully you get there soon after your teens. Lots of other people don’t get there until 30, or others until 70. What I find really interesting looking back is ... how much of the historical significance of it, and the events going on at the time, are apropos of today. I don’t think that there’s any problem (relating to it).
Q: There’s a film you’ve made documenting the story. What was it like putting that together?
Townshend: I can tell you that for my part, the writing about the record and going back through the album was easy, but doing the documentary was quite difficult. I haven’t seen it. (Daltrey laughs and scoffs.)
You get to a certain age and the last thing you want to look at is yourself looking 105 going on about being 15.
When the movie (Franc Roddam’s 1979 version, with Sting as Ace Face) first went to America, people couldn’t understand what was being said; there was word that the movie was going around with subtitles. (But) the film gave the characters in the album flesh. That was really, really important. It’s been restored and re-dubbed now — and you really can hear what people are saying. (It arrives in a Criterion Collection edition on Aug. 28.) But I’m delighted with the response to the documentary. I put a lot of work into it, and the box set that preceded it. Quadrophenia is a passion of mine, I love it.
Q: How well has Quadrophenia aged?
Townshend: Just as a piece of music, it stands up, and it offers a journey, whether you choose to go on that journey or not.
There’s a poignancy to me of how it connects me to my early days. It’s not nostalgia, and it isn’t self-indulgent. You’ve got to remember that The Who were a very young band when we started out in 1963-64 playing to those audiences. We were just kids.
It seems to still have some potency. Not sure how that works. Maybe because the mod image is so clean-cut — it’s a cool look.
Townshend on The Who then vs. now: The other thing that Roger and I carry, apart from the fact that we can take our pick of musicians, is that we miss the other two guys very much. (Keith Moon died in 1978, John Entwistle in 2002.) Roger and I were lucky enough to tour from about 2000 onward with John Entwistle. But there is this constant drive to re-create (and) there was a sense of being liberated, I don’t want to make a good thing out of two deaths, but sometimes that’s what happens. I do feel freer to explore what I did as a musician back then but also find new things.
Q: What other Who classics will be in the mix on this tour?
Daltrey: You won’t get them all — that would be a five-hour show. But we’ll do a good portion of stuff and try to vary that — I hope, anyway. I saw Paul McCartney recently (and) I really realized when I saw that concert that people do so much want to hear the hits. It’s great that we can get a good show out of Quadrophenia, but to kiss it good night, what better way than with Baba O’Riley or Won’t Get Fooled Again?
Townshend: Wheel out the old chestnuts.
Q: In light of Roger Waters going all out with The Wall recently, would you ever expand Quadrophenia into a larger production in the future?
Townshend: I would, he wouldn’t (pointing to Daltrey). As the composer, I like the idea of it being as grand as possible. I think what Roger wants is to be able to sing the story authentically — to really feel it. That’s why I think it’s important that Roger should drive this.
Daltrey: For me, as a singer, you have to know what you’re inhabiting when you’re singing it. It’s a strange process; you can’t just be in a vacuum. That’s always been a bit of my difficulty with Quadrophenia, in the production from 1996-97. One of the problems I think Pete in some ways had in putting this music into stage form is that people tend to put it into a standard Broadway production. His music and the things he writes about are so different, you almost have to invent a whole new staging, a whole new world to inhabit. That’s what we’re trying to do with this.
Q: Will there be any new Who material? Will you record together again?
Townshend: I’m writing right now. Once I put down this bloody life story (he’s prepping memoirs for publication), I went back to music. The only thing is that I’m not sure if what I write today, whether you can rubber-stamp it as Who music, though with the last album (2006’s Endless Wire), we proved that we can adapt.
Daltrey: I just think that whatever you’re writing, even if it’s a bit of a jazz instrumental ... if you write it, and I sing it, that’s Who music.
Townshend: I agree with that. But as a Bruce Springsteen fan from the very, very start, I want to hear him grow within that framework that he’s always been in, not some hee-haw-on-the-hudson-River nonsense.