Everybody in the western world knows about Tommy, The Who's rock opera featuring the deaf, dumb and blind boy who sure plays a mean pinball.
The Who made another rock opera a few years later, the story of Jimmy the Mod (a movement in Britain in the 60s). Many fans of The Who consider Quadrophenia to be the band's greatest album. Full disclosure: I say their best is Who's Next. But why should friends quibble.
This documentary pieces together studio footage from the time of the album's recording, along with 21st-century interviews with Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Richard Barnes, Bill Curbishly and a host of others who help put the album's story, music and recording in historical perspective.
I still say that if they'd dumped the pretense of the story and issued a single album it not only would be the greatest album by The Who, but maybe by any artist of the rock n roll era. Here's the tracklist I propose would make it unbeatable:
The Real Me
Cut My Hair (re-work it into a proper rock song instead of a story-telling bridge)
The Punk and The Godfather
I'm One
I've Had Enough
That's a 21-minute, give or take, Side 1
5:15
Drowned
Doctor Jimmy
Love Reign O'er Me
Edit Doctor Jimmy down to just over 5 minutes and you'd have a 22-minute, give or take, Side 2
With a stronger outside producer (Kit Lambert was so wacked out on heroin by this time the band fired him) to turn Townshend's songs into a proper rock album there's no telling how many units they would have shifted.
