But by the end of February ’74 The Who had stopped playing it entirely. “The whole thing was a disaster,” griped Townshend. It would be 22 years before they attempted it again. This product is in no way associated or endorsed by any of the brands or figures included within the design** 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. 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.” 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.

The week of Quadrophenia’s release wasn’t quite as beatific though. At least one quarter of The Who seemed a little disgruntled.PeteTownshend: "Entwistle was stunning, he was also wonderful to work with" (Image credit: Redferns) 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. 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”.

Although Jimmy pulls away when he realises it’s his friend Kevin, he doesn’t stop the fight, he rides away on his scooter. Townshend today describes Entwistle’s input as “Stunning, he was also wonderful to work with: meticulous, disciplined, funny and inspired. I loved it that he wrote out his brass parts on music manuscript paper like a proper composer. What he arranged and played on a whole variety of exotic brass instruments fit my own synthesiser and string arrangements perfectly. 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. 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.

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Although many of the locations have since changed, here are some of the famous places you can still visit if you want to take in the Quadrophenia experience: Fast forward to the summer of 1996. Quadrophenia has finally been remixed, with both Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend involved, and remastered on CD. The sound is sharper, clearer, the nuances of Townshend’s more intricate passages teased out in much greater relief against the bigger, more abrasively Who-like songs. Technology has finally caught up with Townshend’s original vision. It’s enough for the band to try out Quadrophenia live again. 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.”

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.”The brawls between the two subcultures featured in the film did take place over two bank holiday weekends in 1964 and led to a media-fuelled, widespread perception that the two groups were nothing but troublemakers. 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. 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. 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.