THE WHO “QUADROPHENIA Love Reign O’er Me”

The story covers about five days of the life of a certain Jimmy, a participant in the circa 1964 Mod lifestyle in England. “The story is set on a rock!” announced the composer, Pete Townshend, at one live performance, indicating that the opera represents Jimmy’s looking back at the events of the previous day or two that led him into the gloomy situation where he finds himself at the end of the story. The narrative is difficult to derive from the lyrics alone, but becomes clearer with the benefit of a short story (also written by Townshend) related from Jimmy’s first person perspective, that is included in the album’s booklet. The first half of the opera consists of songs that allude to the frustrations and insecurities that govern Jimmy’s life, including brief glimpses of his home life, his job, his psychoanalyst, and his unsuccessful attempts to have a social life. Halfway through the opera he sings “I’ve Had Enough”, finds himself kicked out of his home when his parents find his box of ‘blues’ (blue pills of some unnamed drug, possibly amphetamine) (this happens in the song Cut My Hair). Distraught and with nothing better to do, Jimmy takes a large dose of blues and takes a train ride to the coast (Embodied in the song 5:15, which is supposed to be the time when the train departs). During his stay near the beach in Brighton, he encounters the former “Ace Face”, the leader of a group of Mods, whom he admires greatly. However, “Ace Face” now works as a bell boy at a …