The Who - The Who, The Mods & The Quadrophenia Connection

How one double album revitalised a scene

The story of The Who has already been told in rich detail, not least by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend themselves on the 2007 documentary Amazing Journey, so this DVD mainly concerns itself with the impact of one album on the mod movement. Brief clips from the movie version of Quadrophenia pepper the narrative but, for the most part, this is a film about the people who listened to the record, rather than those who made it.

Mod-friendly musicians and journalists offer a potted history of the movement’s beginnings in the 50s jazz clubs of Soho and the shifts that came about when the styles and sounds reached London’s suburbs. Former NME scribe Paulo Hewitt offers an interesting distinction when he claims that, “The Who were a band who became mods, Small Faces were mods who became a band.”

Despite its bombast and the fact that it was made by players who’d moved on to become a stadium rock institution, the release of Quadrophenia (the album) in 1973 struck a chord with a new generation seduced by mod trappings. The Jam would be the obvious touchstone, but it’s the members of less celebrated outfits such as The Purple Hearts and The Chords who supply the context here, arguing that the album’s anti-hero, Jimmy Cooper, also gave birth to British punk.

Sexy Intellectual | SIDVD 551

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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