The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 25/06/24
"Only Love Can Make It Rain..."
Before I steer you towards yet another musical masterpiece, I think that I need to put it into a broader context, egged on by this piece in the Guardian today.
Quadrophenia (1973) was the second 'rock opera' to be produced by the Who (after 1969's Tommy), and their third 'concept album' after Tommy and 1967's Sell Out. And those two appellations were at that time absolute poison in the music press, leading to the inevitable derision from the hacks as they told us that such things weren't really rock at all, merely exercises in onanism by pretentious musos who had been allowed to get a long way up themselves. So anyway...
Quadrophenia was an attempt by the band to reconnect with their roots in the mid-60s mod scene from which they had sprung. Not so much to connect musically, but thematically and in terms of the story they were telling.
The story is of Jimmy, a working-class London lad who - at the time in which the tale is set (1965) - is about nineteen years old. He had been an eager participant in the whole mod experience, smart clothes, Vespa GS scooter, amphetamines, the whole kit and caboodle. But now, with that world fading into irrelevance, Jimmy - who had always needed to be part of something bigger to make himself feel more significant than he felt that he actually was ("I work myself to death just to fit in") - now wonders exactly who and what he really is. This sense of lack of direction, along with the drug use and a family propensity towards mental illness ("I went to by mother, I said, "I'm crazy, Ma, help me!"/She said, "I know how it feels, son, 'cos it runs in the family"), starts to disconnect him from everyone and everything. His job as a binman lasts two days before he quits it, his former girlfriend snubs him in the street, and there is nothing else for him to latch on to. Disorientated, and now completely estranged from his parents, he takes the train down to Brighton, scene of battles, triumphs and defeats in the not-so-very-distant past. There, he bumps into one of the 'faces' he had followed just a couple of years before, to find that he is now working as a servant in a flash hotel which they had smashed up on that previous expedition, and is seemingly content with his lowly position. By now totally disillusioned, Jimmy steals a motor boat and navigates to a rock island some way off the shore. There, the boat - as unmoored as its quondam occupant - drifts away and leaves him marooned in the rain, which is where we take our leave of him. What is his fate? Who can say? But his final call out to us is of a powerful yearning and begging for love, which he wishes would fall upon him like the rain from which he has no shelter.
There are other thematic elements as well. There are four themes, each one representing not only an aspect of Jimmy's personality (hence the 'Quad' in Quadrophenia), but also each of the band's members. All of these themes recur in various places throughout the album like Leitmotive, and are indicative not merely of the conflict within the young man's head, but also - almost as a counterpoint - as illustrations of the coming together of the attributes of four supremely gifted musicians.
Speaking of the music - and, let's face it, it's about time I did - there is a significant variety of styles and modes of expression in Quadrophenia, whilst still staying within the general tenor of what the Who had become known for. So we have the standard heavy rock style of The Real Me (the opening track, if you don't count the brief montage of the four themes which opens the album) and 5:15; the pseudo-orchestral forms of the two long instrumentals (the title track and The Rock) which almost book-end the whole piece; along with nods towards country rock (I'm One) and blues-rock (Drowned). The performances are, as one would expect, of the highest standard, and the arrangements (Entwistle for the horns, Townshend for the synth strings) are never obtrusive, always adding to rather than subtracting from the result.
In its storyline and execution, Quadrophenia outstrips Tommy by some distance in terms of musical expressiveness and narrative coherence, and therefore should be regarded as the Who's greatest album.
And now, at long last, to the track I want you to hear.
Love Reign O'er Me is the closing song on the album, and is sung by Jimmy as he sits - pissed off and pissed on - on the rock. Even taken out of the context of the rest of the album, it's a remarkable piece, starting with grand piano chords and figures (accompanying and shadowing the sound of the rain falling) before building into the start of the song 'proper', which opens with a glorious E♭ minor chord, and we're away. I don't think Roger Daltrey ever gave a finer vocal performance than the one he exhibits here; the verses are sung with great control and longing, but the choruses (and, to a lesser degree, the middle eight) are powerful cries almost of desperation for love to reign/rain o'er him. The musical arrangement is deft and by turns subtle and powerful, ending in a cataclysmic chord with fevered drumming from Keith Moon (who had been remarkably restrained up to that point, at least by his mad standards). And does that final scream as Townshend drags his plectrum up the fretboard indicate a lightning strike on the rock? We can't be sure, but either way the song is a truly astounding ending to a compelling telling of a story, the central figure of which earns - for all his bravado, for all his self-doubt and uncertainty - the right for one to go over to him, put your arm around his shoulders and try to reassure him that things will turn out all right in the end, so much have we come to empathise with him:
(This video is slightly off with the lyric in the first verse; it's 'lovers', not 'love birds')
And if you now want to dive a little further into it, here's multi-instrumentalist and producer Rick Beato to take you through it:
