It was 36 years ago today (October 19th, 1973) that the Who released their second double album, the watershed 1973 collection, Quadrophenia. The set featured such classic Who songs as “The Real Me,” “5:15,” “I’m One,” “The Punk And The Godfather,” “Drowned,” “Sea And Sand,” and “Love Reign O’er Me,” among others. A film version based around the album was produced by the band and released in 1979.
For Quadrophenia, Pete Townshend created a song cycle chronicling the life of “Jimmy” — a pill-popping fashion conscious R&B loving “Mod” from London in the mid-’60s. The album focused on Jimmy’s battles with his parents, the mod nightlife, his demeaning office job, and the mods’ legendary beach rumbles against their cultural nemesis, the “Rockers.”

The character of Jimmy was supposed to represent the four facets of the Who: Keith Moon (insane), John Entwistle (romantic), Roger Daltrey (bad), and Townshend (good).