Pete's Quadrophenia Demos

[jakeisjake]

i've been on a huge Who kick the past couple of weeks...and Quadrophenia is one of the most brilliant pieces of music ever (of course, imo).

in the deep recesses of youtube i stumbled across this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Gm1Rj2oKk&spfreload=5

what a pleasure to listen to, both for the unused tracks and the sketches of songs included.

what a genius he was (i know he's not dead).

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Pete Townshend and the Who and always have been. Quadrophenia is great, and Pete's demos are always a lot of fun. I've heard some of them but I'll take a listen again.

I don't even understand how one could do a thing like Quadrophenia. It's amazingly ambitious, it hangs together well, it sounds as good as anything. But what gets me is that one guy wrote it and showed it to all these other people and the end result was that. Like it or not, it's not something that anyone except one in a million people could pull off.

[jakeisjake]

just re-listening to this with headphones (instead of just using crappy PC speakers)...what a difference.

so...is Pete playing everything?

[julius2790]

I think he pulled a Brian Wilson and almost drove himself insane during the making of that album. There is a really cool photo of him sitting in this mountain of cords and cables with this insane expression right around that period.

I like his demos better than a of the official Who recordings. The demo for "Behind Blue Eyes" is amazing.

[Larry Mal]

That's right, on his demos he plays all the stuff, of course, there are probably times that he didn't.

[budda12ax7]

Good stuff.