songs for broken hearts, no. 60

Do you remember when they used to sell LPs in department stores? When I was a kid, places like Gimbels on 86th and Lexington, Bloomingdale’s on 60th and Lexington, and Alexander’s on 59th and Lexington, all had record departments. You could also buy records at places like Lampston’s, Caldor, Korvettes, and Two Guys. Which reminds me: In fourth or fifth grade, the big joke within my circle of friends was, ‘Hey, I heard they named a store after your parents – Two Guys!’ Just an aside...

One of the advantages to getting records at a place like Gimbels was that you could shoplift them fairly easily. I only had the balls to do this a few times (I’ve always feared the law and authority), but I knew kids whose entire record collections were comprised of purloined LPs. And these were kids from well-to-do families, living on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and Central Park West. Lifting the records had little to do with privation and everything to do with the thrill of being bad. With that said, though, my parents were relatively tight with my weekly allowance. I think they gave me 2 or 3 bucks a week when I was 11, and it’s hard to get by on that kind of scratch when there’s hundreds of records you want and they all cost either $5.99 for a single LP ($6.47 with tax) or $9.99 for a double LP ($10.87 with tax). The rare and imposing triple LP – e.g. Emerson Lake and Palmer Live and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass – was completely prohibitive...

Limited funds left me with several options, one of which was to simply do the Beaver Cleaver thing and save up. But saving was for chumps and, more to the point, it would never adequately satisfy my fierce commodity fetishism and even fiercer need for instant gratification. The second possibility was to steal money from my mom’s purse, which I did regularly. …And then there was the nuclear option, shoplifting the records from department stores where you could put the LP in your jacket, blend in nondescriptly with the yentas shopping for girdles, and get out the door with no problem. While not as safe as stealing from mom, the high-risk, high-reward exhilaration of stealing from a store provided so much more in the way of thrills and respect amongst your peers. Some kids would ratchet up the thrill factor and take the merch out of the store without even putting it in their jackets, sometimes lifting 2 or 3 LPs at once and even returning to the store multiple times in one day for additional hauls. My biggest score was the Who’s Quadrophenia, an intimidating album to lift because it was an enormous double LP gatefold with a thick booklet inside. But I got it out the door from Gimbels and scurried home giddily, barely able to contain my excitement over the rock ‘n roll bliss that awaited me…

Quadrophenia is absolutely a work of rock, not pop, and for about three or four years it was my bible, an album of such outrageous conceptual overindulgence that you might think it issued forth from the mind of a nerdy 12-year-old. But no, Quadrophenia’s huge ambitiousness is actually the product of Pete Towshend’s (quite likely drug and drink fueled) sense of himself as a brilliantly deep artist. I think Townshend now concedes the album’s ridiculousness and has a sense of humor about it, though it should be said that the music is quite good in parts, particularly if you like your rock loud, bloated, and as subtle as a B-12 bomber. The story the music tells, such as it is, involves a Mod in 60s Brighton who has a four-way split personality, with each member of the Who representing one of the personalities. (!) Hence, quadrophenia, I guess. I could tell you more, but it’s too convoluted for me to try...

In spite of Quadrophenia’s big aggressive sound, there are scattered moments of lovely tenderness and vulnerability that go a long way towards excusing the more grandiose pretensions. Tonight’s song is a perfect example, probably my favorite track on the album. I love the way Roger Daltrey harmonizes with himself, particularly when he sings, ‘but I just can’t explain/ why that uncertain feeling is still here in my brain.’ It’s also always a treat when Daltrey and Townshend share the lead vocals on a song. I’ve always loved the expressiveness and frailty in Townshend’s voice and wish it had been used more in the Who’s music. …

Nowadays Quadrophenia is, for me, interesting primarily on an analytical level, as an artifact of the early postmodern era. The album’s form and content don’t really talk to each other. While the story is set in England’s Mod scene of the 1960s, the music is undeniably 70s-sounding. You’d never hear Quadrophenia and mistake it for something recorded in the 60s, I don’t think. The disconnect creates a confusing historical pastiche, even though the history the music attempts to reconstruct is a mere eight or so years removed from when Quadrophenia came out in 1973. …But what does any of this really matter when Pete Townshend smashes his guitar?