Two albums – The Who’s Quadrophenia, from 1973 and Billy Joel’s The Stranger, released in 1977. We’ll see, but I expect this will be my last album set for a while after six straight Saturdays, back to individual songs or some other theme next Saturday. My album commentaries are beneath each record’s track list.
The Who – Quadrophenia
1. I Am The Sea
2. The Real Me
3. Quadrophenia
4. Cut My Hair
5. The Punk And The Godfather
6. I’m One
7. The Dirty Jobs
8. Helpless Dancer
9. Is It In My Head?
10. I’ve Had Enough
11. 5:15
12. Sea And Sand
13. Drowned
14. Bell Boy
15. Doctor Jimmy
16. The Rock
17. Love Reign O’er Me
I agree with the allmusic review site’s assessment of Quadrophenia – which was about the British mod culture of the late 1950s into the 1960s that was at least part of the roots of The Who – that “the concept might ultimately have been too obscure and confusing for a mass audience.” Particularly if you didn’t grow up in the UK of that time.
But, as allmusic also says, and I concur, the album is full of great songs that can stand on their own, including the well-known and excellent singles 5:15, The Real Me and Love Reign O’er Me. And, also, to me, The Punk And The Godfather, The Dirty Jobs, Sea and Sand, Doctor Jimmy . . . so many, and so many of them propelled by Keith Moon’s propulsive rat-a-tat drumming.
The song 5:15 and its lyrics “out of my brain on the 5:15; out of my brain on the train” always resonates with me not only because I like the song but because, like the song narrator Jimmy, I, too, was out of my brain on a train although he had consumed lots of drugs, in my case it was drink.
Fall 1978, I had worked for a year to save money to pay my way through college, so at the place I worked friends and colleagues took me out for a mostly liquid lunch on my last day, where I got reasonably hammered such that I dozed off on the GO commuter train – and it quite likely was a 5:15 pm or so train – home from Toronto to Oakville.
Not sure why an attendant wouldn’t have woken me up at the Oakville stop, the end of the line going west (if you wanted to GO further west back then, you had to grab a connecting bus) but anyway when I finally woke from my slumber I looked out the train window and I was in Pickering – the eastern end of the line on the other side of Toronto. That sobered me up right quick as back we went, Pickering back to Toronto’s Union station and on to Oakville – a half-hour commute home on the train, thanks to me being out of my brain, becoming a 2.5 hour round-trip: Toronto-Oakville-Toronto-Pickering-Toronto-Oakville. Back and forth we go . . .
Billy Joel – The Stranger
1. Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
2. The Stranger
3. Just The Way You Are
4. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
5. Vienna
6. Only The Good Die Young
7. She’s Always A Woman
8. Get It Right The First Time
9. Everybody Has A Dream
A huge album for Billy Joel not only due to its massive success but it arguably saved his career. Joel had achieved success with his 1973 album Piano Man and its title track hit single, although the entire album is terrific and includes another of his classics, the epic Captain Jack. But his subsequent releases, Streetlife Serenade and, particularly, Turnstiles (despite the presence of the hit single Say Goodbye To Hollywood) saw a sharp decline in sales and chart positions such that Joel was at risk of being dropped by Columbia Records. Then came The Stranger, with singles like Just The Way You Are, Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), Only The Good Die Young, She’s Always A Woman and the epic non-single classic Scenes From An Italian Restaurant and the rest is history. It’s one of those albums where every song is familiar including one of my favorites, the title track which was released as a single in Japan where it hit No. 2.