Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? Page #2

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mother?

Can you see the real me, mother

Whoa, Mama...

Once you hear that track,

you know that this is going to be

the revelation of a condition.

Jimmy gets up in the morning,

goes to see his shrink,

goes to see his priest because his

mum is a deep, dark Catholic.

Goes to look up at this girl's

bedroom that he's in love with

who won't shag him.

The cracks between

the paving stones

Like rivers of flowing veins...

You're going right inside the boy's

head. You know where you are,

you've come from the peace

of the sea,

and the idea that this is

a little bit of this,

and a little bit of that and then,

bang, you're into the action.

Lives in this yellow house

Yesterday she passed me by

She doesn't

want to know me now...

When I first heard it,

a friend of mine had it and they had

the gatefold sleeve and everything

and I loved it, but it was

quite costly, so they recorded it

for me on what was back then a C90.

I remember for ages thinking that

he'd started on side two

because it begins with

"I went back to the doctor."

It's like you've jumped right into

the middle of the stream,

you've come right into the middle

of the ride,

come right into the middle of

a rush, and that is brilliant.

Can you see the real me, mother?

Can you see the real me,

me, me, me, me,

me, me, me, me, me m-m-me... #

1, 2, 3, 4...

Pete decided that as part

of the album, he'd have this lavish,

very generous big photo book to

illustrate the story and also,

the other thing is I think he

thought it would help explain

the story, particularly to the

Americans who didn't understand it.

Ethan Russell's photos

put you in that place.

As an American,

you were able to understand

because you were able to see it,

you were able to see his room,

you saw the life and it told you

the story better than a movie,

better than a video. It's all there.

The first cover I did for The Who

was the album Who's Next, here.

I was back in the United States.

I got a call from Pete.

He was pretty stressed already

because he'd been

working on this forever

and you could feel this tremendous

energy of him sort of wanting to

birth this thing, you know.

So he played me the material

and he told me the story.

And we went out to try

and sort of build that world.

We're here in Battersea in

the Patmore Estate.

My sister Maxine and I used to

live across the road here,

in this block of flats here.

Our foster sister Jane used to

live in this block of flats here

and the three of us

used to hang out,

generally around on that

corner block there.

Along here,

which used to be a church hall,

became Ramport Studios

which was owned by The Who,

back in the early '70s.

This is myself here. I would have

been just coming up to 15.

That was an original mod outfit.

I had my hair cut very short

and cropped and black eyeliner,

which you can't see through

the black and white picture.

That's me.

And I've got on a pencil skirt,

a pinstripe pencil skirt,

Hush Puppy shoes

and a navy blue twinset,

little jumper underneath,

a cardigan and like Julie,

my hair cut very short,

mod-style haircut.

The girls came up,

too young to go in the pub

but they knew that I was

looking for someone to play Jimmy.

Chad was one of the local guys

that lived near the pub.

We thought he had the look for

the main character of Quadrophenia

so we introduced him to Georgiana.

I saw the attitude.

I saw the class and the attitude

and the sort of, you know..

His wheels were spinning a bit,

you know.

And he was the real thing. He had

love-hate tattooed on his hands.

Pretty early on in life for that,

you know.

He was often in bed.

They would have to go and get him

up at the flats, I remember that.

Because he'd had too much to drink,

or maybe drugs,

I don't know what,

I won't swear that either,

but he was often not on location

when he was supposed to be.

About two thirds through the shoot

Chad came up to me and says,

"I've got to go to court."

I said what have you got to go to

court for? He said, "I stole a bus."

And I said, "You stole a bus?" And he

said "Yes, I stole a bus."

I said, "OK."

He walks up to the judge and the

judge says, "What did you do?"

He said, "I took her for a drive."

I can't do the accent.

He said, "what are you doing now?"

He says, "I'm a male model."

And I'm sitting in the back,

and he says, "Who do work for?"

"I work for The 'Oo."

And the judge turns to me and says,

"Is this true?" And I said, "Yes."

He says, "You need him?" And I said,

"Yes, absolutely I need him."

So he let him off.

Pete always had this thing about

mods, even before they were mods.

I like to be subsumed in a gang.

And so I love that feeling of being

safe in the mod movement.

I felt safer in a gang of mods

than I did in the band,

I can tell you that!

There was this

hierarchical structure.

At the top you would have

these top faces.

These were the mods that really

looked really smart

and seemed to be able to afford

new suits a lot.

There were the numbers

and there was tickets.

The tickets were the little kids.

The one that I came across

was Seven And Sixers,

and I never knew why they were called

Seven And Sixers and it was cos

the T-shirts they wore were

seven and six in Woolworths.

What will the well-dressed mod

be wearing this Whit weekend?

I will be wearing white hipster

slacks or blue hipster slacks

with either a cycling shirt,

a zip here and stripes across there,

mainly with white ground

or a blue ground.

Or a T-shirt with a large

emblem on the front or back.

Roger talks about the mod movement

only happening

because in those days, '62, '63, '64,

a young man could get a job.

We were the first generation to have

money and creative energy because

previous to that everybody had been

slaving to pay the bloody bills.

And living on the ration book.

To be a face, you had to go out

to work. You couldn't be a face

if you're a school kid because you

didn't have enough money to buy

the scooter, to pay for the petrol

to pay for the girlfriends

and the burgers and the drinks.

The mods were hard-working

youngsters

and it was all about spending

your money on clothes.

A new booming outfitting

business both meets and creates

the mod demand for elegance

in a young man.

This shop now has 18 branches

in London

and a turnover of

half a million a year.

They'd see Italian students

and kids over here on holiday

in central London

and were admiring their clothes

and saying, "Look at the cut on their

clothes." Stuff that we didn't have.

I don't like red on you anyway.

From all these different elements

emerged this sort of movement

with its strict rules that were

never written down

but they seemed to understand them.

That's a very mod neck.

That rollneck's all right,

a suede front, it's different.

That's true, yeah. This is great,

I like this. It's fabulous.

If I left a deposit for that, John,

can I come back next week?

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