Does Jimmy live or die? That is the big question raised after listening to The Who‘s 1973 album Quadrophenia. The main character, Jimmy, is a composite based on many people, including Who band members Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon. He struggles with multiple personalities as he clashes with his parents and employer. He finds his tribe in the mods after seeing The Who perform in Brighton, but he is disillusioned when he discovers all is not as it seemed on the surface.
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After crashing his scooter and contemplating suicide, Jimmy takes drugs and grabs a train to Brighton, hoping to return to the scene where everything is better. He’s consumed with thoughts of anger, confusion, sexual frustration, and violence. In Brighton, he discovers the mod he looked up to most is nothing more than a bellboy, taking orders and carrying bags for hotel guests. Jimmy steals a boat and sails out to a rock overlooking the sea. As he is stranded in the rain, he examines his life. Let’s take a look at the story behind “5:15” by The Who.
Why should I care? Why should I care?
Girls of fifteen
Sexually knowing
The ushers are sniffing
Eau-de-coloning
The seats are seductive
Celibate sitting
Pretty girls digging
Prettier women
The Origin
Townshend came up with the idea in London. In the Quadrophenia liner notes, he wrote, “5:15′ was written in Oxford Street and Carnaby Street while I was killing time between appointments. I must try it again sometime; it seems to work.”
Magically bored
On a quiet street corner
Free frustration
In our minds and our toes
Quiet stormwater
M-m-my generation
Dream View
Townshend has described Quadrophenia as a dream view rather than a straight narrative. Jimmy represents many people. Townshend wanted to relate to the band’s fans in the same way he wanted the fans to relate to the band. In his 2012 memoir, Who I Am, he wrote, “I wanted everyone who listened to the album to find themselves and their own story in it, including each band member. If my malaise, and Jimmy’s, was spiritual, then the members of The Who were simply going to have to bite the spiritual bullet because it seemed to me that our fans’ malaise was probably spiritual as well.”
Uppers and downers
Either way, blood flows
Inside, outside, leave me alone
Inside, outside, nowhere is home
Inside, outside, where have I been?
Out of my brain, on the five fifteen
Out of My Brain on the Train
Townshend, referring to the drugs Jimmy consumed, said in the Quadrophenia liner notes, “His train journey down to Brighton, sandwiched between two city gents, is notable for the rather absurd number of purple hearts he consumes to while away the time. He goes through a not entirely pleasant series of ups and downs as he thinks about the gaudier side of life as a teenager that we see in newspapers like the News of the World.”
Out of my brain on the train
Out of my brain on the train
On a raft in the quarry
Slowly sinking
Back of a lorry
Holy hitching
Dreadfully sorry
Apple scrumping
Born in the war
Birthday punching
Brighton Mods
Jimmy’s experience in Brighton was based loosely on one of Townshend’s experiences. He wrote in Who I Am, “My memory pulled me back to a single night when I was 19 years old. I had slept for a few hours under a Brighton pier in 1964 with my art-school friend, the pretty, strawberry-blonde Liz Reid. We had been together for a riotous night at the Aquarium Ballroom after our gig on the night of a Mod-Rocker street battle on the seafront. Walking along the beach in the dark, under the pier, trying to stay out of the drizzling rain, we’d come across a group of Mod boys in their anoraks. They were giggling as the tide came in, getting their feet wet. We sat with them for a while. We were all coming down from taking purple hearts, the fashionable uppers of the period.
“As I thought back to that night, a sense of falling and vertigo came flooding back with the flooding river outside—I felt that same sense of depression and hopelessness. But I also felt again the remembered romantic warmth of nodding off on the milk train home in the early hours with Liz by my side. For a short time, we had both felt like Mods. There was something wonderful in all that. We also fell in love, and yet I didn’t go on another date with Liz, never again. The moment with her was frozen, exalted, and would always be special.”
He man drag
In the glittering ballroom
Gravely outrageous
In my high heel shoes
Tightly undone
They know what they’re showing
Sadly ecstatic
That their heroes are news
Four Personalities
Jimmy finds himself giving up all hope, stranded on a rock in the rain, looking for redemption. He is a tough guy, a romantic, a lunatic, and a beggar all rolled into one. The four personalities clash within the young man, who feels he has lost everything important to him as a teenager.
Inside, outside, leave me alone
Inside, outside, nowhere is home
Inside, outside, where have I been?
Out of my brain, on the five fifteen
Does He or Doesn’t He?
Townshend has the final word, “‘Love, Reign o’er Me’ suggests that he has finally been able to integrate his multiple selves. Even as author and composer, I realized I had no right to decide whether or not Jimmy should end his own life. I let Jimmy decide for himself.”
Out of my brain on the train
Out of my brain on the train, on the train, out of my brain
Out of my brain on the train
Here it comes
Out of my brain on the train, on the train
Out of my brain on the train
Why should I care?
Why should I care?
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Photo by David Redfern/Redferns
