Class, Youth, and Dirty Jobs: The Working-Class and Post-War Britain in Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia

Abstract

This chapter examines Quadrophenia (1973) and the way in which it depicts continuity and change in the lives of the British working-class in the period that the album documents (1964/5), the political milieu in which it was written (1972/3), and the legacy of the concept that was later depicted on screen (1978/9). The album is explored as both a social history of an element of youth culture in the mid-1960s and a reflection on contemporary anxieties relating to youth, class, race, and national identity. It argues that Quadrophenia is a significant historical source for ‘reading’ these pivotal years providing a sense of how musicians were both reflecting and dramatizing a sense of ‘crisis’, ‘continuity’, and ‘change’ in working-class Britain.