10 Bands That Made The Same Album Over Again
2. The Who
After the Who unleashed Tommy, the rock community was a completely different world. With Pete Townshend's songwriting prowess being burst wide open, the concept of the rock opera was born, leaving behind millions of imitators trying to copy them. It's hard to recapture the magic of the first love though...and yet the Who actually managed to top themselves.
Though Quadrophenia's storyline is pretty much a carbon copy of the down and out protagonist of Tommy, this is a much more grandiose undertaking than we were used to. While Tommy already put different songs into the classical music realm, the incorporation of horns on this album give a lofty flair to some of their greatest tunes, from the bass extravaganza of The Real Me to the bombast melodrama of the Punk and the Godfather.
This is also one of the more interesting concepts in rock history in that it has no real ending, with our protagonist Jimmy stuck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, desperately seeking love which may or may not come back to save him. Compared to what we saw on Tommy, Quadrophenia leans much more on the opera side of rock opera, going for more ambitious goals and clearing the bar nearly every single time. While this idea reeks of 'second verse same as the first,' Quadrophenia still stands as one of the greatest peaks in '70s rock for a damn good reason.