6 Jun 2017
PETE TOWNSHEND’S CLASSIC QUADROPHENIA GOES STATESIDE!
Pete Townshend’s CLASSIC QUADROPHENIA is coming to the US for a series of concerts this September! CLASSIC QUADROPHENIA will be performed by Pete Townshend, Billy Idol and Alfie Boe plus a full symphony orchestra and chorus.
Concerts will be held at Tanglewood Music Center, Lenox, MA, The Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, NY (two nights) and at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, CA.
Released as a double-album in 1973, The Who’s rock opera QUADROPHENIA is a conceptual work set in the 1960s milieu of the Mod movement during which they began their career in west London. The central character of Jimmy is a disaffected youth who hates his parents and lowly job, but finds release from blue-collar drudgery with his fellow Mods, popping pills and riding motor-scooters to weekend concerts by bands like The Who. But the freedom he finds turns out to be illusory. The album title comes from the personalities of the four members of The Who, used to represent the four sides of Jimmy. Townshend has described the album as the best music he has ever written. In 1979 it was turned into a film, directed by Franc Roddam (and featuring a young Sting in a key role) and has been performed live by The Who, sometimes with guest performers. In 2012 The Who played the album in its entirety on tour.
PETE TOWNSHEND
One of the most recognisable figures in the pantheon of popular music, Pete Townshend has spent 50 years at the helm of rock legends The Who, primarily as guitarist and principal songwriter. The British band, who rose to fame alongside The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Kinks in the early 1960s, has sold more than 100 million albums including the rock operas TOMMY and QUADROPHENIA
RACHEL FULLER
Rachel Fuller is a successful composer, arranger and singer-songwriter who has been composing music since she was ten years old. A classically trained pianist, she first worked with Pete Townshend on his LIFEHOUSE CHRONICLES solo project, subsequently released her own solo album CIGARETTES AND HOUSEWORK and co-wrote a song for The Who’s last album ENDLESS WIRE. Rachel, 41, worked closely with Townshend on the orchestrations for QUADROPHENIA – an album originally released in the year she was born. Her first professional job in music was as an organist in a funeral home. More recently she wrote her own stage musical, ASH. She met Townshend in 1996 and lives with him in west London.
ALFIE BOE
Britain’s leading tenor Alfie Boe has triumphed on theatre stages and in concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic. He shared a Tony award for his role in Baz Luhrmann’s 2002 revival of ‘La Boheme’ on Broadway and scaled new heights of popularity as Valjean in the West End stage production of LES MISERABLES in London and its 25th anniversary performance in 2010. Now 41, he grew up in Lancashire as one of nine children and was famously discovered while singing opera on the production line of his job in a car factory. A graduate of the Royal College of Music, and the Royal Opera House’s Young Artists Programme, his subsequent string of solo albums spanning familiar favourites from the worlds of opera, pop and folk have earned him four Top Ten hits.
BILLY IDOL
With his spiky peroxide hair and black motorcycle leathers, Billy Idol was made for MTV and his rise to pop stardom coincided with the TV channel’s ascent to dominance in the early 1980s. The former frontman of punk band Generation X lived up to his assumed surname with hits like ‘Rebel Yell’ and ‘White Wedding’ – rock anthems as notable for their big-budget videos as their big riffs and shout-along choruses. Long resident in Los Angeles, he survived drug problems and a serious motorcycle accident to tour with The Who as a guest singer on their 1996-97 QUADROPHENIA tour, later released on DVD, and appeared (as himself) in the 1998 film The Wedding Singer. Still recording and performing, he published his autobiography, Dancing With Myself, in 2014.