One of the pleasures of being a hypocrite is that Pete Townshend empathises completely. Not that one should go on any particular *ahem*, “nostalgia” trip, circa 2003. Instead, cast your attention upon “Quadrophenia”, Townshend’s emotional, sexual, primal, whatever you want to call it mindfuck from some 30 years previously.

Laying down a sequence of particular character foibles in honour of the project’s motivational title, Daltrey, the anything but cowardly lion is branded “”A tough guy, a helpless dancer.” Entwistle obviously had a penchant for aligning himself with the meandering emotions of William Wordsworth, while a few floors below him, television sets were sent on recon missions without the assistance of any parachutes, hence he becomes a beaming romantic via the somewhat schizoid pulsations of “Dr.Jimmy”. Keith, dear boy, wasn’t it the most deliciously unsubtle touch, that YOU should carry the bags out, a retreat from usually chucking them across airport runways? Well perhaps not. In a moment of confusion, the idea of  “a bloody lunatic, I’ll even carry your bags,” doesn’t seem to fit into Townshend’s somewhat fractured Modtastic jigsaw puzzle, especially given that a still relatively unknown Sting should occupy the celluloid persona of the great one’s inner metronome, a judgemental slip while profiles were assembled on the dusk embambled road back from Brighton.

Still, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, and Pete’s Jungian observations afford a grand finale that Franc Roddam conjured into a back alley release for Phil Daniels’s Jimmy Cooper, and Leslie Ash as Steph, long before oikish fuckwit Neil Morrissey was demeaning the late 20th Century male with his designs for her booty. Anyway, forgive my digressions. Townshend, “A beggar, a hypocrite, Love Reign o’er me.” is at the mercy of his confessors, what his particular neurosis turns out to be is by common experience, anyone’s guess. But by cleansing himself of his own demons, ones plauged by insomnia, “dry and dusty roads” et al, Quadrophenia’s most epic confession, does not only stand as kind of “equalise before the opposition score” (apologies to Danny Blanchflower) philosophy, what Townshend’s craftiness epitomises in The Who’s bona fide masterpiece, is yet another crossroads, with four signs pointing in the most obscure directions, at once infuriating and fascinating. And from that hypocrite’s confession a redemption is gained, his shallow artillery lays shattered on the rocks below him, his burden is released, that sunset is all his.