"It’s interesting that being in a pop band in the ’60s, for me, my role was not just entertaining. It was also slightly journalistic. … I would talk to people. I would find out what’s going on in their heads. I would observe them very, very closely. I will try to find things about them that would enrich not only my craft, but that would touch them.

"And Quadrophenia grew out of the fact that … for a lot of the time, I didn’t have that kind of access to the audience. I had to just look at the four guys in the band … I had to measure our audience through looking at them. And there were four very, including myself, four very eccentric characters … I still like to think of myself as, above everything else, as an artist with a stroke of journalism."

Pete Townshend