The Who's Quadrophenia musical premieres in May

The first full-blown officially sanctioned musical production of the Who's Quadrophenia, will kick off it's regional UK theater tour on May 9th in Plymouth, Britain. Pete Townshend has been the production's creative consultant, and helped shape the band's 1973 concept album into a durable musical -- as he did over 15 years ago with the Tony Award-winning Broadway version of Tommy. There has been no word regarding a West End or Broadway run for Quadrophenia.

For Quadrophenia, Townshend created a song cycle chronicling the life of "Jimmy" -- a pill-popping fashion conscious R&B loving "Mod" from London in the mid-'60s. The album focused on Jimmy's battles with his parents, the mod nightlife, his demeaning office job, and the mods' legendary beach rumbles against their cultural nemesis, the "Rockers." The double album featured such Who classics as "The Real Me," "5:15," "I'm One," "The Punk And The Godfather," "Drowned," "Sea And Sand," and "Love Reign O'er Me," among others.

The Who executive produced the 1979 motion picture version of Quadrophenia.

Since the success of Broadway adaptation of The Who's Tommy, Townshend has felt more at ease creating for the stage that competing as a solo artist away from the Who: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "I'm writing plays, that's what I do. I mean, it might disappoint a lot of people that I'm not keen on churning out records, but I'm not. I think the problem that I have today is that if it was just about radio, I'd be happy, but it's not. It's about MTV and VH1. MTV were great to me when they started, and VH1 are great to me now, but, I don't like making videos. I don't like being in videos, I don't think I'm particularly photogenic."