Quadrophenia

It came out on 26 October 1973 in the United States and 29 October in Britain, and reached number two in both. Kit Lambert served as pre-production and executive producer, but he missed sessions and Daltrey demanded that he leave by mid-1973. Ron Nevison engineered. Townshend recorded many of the ARP 2500 synthesizer parts at home. Jon Curle reads the news on the record, and Chris Stainton is credited as an additional musician.

Lenny Kaye wrote in Rolling Stone that the Who have never sounded better, but that the album falls short of its own aims. Charles Shaar Murray of the NME called it the most rewarding musical experience of the year.

The story follows Jimmy, a young working-class mod in London and Brighton in 1965. Townshend built the character from six early fans of the group, including Irish Jack Lyons, and gave him a four-way split personality that supplied the title. He wrote four themes for the four members of the band: Bell Boy for Moon, Is It Me for Entwistle, Helpless Dancer for Daltrey and Love Reign O'er Me for himself. The title track and The Rock are instrumentals that contain all four themes. It is the only Who album written entirely by Townshend.

Sessions in May 1972 with Glyn Johns produced Is It in My Head and Love Reign O'er Me, but the material was judged too close to Who's Next and set aside. The band's own Ramport Studios in Battersea lacked a mixing desk, so Ronnie Lane's mobile studio was used. Only 5:15 was arranged by the band in the studio. Townshend bought a cello and learned it over two weeks for the string parts. Entwistle recorded the bass on The Real Me in one take on a Gibson Thunderbird, and Moon sang lead on Bell Boy. Townshend also made field recordings of waves on a Cornish beach and a diesel train near Goring-on-Thames, and nine tape machines ran effects at one point during I Am the Sea.

The single 5:15 reached number 20 in Britain ahead of the album. In the United States it was the highest placing of any Who album, kept from number one by Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and in Britain it was held off the top by David Bowie's Pin Ups. The US edition retitles The Punk and the Godfather as The Punk Meets the Godfather. Billboard wrote in 2013 that it is 90 minutes of the Who at its very best, and Townshend said in 2011 that the group never recorded anything so ambitious or audacious again.

The tour began on 28 October 1973 at Stoke-on-Trent, with backing tapes run by Bob Pridden. At the Cow Palace in San Francisco on 20 November Moon collapsed, and the audience member Scot Halpin finished the show on drums. The last stage performance of the piece with Moon was at Lyon on 24 February 1974. It was revived at Hyde Park in 1996, when Zak Starkey made his first appearance with the band, and toured again in 2012 and 2013. A film adaptation directed by Franc Roddam followed in 1979, with Phil Daniels as Jimmy and Sting as the Ace Face.