Martin Popoff

The Publisher Says: The Who & Quadrophenia offers a generously illustrated deep dive into all aspects of one of the most popular rock albums of all time. Take a deep dive into one of the best-selling albums ever on the 50th anniversary of its release with this beautifully produced and authoritatively written slipcased edition.

Veteran rock critic Martin Popoff leaves no stone unturned in taking apart The Who’s generation-spanning masterpiece, Quadrophenia, while exploring each of the show more album’s 17 tracks and their themes of identity, anxiety, and mental health. Chapters cover:

The state of The Who as of 1973, including their role in Mod culture

The recording sessions at famed Olympic Studios and the band’s own Battersea location, including techniques used

Song-by-song studies of each album side, including analyses of lyrics and the guitars, drums, keyboards, and synthesizers employed by members Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon

The 1979 motion picture based on the album’s song cycle

The continent-hopping tours that supported the album

The rock group’s trajectory post-Quadrophenia, including notable albums and tours

Popoff also takes you on side journeys examining each band member, mod vs. rocker culture, the album’s famous graphic design, manager/producers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, Quadrophenia collectibles, and more.

There’s even a brief discography and complete LP tour dates.

Presented in a 10" × 10" slipcased book, The Who & Quadrophenia is illustrated with stunning performance and candid off-stage photography as well as rare memorabilia.

The result is a richly presented celebration and your ultimate tribute to the rock opera masterpiece.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: They're rising 80, Daltrey and Townshend, and yet The Who are still touring. People are still buying the album discussed here FIFTY YEARS LATER.

Getting old is as simple as just not dying, but nothing can prepare you for the weirdness of your youth being History to most of the world's population. My parents remembered the 1930s vividly and felt that the Second World War was a recent event my whole life. To me, of course, they were History. I knew somewhere in my logic circuits that, if I just didn't die (not a sure thing as a gay man in the early 1980s) it would happen to me, too.

But one of my most coveted albums, one I begged for all during 1973 (didn't get it), is now historically important enough to warrant an expensive, lavishly produced, slipcased hardcover book. That feels...weird, unsettling, a little shocking. Millions upon millions of us Boomers are left in the world sitting atop a vast pile of pilf to plonk down for gift items like this. We can afford, most of us, to give it to ourselves as well as to other old people.

Old People! Books about ROCK MUSIC for Old People!

The book itself is on-brand for Author Popoff, he of Rush: The Illustrated History and Queen: Album by Album and Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers: The Rise of Motörhead among others. He does an admirable job of delving into the songs, the ideas in, the people behind, and the legacy of this astoundingly influential and important album, treating it with the historian/fan's eye that it as a concept and as an item can easily support. The photographic documentation of the Who began before this album was released, but it definitely makrked a sea change in the intensity and the completeness of that documentation.

The table of contents, as you see above, is a beautiful design. It's also demonstrating Author Popoff's characteristic completeness of view. His analyses, and takes on the events of the day, his credibility as a rock writer with publication credits in the likes of Revolver, Guitar World, Goldmine, and Record Collector assures the fussy reader of an informed, well-presented opinion. Let me end with a page spread, which (let's be honest when it's just us here) is the real reason you'll buy the book whether for yourself or someone you really, really want to spoil: show less

Limelight: Rush in the '80s by Martin Popoff is a detailed account of the group during this period. Filled with facts and opinions (both his and those of the band members), this work really makes these albums come alive again.

I admit to being one of the fans who prefer their earliest records. My first album of theirs was Fly By Night while I was in high school. I then found their first album, bought it, and bought every one through Grace Under Pressure when they released. While I still liked show more them, GUP was the album that made me decide not to buy their albums immediately upon release any more, and I only bought a few more after that. So now you know where I am coming from.

Popoff goes into detail on every album as well as the influences that helped form the later Rush sound(s). I think that reading this has given me a better appreciation of what they were doing with the albums I liked less. As expected, I was particularly interested with reading about their albums early in the decade and I was not disappointed.

It is funny how as listeners we often only pay attention to one or two aspects of an artist's music when it is first released. Reading this made me remember some of my thoughts during those years and how, in some respects, they were quite ignorant of many fine points. I also never really bought into genre names too much, I either liked something or I didn't, so liking Rush or Yes didn't conflict with my liking Sabbath or Judas Priest, or even The Eagles for that matter. Progressive was a term I knew then but simply disregarded as being a way to divide music and listeners into warring camps. Anyway...

I recommend this to fans of Rush (whether the 80s was your favorite period or not) as well as readers with an interest in rock history.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Iron Maiden: Album by Album from Martin Popoff consists of 16 chapters, one for each studio album, of several Maiden fans (and peers) discussing each album. I was torn between 4 and 5 stars but went with 5 for the simple reason the book was exactly what it set out to be. I refuse to mark down because the book wasn't what it never set out to be.

The book as a whole has a strict structure with each chapter being a discussion about one album. Within each chapter there is a loose structure where show more Popoff makes sure certain aspects are always covered, such as production values and such. But most of the conversation, while prompted by Popoff's questions, go off in whatever direction each speaker wants to go. Kinda like when you and your friends are talking about something. A question sets you off but you make whatever connections matter to you.

The conversations range from close analysis of some songs to placing the songs/albums in the larger context of the music business and even to some extent world politics. We also have talk about what the band meant to some of these people when they were young and first discovered them. There is a lot of information to glean from these conversations but just be aware this is not a track-by-track technical overview of production, engineering, or the music performance itself. This is a bunch of knowledgeable people sitting around and having fun talking about one of their favorite bands. There is talk about how some things were done but that is few and far between since that wasn't the purpose of the book. This is less for the "fan" who thinks fandom is pretending not to be a fan but rather a (usually semi-literate in music) technician and more for the fan who may or may not be musically inclined but likes to hear about the history of a band. This is an oral history ABOUT the band rather than OF the band.

I recommend this to any Maiden fan (of course) as well as those interested in the history of how a band evolves over time and how a band can influence their fans and peers. The participants include musicians, rock critics/historians, even a wrestler/rock musician. We have a former (short term) Maiden member as well as a former Megadeth member as well, so this isn't just a group of everyday fans. If you're a fan of Maiden yourself, you'll have plenty to both agree and disagree with in the book, just like in any good conversation among friends.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Overall, a fun and relatively thorough overview of the band's beginnings and career up to the end of the 70s. It's also quintessentially Canadian... Read virtually any rock biography, and you'll read about a lot of nefarious, illegal, and immoral acts involving booze, drugs, women, and possibly poor small creatures who get their heads bitten off accidentally.

But then along comes Rush, who do admit to some partying, some drinking, and some pot, but that's as far as it goes. "Neil knows his show more limits. He knows when he's had too much to drink. He knows when it's time to stop and go to bed." I defy you to find another top-of-the-heap band who can make that claim. I mean, the only thing we don't read (at least not in this first of three books), is about Alex, Geddy and Neil saying something like, "Oh ya, after da big gig, we'd boot over to da nearest Tim Hortons fer a double double an'a chocolate dipped, eh? I mean, what else ya gonna do on a Sadderday night in Sudbury, eh?" (And yes, I can make fun of how Canadians talk, being a born and bred Canuck.)

Anyway, as I said, overall, this is a really solid overview of the ups and downs of the band. There's a lot here to love.

Having said that, two things stop this from being a five-star review.

The first is Popoff showing his limits as a journalist by offering up a story, then having Geddy talk about it, then Alex say virtually the same things, then bringing in Neil to say similar stuff, then moving to management or road crew or parents to once again state the now-oft-repeated circumstances. These stories would have been served better by taking all those viewpoints and weaving them into one coherent story, told only once.

The second and, I suspect, likely more personal decision on Popoff's part seems to be to sanitize the band a touch. I'm not looking for muckraking here, because I'm not a fan of it. However, as an example, Popoff goes to pains to illustrate how, once Neil wrote lyrics that harkened to Ayn Rand (Anthem/2112), or organized labour (The Trees), etc., the press would hound him on this stuff, and he apparently didn't have much patience for it. But all we get is, "and it wouldn't end well for the interviewer" when they questioned him. Why not give us an insight into this? I'd love to know how Neil actually dealt with this stuff.

Other than that, though, I will say I thoroughly enjoyed what I got, and I look forward to the next book, especially because that one spans the decade that I first took serious notice of the band, and started attending their concerts.

Another bonus? It's made me go back and listen to those early albums for the first time in years. show less