But the road to creating this classic cover was far from smooth. Russell is the only photographer to have shot album covers for the British rock trinity of The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who. He had shot the cover of The Who’s 1971 album, Who’s Next, and recalls, ‘The singer/songwriter aspect was the reason I got involved, because of the writing, because of what Pete Townshend did. The houses symbolise four personalities in this case coming from four different homes Different cover ideas The music was the most important thing but it was, for me, the writers behind the music.’Ĭover of the lyric and photo book.
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Quadrophenia was to be accompanied by the aforementioned book that featured the lyrics to the album and a series of images shot by Russell in London and Brighton, but when it came to shooting the cover the project became divided into two creative camps – Pete Townshend and Ethan Russell versus The Who’s singer, Roger Daltrey, and photographer Graham Hughes, who also happened to be Daltrey’s cousin. Russell reveals, ‘My idea was to take the four faces of The Who (Townshend, Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon) and make one face. It’s an obvious idea but what I didn’t want it to be – this is the difference – is that I wanted you not to know.
I shot the heads on 4×5 and gave it to them to put together. I cared about this book like crazy, but they wanted an album cover and they were right.Īll the time this is going on it was constantly, “What’s the cover?”.
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Jimmy the mod pictured in a fish and chip shop in Brighton I got the picture that was made of the four faces of The Who and you couldn’t tell it really was a new face.’ That didn’t happen till we had this big meeting with Pete and Roger where I had stuff from the book and all the rest of that, but it was really about the cover. He adds, ‘My visceral reaction to it was I think I made a mistake. Since that was all about being a mod I really did create a mod face like Jimmy but I just didn’t like it I freaked out. I brought it to that presentation and Pete looked at it and was interested in it. At that point there were other things that were way too arty and Roger basically took all the props etcetera that were part of my doing the book and gave them to photographer Graham Hughes.’ But I think he took the lead from me that I was scared about it and I wasn’t trying to sell it. Russell explains, ‘Graham Hughes had this idea where Jimmy was reflected in the four mirrors and it was a good idea. It did solve that problem in the sense of it didn’t have anything else to do with the package. I’ve since thought about finishing that face.’ Townshend’s choice There are a lot of reasons one can feel iffy about it, but it was pretty well done and so I didn’t fight it. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Week’s website Pete Townshend explains, ‘ arose out argument with Roger. The original cover was going to be the image on the inside sleeve, which was Battersea Power Station with Jimmy riding his scooter. The shot of the character Jimmy the mod pictured in front of Battersea Power Station, London. This was Pete Townshend’s favourite image for the cover #THE WHO QUADROPHENIA MOD#
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