No. 189 – I’ve Had Enough

Performer: The Who

Songwriter: Pete Townshend

Original Release: Quadrophenia

Year: 1973

Definitive Version: The original version, although I like the one from New York in July 1996, too.

The first time I saw the movie Quadrophenia on Qube in the fall of 1980, I was amazed by two things. The first was the sheer majesty of Pete Townshend’s music.

The Kids Are Alright, of course, passes over Quadrophenia as though it never existed. None of the songs are featured either in the movie or on the soundtrack album, so it wasn’t until I saw the Quadrophenia movie—well, really the trailer for the movie—that I heard any of those songs, including this one. The Kids Are Alright gave a stinging crack across the face; Quadrophenia blew me away. It remains my favorite album of all time.

The second amazing thing that came out of seeing the movie was … wait a minute … I’ve BEEN there. I’m talking about Brighton Beach, where the infamous riots between the Mods and Rockers took place back in 1964 and a key locale in the movie. I had no idea at the time I was trodding such culturally significant soil.

When Jin and I visited Uncle Jack and his family in England, they made it a point to take us out of London to see other things, or at least as many things as we could in the two or three weeks we were there. One trip was to the north, to Stratford-upon-Avon, and I’ll talk more about that later. Another was south to the Channel coast and Brighton. (We didn’t make it to Beachy Head where Jimmy drove his purloined scooter off the edge, alas.)

Unfortunately, because I wasn’t up on my Quadrophenia, I didn’t soak in as much about Brighton as I wished I had. Had I known how important it was in The Who canon, I certainly would have paid more attention. In fact, I don’t even remember how we got down there or back. I remember only three things about that trip.

The first was the beach itself. I’d never seen a beach like Brighton’s, which, at least back then, was completely covered in pebbles. I was used to sandy beaches, so this was unusual enough to stand out.

I’d also never seen a nude beach before. As we walked along the beach, we went past a portion that was for patrons to strip all the way down. Aunt Linda remarked that you could tell the Americans, because they were the ones gawking. Well, I might have passed for English, because the nude beach that day had few people on it, and the only ones who were nude were dudes. Nothing for me to see there.

The second memory was the Brighton Pier. Again, I’d never seen anything like it with all the shops and activities. We went out, and while Jin and our cousins, Jenny and Amy, hit up the slide, Linda and I went into the casino to play a few games. Being 16, I was able to go inside.

The casino on the Pier was nothing like a Vegas casino. There were games of chance, though, and the amazing thing to me was that I knew these games from the fund-raising festivals that I had gone to with Mike and his family in Columbus.

I don’t know if Catholic churches do this any more, but 30 years ago, to raise funds, the ones in Columbus would hold festivals during the summer that included gambling games. The games consisted of coins—quarters, dimes, etc.—that you dropped onto a platform in a way so various levers would knock a bunch of coins over an edge and down into the coin-return chute.

The games looked so tantalizingly easy that you could drop a bunch of quarters in there, because, well, just look at how many coins are right on the edge! Of course, I didn’t realize that the edge was angled up so it took a ton of coins to push just a few over the edge. In some ways, the games are like a fair carny game—kind of a scam.

Well, when in Brighton … Linda and I played for a while, and I’m sure I left with less money than I walked in with, but because it was all coins, it didn’t seem like I lost much.

The third and final thing I remember about Brighton was that was where I had my first high tea. However, considering I didn’t drink tea, it didn’t make as much of an impression on me as you might imagine. Jin, I think, got more out of this part, because she had tea parties when she was a kid. This was the real thing.

I had a Coke and a scone that tasted as though it had been made about the time the Mods and Rockers had their little tete-a-tete. I wasn’t a gourmand yet, but even I knew bad food when I tasted it.

We headed home after the tea. My recollection is that Jack, who had to work despite the holiday, drove down and picked us up, but it’s possible Linda drove us there and back. I honestly don’t know. All I know is I was there, in Brighton, and I have photos to prove it.