I went back to the doctor, to get another shrink
I sit there and tell him ‘bout my weekends
But he doesn’t betray what he thinks
I went back to my mother, I said, “I’m crazy ma, help me.”
She said, “I know how it feels son, ‘cause it runs in the family.”
The cracks between the paving stones
Like rivers of flowing rain
Strange people who live there
Look from behind every window pain.
The girl I use to love
Lives in this yellow house
Yesterday she passed me by
She doesn’t want to know me now
I ended up with the preacher...full of lies and hate
I seemed to scare him a little
So he showed me to the golden gate...
Can you see the real me....
The beauty of the album is that it captured the angst of teens growing up trying to fit in. I listened to that album every day (no doubt, to my detriment, as I began to assimilate the ideas more and more into my own thinking, thus becoming a classic example of arrested development.) What I remember, and what made me come back to the album over and over is that each of the 4 personae created by Townshend’s song-writing expressed my inner state at various times during my teens (heck, during my every waking moment).
I think the liner notes that painted the story for the listener said something like, “Schizophrenic? I’m a bleeding quadrophenic.”
That was me...me...me...me...me...me...me...me...