Pop Screen roars back, like an army of mods on scooters, with Quadrophenia. One of the definitive British cult movies, a peerless translation of an ambitious concept album and a loving tribute to a scene that, in its era, was so dangerous that the term “moral panic” was coined to describe the press reaction. It’s the film that made Brighton rock.
But even this is selling Frank Roddam’s film short, as Mick and Graham discover. It worked in the 1970s because it tapped into the disaffection and rage of late ’70s Britain, it worked in the 1990s as part of the mass Sixties revival of Britpop, and it works now because – hey! – it’s a good film, got some good tunes in it and that. All of these topics will be discussed, as well as Roddam’s links to everything from one of Hollywood’s legendary unproduced screenplays to Masterchef, the film’s early roles for Sting, Ray Winstone and Timothy Spall, and the bit-part actor whose name had to be redacted from a song by Iggy Pop.
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Often accused of being pretentious, the Style Council chose to face down these allegations in 1987 by promoting their album The Cost of Loving with a non-linear musical satire on British identity in the age of Thatcherism, narrated by a pre-Reverend Richard Coles. Surprisingly, this did not stop people from calling them pretentious, and the resulting film JerUSAlem (it is our sad duty to confirm that yes, you saw what they did there) vanished from sight.
POP SCREEN BONUS EPISODE
Quadrophenia – Sting – Archive
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