THEY say if you remember the Sixties you weren’t really there but my ragged patchwork of flashbacks cannot be blamed on certain substances but on the rather ordinary fact I was only born at the start of that decade. But among those few vivid memories is the day our neighbours in our ordinary London suburb got caught in a Mods and Rockers battle at Box Hill - and were still shaking when they got home. But I didn’t get it, a point I proved a few weeks later when we were on a coach trip to the south coast. We stopped at a roadside café, were joined by a crowd of leather-clad bikers and in that loud voice only kids can do, I asked my dad if they were Mods or Rockers….. Fast forward to 1979, I’m living here in Warwickshire, punk has been exciting but then along comes the film of Quadrophenia. The original Who album had passed me by but the film was a revelation. The fact the critics didn’t get it just added to the magic, it brought about a Mod revival, transformed the fortunes of The Jam and I joined most of the male population in falling in love with Lesley Ash. It was rough round the edges but it was the first film that felt like it was for my generation and with its serious issues of identity there was a towering performance from Phil Daniels. Look at it now, of course and you’ll recognise most of the other key players, with credit where it’s due to Sting, who as Ace Face had a great way of irritating people, long before he became famous and started really irritating people. It all had such an impact I make no apology for the preamble because the affection for the film helps to explain the appeal of this stage version, which sees Pete Townshend reinvent his challenging vision yet again. If it goes back to the album and is a non-stop musical journey, an obsession with the film still helps to unlock what’s occurring in front of you. The dialogue’s gone and the sound’s not quite good enough to pick up all the lyrics but the physicality of the performance and that bit of prior knowledge fires the questions at you all over again. And while Ryan O’Donnell has more than a little of the Phil Daniels about him, they’ve gone for the quad casting and three others join him as Jimmy throughout. There’s an Ace Face, mum and dad, the gorgeous girl, the drugs and the fighting but above all the music, all played live on stage by a band who never let the pace flag. Love, Reign O’er Me becomes the recurring tune as Jimmy’s journey unfurls but they also do the anger and the confusion just as well, with an in-yer-face 5.15 a stunning opener for the second half. If the film had enough humour for anyone who didn’t want to dwell too long on Jimmy’s agony, there’s less of a distraction here, although after taking their bow the cast did a freestyle My Generation and got us clapping along if not quite dancing in the aisles. They then disappeared into the night chanting, ‘we are the Mods’, echoed by the departing and packed audience, glad in more than a few cases, to have been given just cause to dig out the Fred Perry polo shirts, the parkas and the scooters once again. Quadrophenia is on at the Belgrade Theatre, Belgrade Square, Coventry, until Saturday October 3. | 
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