In The Real
Me the main character, whose name is Jimmy, is trying to figure out who he
really is. He goes to a shrink, his mother, and a priest and asks if they can
see the real him. I’m sure that a lot of
people go through this sort of episode during their life, where they feel like
they act differently with different people and that none of those facades are
really them. Jimmy is trying to find his real self, but each of those people sees
him differently. If you read the liner notes you will discover that Jimmy
believes that he has a mental illness similar to schizophrenia called quadrophenia,
which means that he has four different personalities. Throughout the album the
listener can hear the four personalities come through in the themes.
My favourite
part of The Real Me is the bass line. In pretty much every song ever written
you get just a standard bass line that carries the song along but doesn’t
really add much depth to the music, this, however, is never the case with a
John Entwhistle bass line. In this song the bass line acts a sort of counter melody;
it is very pronounced and has more prominence then the guitar. I often find
myself singing along with the bass when listening to The Real Me and I can’t
say that I actually do that with many other songs. This bass line is the
perfect demonstration of one really awesome thing about The Who, they weren’t
afraid to think outside the box. If they wanted to do it, and they thought it
sounded good, they did it. AND the really cool thing is that they had the
talent to back these ideas up. The other example of this is the horns in The
Real Me which were also played by John Entwhistle. The talent was there and
they incorporated the talent into the songs which makes them so much more epic!
The Real Me
is such a great way to start off this album; it grabs your attention and makes
you interested. The music is amazing and the lyrics are one hundred percent relatable.
It will always be one of my favourite songs.
