The Real Me Album: Quadrophenia (1973)
by The Who
The purpose of "I Am the Sea" is to set you up for "The Real Me". The sound of the ocean sets up the album's shoreline theme, but because the vocal references to songs on the album are muffled by the waves, you start to turn up the volume. Then you turn up the volume a bit more. Then just a bit more... Then you hear a muffled "can see the real me, can ya, CAN YA!?!. Finally, because you have your volume up to 11 at this point, you get blasted by Pete's guitar riffs and Entwistles bass attack as The Real Me takes off
"The Real Me" is about how a Mod can't see who he really is. "Mods" were British youth who kept up with the latest music and fashion trends. Pete Townshend was a champion of Mod culture, and the rock opera Quadrophenia told the story of a Mod named Jimmy.
John Entwistle gave what many consider one of his greatest bass performances on this song. In a 1996 interview with Goldmine magazine, Entwistle explained that he recorded it in one take. He was just "joking around" when he played it, but the band thought it was great and used it in the final version.
The story in this song holds up fairly well on its own, relating to themes of identity and madness. This makes it one of the more radio-friendly tracks on Quadrophenia, which is meant to be heard in its entirety.
The Quadrophenia concept relates to both the storyline in the album and the technology used to record it. The main character in the song has a "quadrophenic" personality, meaning four distinct personas are inside him. Each personality was meant to correspond to one of the band members.
The technical aspect is the "quadrophonic" sound. Ron Nevison, who engineered the album, explained it in a Songfacts interview: "Basically, it was a way to take the channels and fold them out of phase into the front channels, and come up with a pseudo-fake four-track quad. It wasn't discreet quad. But even in order to mix it, you had to have quad panning, and you had to have four speakers. There was no studio that could do that in London, so The Who decided to build their own."
The quad recording was ambitious, but it wasn't broadcast quality, so the album was released in standard stereo.
This is the introduction of each of Jimmy's four personalities, The Romantic (Is it me, for a moment?), The Beggar (Love Reign O''er Me), The Lunatic (Bell Boy), and The Tough Guy (Can you see the real me?). So it gives you the four themes, and if you listen closely to the album, you can hear each one of them repeated at different points, especially the "Is it me?" theme, since that's the point of the album: The story arc of Jimmy wondering who he really is.
