Man ! You just had to leave the BOTH option off, didn't you.

So be it !

I'm all in on Quadrophenia.

Much more relatable in content and music in my opinion. Plus, the background effects, like the sea, the tea kettle and the TV are simply sublime.

That seems to be my thing. Not many others have followed in my footsteps it seems. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm not familiar enough with Quadrophenia to vote. I have Tommy but I find it overall to be just ok. It's one of those many double albums that would have been a really great single. 

I keep thinking that time has not been kind to "Tommy" ... specially with a movie on it that makes the whole thing seem stupid and overblown ... and bizarre. By comparison, "Quadrophenia" seems more controlled and complete and stands up much better from beginning to the end. As much as I liked "Tommy", and got the album almost immediately, the years have not been kind to it, and that film, pretty much ruins the whole thing for me. Heck, at least Roger Ruskin Spears' take on Pinball Wizard is a compliment, compared to what ended up in the movie.

It's not exactly a surprise, since Ken Russell had (by that time) done many films about music and a few artists, and all in all? ... it followed the standard those days about rock music, not being serious music!

Now you know what Frank Zappa and many others were fighting ... but I think the film helped ruin the "psychedelic" days, and the whole "scene" of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Made the media happy ... putting down another rock this or that to ensure the 60's died with a severe thrashing.

I've listened to Tommy loads of times since the early '70s, while Quadrophenia is a newer acquaintance of mine, even I got it first time in the '90s. 

I think anyway, I find them today to be about equally good, but Tommy a better achievement for the time of its release.

Hi,

Very true, since just using the term rock opera made a lot of folks go .... what? .... no way. Hearing it THEN, I never thought of it as a rock opera at all ... and it would have helped make it a more important work if The Who, had toured the whole thing, instead of just doing parts of it. With a properly designed stage, this could have been done well, and make Genesis look silly years later! I always thought they obviously did not think much of their rock opera, except the idea of making rock/pop folks think that this was better and more important.

I don't find it as good an "opera" these days, but I will accept it as a "concept" album. 

Of course, without Tommy's existence & success, no Quadrophenia.

Oddly enough, The Who had much more mileage from Tommy than Quadro (which they didn't tour much or for long)

As for the movies, I love Quad, but dislike most of Tommy

Tommy spells out everything far more explicitly. Quadrophenia's story is much more implicit and impressionistic.

I think a lot of Quadrophenia's story remained in Townshend's head and couldn't be expressed in words and music, making the album far more open to personal interpretation. This is why I've always preferred it to Tommy. Those of us who were never anywhere close to the mid-1960s Mod scene could still relate to the overall concept of teenage alienation and disillusionment. Tommy is about revolution, while Quadrophenia about watching the idea of revolution recede into the past.