1972 was the least active year for the Who since they had formed. The group had achieved great commercial and critical success with the albums "Tommy" and "Who's Next", but were struggling to come up with a suitable follow-up. The group recorded new material with "Who's Next" collaborator Glyn Johns in May 1972, including "Is It In My Head" and "Love Reign O'er Me" which were eventually released on "Quadrophenia", and a mini-opera called "Long Live Rock – Rock Is Dead", but the material was considered too derivative of "Who's Next" and sessions were abandoned. In an interview for "Melody Maker", guitarist and bandleader Pete Townshend said "I've got to get a new act together… People don't really want to sit and listen to all our past". He had become frustrated that the group had been unable to produce a film of "Tommy" (a film version of Tommy would be released in 1975) or "Lifehouse" (the abortive project that resulted in "Who's Next"), and decided to follow Frank Zappa's idea of producing a musical soundtrack that could produce a narrative in the same way as a film. Unlike "Tommy", the new work would be grounded in reality and tell a story of youth and adolescence that the audience could relate to.