QUADROPHENIA is one of the best-known albums playing tribute to the mod movement so closely associated with Brighton.

The film of it, starring Sting, Phil Daniels and Leslie Ash, was set in Brighton.

Now, one group are bringing the album to the city, to play in its entirety.

The Goldhawks formed a year ago, with the specific goal of bringing a theatre-type show to gig venues across the country.

Singer Doug Freeman says the choice to take the show to gig venues, rather than theatres, was very much intentional.

“Unfortunately, music venues are shutting down, all across the country, so the avenues for performing are getting less.

“We quite like the theatre scene, and we thought it would be a great opportunity to take Quadrophenia to these venues,” he said.

The Quadrophenia Live tour will be taken across the country, but it is here in Brighton where the show kicks off – how appropriate.

When asked about performing in a city so synonymous with The Who, Doug said: “What we wanted to do was bring something for the mods.

“These are our first two inaugural shows of the tour, and to be able to kick the tour off in Brighton… how much better could it get?”

The Goldhawks are very much a supergroup, with its members having performed in bands for decades.

But Doug says there will be something special performing classic Who tracks.

“We’ve done others shows before, but the passion we have, it’s something else in performing Quadrophenia, it’s a dream come true.

“The Who are what got me into music.

“Some girls took me to see them in Manchester when I was a boy.

“They took me to see this band, and I didn’t know anything about music at this point, and they just blew me away, it was an epiphany without a doubt.

“When we got back from Manchester I went to my mum and told her I wanted a microphone.

“Back then the cost of a microphone was quite big, but from that moment I was hooked. I was in my room playing guitar and trying to be Roger Daltrey.”

With a team of seasoned musicians, Doug says it wasn’t getting the music down that was the issue.

The real hard work came when they decided to go all out on the show itself.

“The preparation for the show took about a year; in getting the band together, but also we’ve got a video archive backdrop and that’s quite intense because we’ve done that ourselves as well, it takes a long time to make a three-minute film, and then you’ve got to do the whole album.

“It’s spot on, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the two.”

Although Brighton is a city steeped in mod culture, it is only natural that mods from across the country would come to celebrate the phenomenon.

However, Doug says he was shocked by the commitment of some people when he saw the ticket sales come in.

“I think Brighton is almost like a destination centre for mods, and I think a lot of people travel far and wide to go to Brighton.

“The first 20 tickets for Concorde 2, the first night it went on sale, went to 20 people from Dundee.

“I went to Dundee a couple of weeks ago and it takes about a day to get there.

“So there’s a lot of people who travel to Brighton for this sort of thing.”

Doug is eager to stress that this is a show unlike any other you will see this year, so as The Who are not on tour why not take another chance to celebrate Quadrophenia.