Doctor Jimmy

It's odd that I should be the first person to comment on this song, but it's just about a masterpiece, so complex and so thrilling.

This song to me must have been at least partially inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R.L.Stevenson, and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Mr Jim is a violent misogynist who is obsessed with destroying anything society sees as "positive" through direct and sublimated sexual violence (rape, fighting, violence, alcohol, gambling). Dr. Jimmy, as the title implies, is the alter ego of the protagonist, who is addicted to Amphetamines.

"Doctor Jimmy and Mister Jim When I'm pilled you don't notice him He only comes out when I drink my gin"

In my view, the song begins and continues in Mr Jim's voice. He is drunk. One can almost hear Alex boasting to his droogs at the Milk Bar about their past and planned exploits in "ultraviolence" through Daltrey's vitriolic flyting. Mr Jim is not satisfied with mere violence. It's about control of his peer group through dominance, (which seems to me to draw a straight line to A Clockwork Orange). His anger can only be satisfied by defiling what is objectively good in his surroundings: femininity, relationships, youth and innocence.

"I'm going back soon Home to get the baboon Who cut up my eye"

The baboon is the "monkey on his back"- his addiction to amphetamines. "Cut up my eye" suggests it has robbed him of his ability to see or think clearly about himself or his actions. Note the iconic movie poster for "Clockwork Orange" depicts Alex emerging from a triangle, holding a stiletto in front of one eye. In European releases, the posters depict a man (Alex) in a bowler hat with only one eye.

In the movie, Alex is reprogrammed by being forced (with his eyelids propped open = cut my eye) to watch violence, while his beloved Beethoven plays. The associative dissonance "ruins" both violence and Beethoven for him and left him a clockwork orange: a fusion of two unrelated identities; poetically describing a schizophrenic with contradictory personalities, both of which are self-destructive. Kubrick's film was released in 1971. The song's first release (it was never a single) was on Quadrophenia, in 1973. I think the word "Quadrophenia", and its linguistic proximity to "schizophrenia", says much; and that album's content plays with this idea. In the album, and later the film ( 1979- which tells the story of Jimmy Cooper, a young mod who struggles with four different personalities and addictions to amphetamines, alcohol and meaningless violence, in his invented conflict with the "rockers") we find our Dr/Mr. Jim from the song.

At the end of the song, much like Alex after his "behavioral reprogramming", we hear Jimmy's bewildered voice, coming back in to the picture. Perhaps he has taken medically prescribed pills, and is experiencing a moment of lucidity. The change in the music, and in Daltrey's voice, make it clear that that the voice in the coda is not the same as the voice that began the song, or sang the stanzas. This is a different version of the same man, perhaps under the influence and supervision of a real doctor/psychiatrist who has prescribed him anti-psychotic medication. Like Alex at the end of Clockwork Orange.

"Is it me? For a moment"

Deep down, he knows that any relief from Dr Jimmy and Mr. Jim is only temporary, because:

"The stars are falling The heat is rising The past is calling"

Go watch Quadrophenia (1979). That should clear up any lingering questions about Jimmy Cooper and whether he is Dr/Mr Jimmy. I think this song inspired his character in the film.

[Edit: spelling]