I saw The Who this past spring. It was a great show, they can still rock hard. Yet I walked out of the show a bit disappointed. It wasn't a general disappointment, they had lived up to all my expectations. It wasn't any sense of "they're getting too old to do this" or anything like that. No, I had a very specific complaint about their show, one which actually applies to a number of concerts I see these days. One which prevented me from totally enjoying the concert.
I have seen The Who three times now. The first time was at Madison Square Garden (NY) in 1979. (I never managed to see the full original band, with Keith Moon on drums. Came close a couple of times, but always missed out.) That one was, by far, the best show of the three, for reasons I'll come back to later.
The second time I saw them was ten years later, in San Diego. That one was, frankly, a disappointing show overall. It was their Tommy revival tour, and they did play a good sized chunk of that album, which was great. But they seemed to have a couple dozen extra people on stage to help them out. Pete Townshend (suffering badly from tinnitus at the time) only played acoustic guitar. He did get a couple of windmills in, but it just wasn't the same. The Whole thing felt almost like a Who tribute band. The songs were all there, but the sheer power of just four guys cranking it out was completely missing.
So I wasn't sure what to expect another 20 (almost) years after that. The band, of course, was down to two original members. But Zack Starkey (yes, Ringo's son) did a great Keith Moon imitation on the drums, and the other added members (included Pete's brother Simon on guitar) felt integral to the sound, not superfluous.
As I said, they rocked. They played a varied
G. Murray Thomas writes and performs poetry because he can't sing. He can be found at myspace.com/gmurraythomas
