We can't see
every big show that comes through Detroit. Money and sanity are limiting factors. But, sometime after initially getting in to the Beatles -- and before keying in to Bruce -- Aaron had found The Who. He found
The Seeker on
Guitar Hero III, and, as is his fashion, subsequently devoured every recording I had of them. Last summer, he brought to my attention that they -- well, Roger and Pete, anyway -- would be coming to Detroit, for a revival
Quadrophenia tour, and he wanted to go.
Frankly, the prospect of a Quadrophenia tour didn't thrill me. It was hardly my favorite work, and besides, Lori and I saw The Who put on a Quadrophenia show at The Palace in 1996, back when John Entwistle was still alive. My main memories were that Pete Townshend played only acoustic guitar during the album presentation that evening, and that the tour program I had purchased was missing many of its pages. Then there was the ticketing: for the kind of seats I might want, I might have to buy a "VIP package" that would throw in souvenirs I didn't really want, at prices I certainly didn't want to pay. So I held off... right up until the day before the show, when 12th row seats opened up at a regular price.
Gonna see The Who!
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| Playing along with Keith: Bell Boy |
We prepped for the show by putting on a borrowed LP of the album. Not CD, which I don't have. LP, all 4 sides, with a sense of nostalgia as I got out the D4. I never really dug deep in to the Quadrophenia story, but I did get a sense of its introspection and melancholy, not to mention the musical attack. We played the entire album before leaving for the show.
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| Vintage Trouble opened the show |
Before The Who took the stage,
Vintage Trouble played a high energy opening set. Their lead singer, Ty Taylor, has clearly studied the moves of James Brown. But he could
sing, and the band's music was tight and urgent. Highlights included
Total Strangers and
Nobody Told Me, from their album
The Bomb Shelter Sessions.
The Who -- now a 10-piece band -- came out around 8:30. Pete, with a checkered jacket over a white t-shirt. and Roger with his own button down jacket and shirt combo (the shirt, of course, would be in various conditions of buttoning throughout the show, finally culminating in "fully unbuttoned" for the encores). Not a uniform band, in terms of clothes, anyway. By the time
The Real Me was over, we could see how the show would proceed: Huge overhead video displays were used to present, alternately, a history lesson, the story of Quadrophenia, and a retrospective of the band. Pete would play plenty of lead electric guitar. And the vintage moves -- Roger twirling the microphone, Pete's windmill attack on the guitar -- would be in evidence, over and over again. All of the sound effects, from the roaring sea, to the snippets of
The Kids Are Alright and
The Thunderer, were presented seamlessly. The only obvious glitch was when Daltrey came forward to play harmonica, and no sound could be heard as his transmitter was off.
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| Hope I get old and don't die? The windmill lives. |
Roger and Pete both can still sing, and Pete's guitar playing sounded as good as ever to my ears (and, for me, a bit of a revelation after the acoustic presentation in 1996). That said, the musical highlight of the evening was a blistering solo by the dead man: Entwistle is gone, but his extended solo during
5:15, taken no doubt from the 1996-97 tour, lit up the room. During that prior tour, Entwistle had a camera at the end of his bass, to provide a dramatic live effect for the audience. To say that it still worked 15 years later would be an understatement; Zak Starkey easily synced to Entiwstle's axe, and the other band players turned to watch The Ox on the overhead. A bit later, Keith Moon rose to take his solo for
Bell Boy, never mind that he's been dead for almost 35 years. This might suggest a question as to just how much of the show was really live and how much might be Memorex, but no one seemed to mind.
The album portion of the show concluded with a typically forceful version of Love Reign O'er Me, starting with Roger silhouetted against images of the sea water tumbling down, and going through to the final screams and windmill chords.
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| A drink of cool cool rain. |
For the encores, both Pete and Roger became a bit chatty with the audience. Pete reminisced on The Who's first show in the area, when the band stopped off in Ann Arbor on the way from New York to Monterrey in 1967. As he described it, there were about 30 people at the show, half of them in the MC5. Daltrey made remarks as to how much he loved the city, and that he believed the city wouldn't "be down forever." Pete and Roger never greeted each other, though, not until a brief embrace at the very end of the show.
The encores were drawn mostly from Who's Next, and completely lacked the urgency of the Quadrophenia presentation. In the audience, the reaction seemed opposite; through the main portion of the show the audience -- save for the people down front with us -- were mostly sitting on their hands. But when the band started Behind Blue Eyes, suddenly there were 12,000 people who knew all the words and were very willing to sing them, loudly.
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| Tea & Theater |
After the band departed the stage, Roger and Pete stayed behind. Roger announced that Chris Stamp, who had helped manage the band during its early years, had passed away that morning. They concluded the evening with an acoustic performance of Tea & Theatre, from the 2006 album Endless Wire.
The show worked. No pretense, really, of seeing anything "new," though with the fresh musical attack and the video presentation, Quadrophenia retained a certain timelessness. In a sense, perhaps it was old even when it was first released in 1973, so it just hasn't aged that much. Before the concert, when I had told my good friend, and The Who biographer
Dave Marsh, that we were likely going to the show, he offered up that "they are still the perfect introduction for classic rock for young teen boys," but that too much could turn one in to a "yobbo" (I had to look that up). We got the introduction. And the kid is alright.
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| Future's bright... | Daltrey's next move: FTD spokesman |
We can't see every big show that comes through Detroit. Money and sanity are limiting factors. But, sometime after initially getting in to the Beatles -- and before keying in to Bruce -- Aaron had found The Who. He found The Seeker on Guitar Hero III, and, as is his fashion, subsequently devoured every recording I had of them. Last summer, he brought to my attention that they -- well, Roger and Pete, anyway -- would be coming to Detroit, for a revival Quadrophenia tour, and he wanted to go.
Roger and Pete both can still sing, and Pete's guitar playing sounded as good as ever to my ears (and, for me, a bit of a revelation after the acoustic presentation in 1996). That said, the musical highlight of the evening was a blistering solo by the dead man: Entwistle is gone, but his extended solo during 5:15, taken no doubt from the 1996-97 tour, lit up the room. During that prior tour, Entwistle had a camera at the end of his bass, to provide a dramatic live effect for the audience. To say that it still worked 15 years later would be an understatement; Zak Starkey easily synced to Entiwstle's axe, and the other band players turned to watch The Ox on the overhead. A bit later, Keith Moon rose to take his solo for Bell Boy, never mind that he's been dead for almost 35 years. This might suggest a question as to just how much of the show was really live and how much might be Memorex, but no one seemed to mind.
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