The Song Is Over? Not yet. But close.
The Who. At 80. Live at the Royal Albert Hall.
There aren’t many constants in one’s life, and the only true one I had has now passed on. But I’ve been coupled to The Who for well over 50 years now, with only a three-four year period of estrangement (1979-82, obviously), and while I would no longer take a long plane journey or put myself out financially to see them in concert (and indeed, turned down a last-minute free ticket at Bethel Woods in 2022 because I had a marathon I’d trained months for the next morning), if opportunity presents itself, I can’t help myself.
And so I found myself back at the Royal Albert Hall last Sunday March 30th, a year after the last time I thought that this could be the last time, for the second of two shows benefiting the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity I support like no other and am willing to demonstrate as much via a substantial (but far from exorbitant) ticket price. Circumstances then moved me from my original seat in the stalls to the 7th row center, where despite my nerves after thoroughly NOT enjoying a 3rd row center ticket last year with too much chaos around me, all was calm, the experience additionally helped by having a best friend alongside me snapping up the additional second spare rather than watching solo as has too often been the case.
All was so calm, in fact, that the concert from my apparent vantage point seemed oddly mellow. Certainly, without the orchestra that’s accompanied them the last five years, and the inherent dynamics such an entity brings with it, The Who as they exist were brought into relief: a couple of octogenarians (Roger Daltrey, just turned 81, and Pete Townshend, 80 in May), backed by a band whose long-term drummer will himself be eligible for a senior railcard later this year. (I am referencing Zak Starkey there of course, decked out in a yellow onesie that raised – or lowered - the notion of casual stage gear to a new level.) Bassist Jon Button was given a low profile in volume and presentation, the kind we did not see when Pino Palladino filled Entwistle’s thunderfingers, additional backing vocalist John Hogg likewise was rarely in the spotlight, but keyboard player Loren Gold, and Pete’s brother Simon Townshend on additional guitar very much present themselves and are lit accordingly as comfortably confident full-timers.
The relaxed and restrained approach was furthered by some of the songs sounding simplified/shortened (‘Who Are You,’ ‘Bargain’), and none got close to peak volume of last year, let alone of yore, though reading superfan Lauren J. Hammer’s front row review on her FB page, the opening songs’ tempo and energy were up significantly from the initial show three nights earlier.
However, ‘The Real Me’ (the point at which last year’s show came alive with the arrival of Eddie Vedder on lead vocals), came thoroughly unstuck not just once - early enough for the group to stop, restart and launch again - but subsequently again, at the point where the final verse should not come in. This is a problem I witnessed working last year with my young cast in the Rock Academy (and something I’ve also seen when the RA Showband tackles this song): The Who’s music is incredibly complex, full of musically “unnatural” instrumental riff extensions among other musical challenges. On this occasion, and for all the times he has sung it, Roger came in early on that verse and Pete had to bring the song home, though unfortunately singing the wrong words such that Roger got lost again trying to join him.
(Long-term Who fans will know I wrote the biography of Keith Moon: Dear Boy (UK)/Moon (US). You can hear me talking recently about the process (and that of directing the aforementioned Rock Academy Who show) on the excellent Talking About The Who podcast, which also put up a short video additional extract this past month. There is not much to see of me on there (not sure I realized it was going up as a vid) but I invite you to listen and watch all the same.
It was that kind of night, and as such, it was just as well that I approached it with the decidedly opposite intent from last year, when my supposed dream ticket over-raised not just musical expectations, but those of my ability to watch unimpeded. This time round, I prepped with an 11-mile morning run through Victoria Park in Hackney, rewarded myself with a mid-afternoon cheeky pint of Gypsy Hill Hepcat because I found a pub nearby in North London that sells this, my fave beer in the world and one that just happens to be made down the road from where I grew up. I had a couple more drinks before the show with my mate, attending his first concert since major heart surgery almost left him for dead on the operating table, joining my London host and some friends in the Kensington Bar of the RAH rather than watch Level 42 (sorry Mark King and co., but old habits die hand).
Once in our row, I stuck my -20dB custom-molded earplugs in my lug ‘oles (like Peter and Roger, my hearing ain’t what it used to be), and figured to just enjoy what may. No singing along, not from me at any rate and nor, tonight, from those alongside me this year either. Just an intimate crowd of 6,000 watching a couple of their life-long musical companions - we can call them “friends” fairly enough - deal with the ageing process as best as the first Generation of Rock can be expected to. In this case, that friendship, collective and individual, was demonstrated through many moments of humorous banter, some of it directed at the crowd, but much of it tenderly directed to each other. The moment below, which I believe the moment below comes from after ‘The Real Me’s messy conclusion, has both:
There were, to be sure, many moments of magic, mainly from Pete playing his uniquely gifted but unshowy improvised jazz-rock-chords-based-blues style, with his work on ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ the ‘Tommy’ finale, and ‘5:15’ (see below) especially experimental, all the more so when the camera reveals that his finesse comes from using his fingers rather than a pick. And it was all the more impressive given that early on, presumably from a bout of geriatric windmilling, he cut his finger open, which at least offered the visual impact of a blood-splatter Strat. Meantime, Roger made up for ‘The Real Me’ with a tour de force melismatic coda to ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ that earned a heartfelt, truly genuine, spontaneous lengthy standing ovation.
But it is what it is. Roger’s physicality is amazing as his voice still can prove to be, yet his struggles with hearing himself onstage only increase with age, and reading Brian Kehew’s excellent Backstage Blog it’s evident that fixing his on-stage monitor problems are none so easy as he wants them to be. Pete is equally resilient and yet increasingly fragile himself: he had a knee replacement only a month ago, which unsurprisingly necessitated sitting down here and there, and he also announced that it appears to have affected his breathing, which might explain his comparative lack of vocals.
Still, this is why we go to see The Who, us lifers. For that banter, for the musical nuances, the improvisations, the imperfections, and even for the calamities, of which there were quite a few more than just ‘The Real Me’ (see Kehew’s blog for further details). Some might say they’re getting less than they bargained for as a result, but it’s these inconsistencies that make a night with The Who a very different occasion than, say, a night with Kraftwerk.
And there is always some effort to play with setlist. Had I looked online from the Thursday night’s archives, I might have known to expect the appearance of ‘Love Ain’t For Keeping’ for the first time since 2004, but I hadn’t and so I didn’t, and it was therefore a welcome surprise for me – though being short, relatively straightforward, and none too voluminous for the band, perhaps not too big a challenge for those on stage.
But then anyone who had looked at Thursday’s setlist and seen that it had included the absolute rarity of ‘I Can See For Miles’ – a bastard to pull off onstage, having both tried it myself in The Catskills 45s and with the RA kids - would have been both disappointed and thrilled to discover The Who also found it beyond a further attempt, and instead performed ‘The Song Is Over,’ for the first time ever as a group, some 54 years since it was released on Who’s Next.
‘The Song Is Over’ is one of my fave songs in the world. Hearing it at the age of 10 or 11, and quite apart from its incredible musicality (aided by the inimitable late Nicky Hopkins on piano) and epic structure, its lyrical references to “the wide open spaces,” “the infinite sea,” and “the sky high mountains” assured me that there was a world beyond grey, suburban, concrete, terraced and violent South London, one where I could be comparatively “free”. I asked to include ‘The Song Is Over’ in the Rock Academy Who show I directed last summer/autumn alongside a number of other complex songs, and almost came to regret it, so difficult are its various chordal modulations and instrumental passages. I was thrilled when, at least on our second night, our kids pulled it off.
The Who, as you will see above courtesy of a front row view from ‘The Gazzas’, did not. Roger, singing Pete’s recorded parts verses as well as his own presumably due to Townshend’s own aforementioned vocal issues, came in early on the chorus that follows straight on from the first chorus, forgetting the additional “to the free…” that forms an extra bar/measure or two. He promptly pulled the song to a halt, blamed the mistake on an inability to hear himself again, and a sympathetic Pete, who had been sitting down, the better to rest those knee after almost two hours onstage but also to check the chords via an iPad, stood up and played it this time facing Roger, effectively directing the onstage traffic.
It was, on the one hand then, a euphoric moment which to end – a band still debuting songs onstage after all these years, of itself an acknowledgement of how deep their catalogue runs. At the same time, given the initial trainwreck, it formed a hesitant conclusion to what was musically already a hesitant night. Who fans critiquing The Who is an accepted form of engagement – Kehew engages it in on the official Who blog even as he is part of their longterm live crew – and I certainly feel entitled to point out the frailties in the set. After all, the band have typically been their own harshest critics, and their utmost honesty is one of the aspects that provides such a solid bond with the audience, which is expected to return it in kind.
But the external reviews (like this from the Standard) were generally excellent, and given the many highlights, the majesty of the songs themselves, Pete’s guitar playing (and occasionally, his vocals), Roger’s vocal peaks, and the reliability of the other onstage musicians, I can’t argue that overall, seeing The Who perform onstage – especially for Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall - is anything but a treat.
If it does turn out to be the last time The Who ever play the UK, that would make it additionally special. But I’ve laboured under that illusion many times before, and it’s certainly not currently their last announced show (there are two in Italy in the summer). And Roger’s enthusiasm for touring is such that he is doing so in a solo capacity even as I type. So, if they The Who decide to go for a global victory lap before finally hobbling off into the sunset, they must know as well as anyone watching that they’ll need to have a game plan beyond this pair of relatively relaxed charity performances.
Like many, I would love to see Pete and Rog go out on a Storytellers type of tour, perhaps entirely unaccompanied. But that only works in smaller venues, which would raise ticket demand, prices and accompanying complaints. Yet giving a wider range of legacy and classic rock fans the farewell that would be demanded by that audience – full of volume, lights, action and video screens – requires a degree of musical agility and physical stamina that you and I would be surprised to find ourselves capable of at 60, let alone 80.
So, who knows? If I admit to myself that all these years, I’ve been chasing something I can’t ever have – the transcendental magic of those late 60s, early 70s performances I was too young to know about, with not just John stage right but Keith at the back, those two and Pete constantly following each other’s improvisations by instinct, all while breaking the record books for sheer volume and the philosophy books for brilliance - then I have to admit that it’s only going to be further diminishing returns from here on in. The Song may not yet be over, but last Sunday’s accidental finale indicates that it is very close.
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I had tears streaming down my face when they did “ Song is Over.”
54 years.
Brilliant.
As a fan Tony who as a teenager sat on the arm of my parents' sofa with a pair of drumsticks trying to keep up with Keith Moon on "Substitute" and really only kicking up dust but who has never gotten to see The Who live I relish your passionate writings as my proxy fandom all these years since reading your book. Many thanks and thanks for this very honest review too.
All hail the octogenarians who I hope I have as much spunk at that age too. Good on them.
I was trying to think who the aged Pete reminded me of and it was that other great British eccentric Spike Milligan....national treasures both of them!
Cheers