Tempo

The last hurrah? Only Who knows

Continued from first Tempo page

…tacs gone; the creative fortunes of the Who have waxed and waned. But the band has endured, weathering the death of longtime drummer Keith Moon in 1978 and a concert stampede in Cincinnati that left 11 Who fans dead. The Who's drawing power, at least, has remained constant, as constant as its longtime image of adolescent rebellion and alienation epitomized in “My Generation," the “youth anthem” in which lead singer Roger Daltrey declared, “Hope I die before I get old."

The Who has apparently changed its mind about that particular notion; the one-time signature song, in fact, would seem to have been dropped from its repertoire, though other longtime staples remain. Tuesday night's two-hour set, which opened with the vintage "Substitute" [the same song with which the band opened its first Chicago-area show at an Arlington Heights teen club called the Cellar in 1967], included “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Pinball Wizard," "Won't Get Fooled Again,” and "Summertime Blues.” All figured in the concert's best moments; all are at least 10 years old.

In recent years, Townshend—who has, incidentally, announced that he is touring sober this time, just for a change—has turned from adolescent and teenage angst to a wider range of topics in his songwriting. The results have been songs less effective in terms of immediate impact but occasionally more insightful; one thing about growing older is that you really do—if you're halfway smart—realize how few things can be delineated in terms of black and white. As “It's Hard,” one of a handful of new songs the band performed Tuesday points out, it's easy to fly but hard to land; the Who has managed to do both.

IF THIS IS, indeed, the Who's last hurrah, you couldn't tell it from its performance Tuesday night. The band may be tired of touring, but it by no means comes across as tired of performing; at no time was there a feeling that it was simply going through the motions. Neither was there anything particularly special in the way of staging or special effects for what could be the grand finale.

The band, as on its last tour, has added a keyboard player [Tim Gorman, who played on the Who's current album, "It's Hard") to the usual line-up of lead vocalist Daltrey, singer-guitarist Townshend, bassist and occasional vocalist John Entwistle and drummer Kenney Jones. The sparse scattering of special effects utilized on the last tour, consisting of flashpots and very bright lights that are turned on the audience, is repeated this time around. And, of course, there's Townshend's windmill guitar style and Daltrey's running-in-place and pacing-in-place stage moves.

Inevitably, when a band does a two-hour set, there will be slow moments, and the Who's show was no exception. Still, the pace was for the most part strong and steady, providing a fairly thorough retrospective of the band's history from the 1960s through 1982 and its current single, “Athena” [which, along with "Summertime Blues" and "Twist and Shout," served as an encore].

The length of the show and the nature of the event might better have been served by dispensing with an opening act—something that was standard procedure with the Who at one time—but there was one, nevertheless, in the form of T-Bone Burnett and his band. Opening for the Who is invariably a thankless task, as Burnett, a decent enough rocker, must have realized by now. Each of his songs was greeted not with applause, but cries of “Who!”

The Who themselves, meanwhile, plan to be on the road for about 10 weeks in all, with nearly a month off in the middle. The final concert on the tour is scheduled for Toronto around the third week in December.

Tribune photos by Charles Osgood

Guitarist Pete Townshend [left] and lead singer Roger Daltrey [right]: Helping set a strong, steady pace, maybe for the last time on the road, for the Who at the Rosemont Horizon.