2000-07-10-The_Times
CAMDEN — The year was 1965 and the Who had just released one of its earliest hits, the sparsely arranged "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere."
Just three songs into the Who's exhilarating set Friday night at the E-Centre, Pete Townshend seized the simple propulsion of "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and throttled it.
He never looked back. Grabbing the neck of his electric guitar and shaking it as he tore into the first of many blistering guitar solos that evening, he attacked the song with the same vigor of his glorious rock 'n' roll youth and brought the surviving members of the Who — lead singer Roger Daltrey and bass player John Entwistle — with him.
Truly a man possessed, Townshend was on a mission to prove the passing of 35 years was merely a number best ignored. And together, the Who boldly accomplished that mission as a stripped-down band more handily than ever in the 22 years since the passing of frenetic drummer Keith Moon.
As Townshend goes, so goes the Who. Daltrey's voice, despite some graininess, magically stays in key and locks in, culminating in his ability to nail the spine-tingling scream that dramatically brings "Won't Get Fooled Again" to its zenith. Entwistle's flying fingers soar as they heighten his always nimble bass playing, showcased during a rumbling solo on "5:15."
Add to that the gracefully authoritative, Moon-inspired drumming of Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) and the essential keyboard atmospherics of longtime sideman John "Rabbit" Bundrick, and the Who is fundamentally back as a real band again.
The Who's renewed relevance on this summer reunion tour is a defiant celebration of the rekindled vitality of not only one of the greatest and most fabled bands in the history of rock 'n' roll, but of rock 'n' roll itself in an industry that is
MUSIC REVIEW
trying to render the genre dormant — if not dead — amid the marketing-fueled dominance of teen pop and hip-hop.
In that context, it's tempting to write off the Who as fiftysomething dinosaurs who should no longer be roaming the remaining rock terrain. But don't try telling that to the generation-spanning crowd of 25,000 that was on its collective feet all night Friday at the sold-out E-Centre, thrusting its fists, fingering its air guitars and roaring the youth-inspired lyrics to enduring Who anthems like "Baba O'Reilly," "Who Are You," "Bargain," "The Real Me" and "Pinball Wizard."
Townshend has been slowly on the comeback since 1989, when he first went public that he was suffering from a debilitating case of tinnitus that not only impaired his hearing but robbed him of much of his fervor in the process.
That was the last time the Who did a greatest hits tour, but the band still needed a number of backup musicians as Townshend tried to compensate on plugged-in acoustic guitar, which had been by his side on every Who tour since.
Not this time, though. Accompanied by just Starkey and Bundrick, Townshend is a windmilling wonder on guitar again, wildly exploring new possibilities of songs 20 years old and beyond, while revisiting others with the same note-for-note ferocity of the recorded originals.
"Magic Bus," in particular, was a whole new revelation, its trademark Bo Diddley shuffle shuttled by some Memphis-style blues sparked by Bundrick on the Hammond B-3 organ.
Townshend explained from the stage what's suddenly propelling the Who toward a full-throttle comeback that has led the legendary British mod-rockers to start recording what should be its first studio album of new material since 1982.
The answer, in great part, is the public's response to the last couple
Truly a man possessed, Townshend was on a mission to prove the passing of 35 years was merely a number best ignored. And together, the Who boldly accomplished that mission as a stripped-down band more handily than ever in the 22 years since the passing of frenetic drummer Keith Moon.
of summer outings in the late '90s — lushly produced on-stage renditions of the Who's classic 1973 rock opera, "Quadrophenia," with Starkey and Bundrick, zip-locking a core band that used added musicians to flesh out its sound.
"It's probably what lured us back out here today," said Townshend.
Despite the Who's restored confidence as a working band, Townshend wondered aloud why the "pretty good" reviews he's been reading in the first two weeks of this tour tend to remark how "strange" it is for men of their age to be playing music "intended" for teenage audiences.
Townshend explained that the
enduring pertinence of songs like "Baba O'Reilly" (which Townshend ended with his first jumping scissor kick of the night) — and thus the Who itself — was because they were about "what happened to us when we were teenagers and trying to overcome what I believe rock 'n' roll still is: getting you from your teenage years to your adult years."
