‘The Who’ Is Best Ever

By Lew Harris

YEAH, they did “Tommy.” All of it—or at least almost all. And then the houselights came up and The Who saw its audience, on its feet. And then they played for a good half hour more—“Summertime Blues,” “Shakin’ All Over,” “My Generation,” a reprise of “See Me . . . ” from “Tommy.”

I’ll bet there wasn’t a person in the Auditorium Theater last night who won’t tell you that this was probably the best concert Chicago has ever had. Even those that have seen Janis and Cocker and BS&T.

Peter Townshend was in this white jumpsuit. Jumpsuit!!! On him, it’s a jumpsuit, kicksuit, gyrationsuit. Everythingsuit. Standsuit. He stands there, body rigid, his right arm going round and round and round. And as the arm rounds the turn, it strikes a chord.

It pounds. And pounds. He loses his pick—it goes flying across the stage. He keeps pounds, two tambourines his bare hands.

And then he’s up in a jumping jack. As he comes down he pounds a chord, a drum pounds, two tambourines smash together—all as he hits the floor.

In “Tommy” alone there were five, six, seven, maybe eight standing ovations. One for a song coming up, like “Pinball Wizard.” One for something just finished, like “Go-to-the-mirror-smash-the-mirror.” And one every time “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me” came up.

Not to mention the ovation

Sound

Keith Moon got just for pantomiming a drum solo in the middle of a Townshend guitar solo.

But you can’t keep picking little things out.

Musically, The Who is almost flawless. And it’s unbelievable how much better they sound live than on record. “Tommy” is done all electric, the most of the studio version was acoustic guitar—and things like “Uncle Ernie” that I never thought worked very well DO work very well.

Visually, they are beautiful. But we’ve talked about that already.

As for “audience rapport,” something there isn’t too much of anymore, there’s a lot of it — from the patter about writing songs in Townshend’s “GAIR-ige” [that’s “garage,” lackey] to Moon’s waving a Holiday Inn towel around for all to see.

There’s another show Saturday night. The Fourth of July.

Lots of fireworks.