The Who—pure, simple, and great

By John Laycock

At pure and simple rock and roll, nobody touches the Who. And Saturday night these four cheeky Englishmen performed at full tilt.

Cobo Hall was packed — all 12,500 tickets sold out weeks ago without any advertising. From the opening spray of electric tonic to the final crash of Peter Townshend’s ruined guitar, those lucky people saw the most unrelenting high-intensity show of any rock and roll band.

Pure and simple, that’s it. Try to isolate the elements of their secret, and you’re left with a boneyard of musical antiques that separately have served others better.

But no-one assembles the basics quite like the Who. The juices of many old rock and roll saints runs through their music. The group learned early the Chuck Berry axiom — a good rock and roll riff never wears out. They’ve scraped all the flab off the essential truths of rock and roll and fitted them together into a seamless whole.

So My Generation, the definitive dumb cry of adolescent fever, stirred the blood as fiercely Saturday as it did six years ago. They could get away with resurrecting an obscure Marvin Gaye tune, or recalling their old hit, Substitute, not in nostalgia but exactly the same way as they have rocked for half a decade. Magic Bus, from 1967, still blew the house down as the final number.

Much of the show came from their latest album, Who’s Next. All the songs have a strong family resemblance to everything else the Who have done; they know they’re right, so they don’t have to change. Only the lyrics have been modified – Peter Townshend, the group’s chief bopper, puts more meaning into words now. But otherwise the album’s bloodlines are firm, even to the point of having about the same amount of congenitally weak material as all their other albums.

It also has that great song Don’t Be Fooled Again, even stronger in the extended version than the hit single, and a high point of adrenalin Saturday night. The other biggest rush came for Pinball Wizard and the See Me-Hear Me section from Tommy, the first and best of the rock operas (or cantatas or musicals or whatever).

Sight and sound fuse when the Who play. Townshend bullfights his guitar, dodging and pirouetting in his thick-soled work boots. No mechanic’s overalls this time, just sports shirt and white bells. Straggly black beard wisping along his hollow cheeks, he had the dour look of a prophet of doom — until his free arm windmilled before slashing his blade home.

Roger Daltrey, resplendent in ancient patched jeans and shirt, did his standard hup-one hup-two march while flinging the mike with a fly-fisherman’s grace and wailing the melodies. John Entwistle stood stolid as ever with his bass; Keith Moon slugged out the irresistable beat while ricochetting his drumsticks in high arcs.

Pure energy. The Who concentrate the essentials of rock and roll so thoroughly that the music’s undiluted force utterly engulfs the audience and sweeps everything before it.

They will probably earn $1 million from their 17-day tour. They deserve every farthing.