'The Who' May Well Be the Best Rock Has to Offer

By Dave Wagner

Of The Capital Times Staff

For The Who, one of the best and most famous rock bands in the world, it must have been a fairly run of the mill concert in the Coliseum Saturday night. They've played most of the songs thousands of times, including the selection from their rock opera, "Tommy."

But for the capacity audience of fans – the natural limit of eleven thousand — it was something else.

It's one thing to listen to their music on an AM radio speaker or even a large stereo system, but it's an entirely different experience to get 40,000 watts right between the ears with the bass guitar and drums a physical force on the rib cage like an external heartbeat and a light show that alternates between delicate spider-web effects and a chorus of two dozen near-blinding carbon arc lamps that light up the auditorium like the summer sun at high noon.

By the end there could have been a few thousand Tommies stumbling out of the Coliseum blind, deaf and speechless like the hero of their opera. But the speechlessness, at least, would come from the astounding authority and power (not just in decibels) these four Englishmen express.

Peter Townshend is regarded as one of the best guitarists in rock, but not for the melodic line of his solos. Since the group has never had a rhythm guitar he developed a style that is heavily rhythmic, depending on wide-open chord progressions and blistering variations. In fact, he's the man who invented the (by now standard) use of controlled feedback that influenced Jimi Hendrix and so many other of the top '60s guitarists.

All of that unique Townshend sound was intact for this concert, along with a few moments of the performance style that once earned him the tag, "Bird-man." He would jump as high in the air as he could, still playing, or make a few splits in mid-flight; roosted on the stage again with both feet planted, he would rotate his right arm like a propeller to smash out key chords when his hand reached the strings, like a rotor blade in a car's distributor, making contact with enough electrical force to detonate a small mountain.

In itself that doesn't mean anything, but Townshend is the composer and lyricist who is responsible for most of the music this group makes, including the opera, which held up beautifully in the quartet version. Drummer Keith Moon introduced it by calling it the "original version, or what's left of it." It was the same, if shortened, version they performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York a half-decade ago, and in many ways it sounds leaner, tougher and certainly more rockish than it does when strings are added.

To underscore their origins in rhythm-and-blues, in fact, the group went back to its familiar 1970 release of the Cochran/Capeheart song, "Summertime Blues" right after the opera.

These guys are unique in that they've been together since the early '60s when they were scuffling in London clubs as a "Mod" band.

It was way back then that they earned a reputation as instrument and amplifier smashers, after Townshend accidentally poked his guitar through the plaster ceiling of a club during a concert. The crowd loved it, and lots of $500 guitars later the group had earned a publicity angle that was invaluable. Saturday night The Who threatened to return to those other roots along with rhythm-and-blues: when problems with the sound system developed early in the show, lead singer Roger Daltrey said they would "smash it to bits" if it wasn't fixed pronto. It was, and the epic battle never came off, but Daltrey sounded like he meant it.

What a difference between a concert featuring someone dreaming of star status and someone who doesn't have to worry about it. This group oozes mania and serenity at the same time. When the famous lines in "Tommy" came around ("See me, touch me . . ."), and the pencil-thin green lights played over the audience, the audience was unmistakably awed and moved. It was a perfect touch, and when the carbon arcs slammed on immediately afterward, illuminating everyone there, it was a symbolic demonstration that the thing that has always set this group apart from the others is that they emphasize a dynamic relation with the audience.

Stars or not, The Who are convincing and real enough to play at their top, which very well may be the best there is in the whole idiom.