The Who and the Grateful Dead, both influential and important rock bands for ten years, are two of the few true greats in rock music. Although both groups turned in excellent performances Saturday at the first of two joint concerts last weekend at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium, the combination of the two bands produced far less excitement and magic than producer Bill Graham originally envisioned.

In fact, the historic pairing of the two bands turned out to be, surprisingly, something of a nonevent.

Both shows were expected to sell out within days of tickets going on sale. Neither show sold out and the concerts might actually have lost money for the producer.

The Dead opened the show with a three-and-a-half-hour performance (with one intermission) that mixed old and new, familiar and unfamiliar. The Who followed with a 90-minute performance—with no encore—that was a near duplicate of the show the band gave last March at Winterland.

Considering the $11 ticket price, many of the near 40,000 fans on hand Saturday must have left disappointed. It was a cut-and-dried rock show, devoid of Bill Graham’s customary flair for showmanship—outside of the hand-painted London/San Francisco cityscape that surrounded the stage.

The Who tailored the performance for the vast stadium, with guitarist Peter Townshend keeping his solos tight and focused, easy to get, even at a distance of several hundred yards. Nevertheless, no band can surmount the massive amount of space between performer and audience that exists at any ballpark concert.

Of all the bands to tour through this town over the past ten years, none have been more careful than the Who in selection of concert sites, with the band regularly performing at halls smaller than could be easily sold out.

In the past, the Who always left town with many people who wanted to see the band, unable to do so, waiting for the band’s next Bay Area concert. This time that will not be the case and it will probably be at least a couple years before the Who returns.

In this manner, these “Day on the Green” concerts, with the 55,000-seat capacity, may be using up headline acts faster than they can be made. No band can be as effective in a ballpark as they can in a hall even the size of the Cow Palace, a mere one-fourth the size of the Oakland Stadium.

Fans crowd the stage to hear the Who and lead singer Roger Daltrey.

Performing in the ballpark automatically strips away the larger than life sensation that can be achieved in a more intimate concert hall and reduces performers to miniature stature, greatly overshadowed by the gigantic sound system.

When tickets went on sale for last March's Who concerts at Winterland, enough orders were received to sell 100,000 tickets. Similarly, the Grateful Dead sold out six shows at the 1800-seat Orpheum earlier this summer almost as soon as the tickets went on sale. Both groups are known for their obsessive fans but, obviously, many of those fans passed on last weekend’s concert.